A ‘Trojan Horse’ or a Do-Over?

Brown University’s faculty delayed voting on a proposed Philosophy, Politics and Economics Center this month over questions about the unit’s purpose. Proponents of the center see an opportunity for scholars to do interdisciplinary work on urgent social issues with colleagues who don’t necessarily share their political beliefs. But critics of the proposal worry that the center risks becoming an ideological island on campus, that it will accept funding from sources some find questionable, or both.

A Controversial Forerunner

Much of the resistance to the proposed center stems from long-standing faculty antipathy toward Brown’s Political Theory Project, elements of which would be absorbed by the center. The project’s mission is to “investigate the ideas and institutions that make societies free, prosperous and fair,” and, like the proposed center, the project says it’s committed to true ideological diversity. Yet the theory project, along with other similar units across academe, has a reputation for veering hard to the right politically.

The theory project also has accepted funds from the Charles Koch Foundation, whose past funding agreements with other colleges and universities have raised academic freedom concerns. Koch has moved away from strings attached–type agreements and toward transparency in its higher education funding in recent years, but the environmentally unfriendly origins of the Koch family fortune and the Kochs’ long-term involvement with Republican and Libertarian politics still rankle many academics.

The theory project has drawn other criticisms in recent years, including allegations that it pays students to participate in its programs; the project says it pays student fellows who apply and are accepted to its society $500 research stipends per semester. Jane Mayer’s Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right also described a cozy relationship between the Kochs and the project’s founder, John Tomasi. Tomasi has since left teaching at Brown to run Heterodox Academy, but he’s said to have been involved in initial conversations about converting the theory project what is now the proposed PPE Center.

In response to a request for comment about the center debate, Tomasi shared a 2018 op-ed he wrote, saying, “criticisms of the PTP [Political Theory Project] have often been built upon innuendo and simple factual errors.” Critics of the PTP “routinely mischaracterize my own political views, describing me as an exponent of unbridled capitalism,” the op-ed continues. “In fact, my life’s work has been to reconcile advocates of private economic liberty to the moral imperatives of social justice (and vice versa).”

Funding Concerns

Richard Locke, provost and Schreiber Family Professor of Political Science and Public and International Affairs at Brown, and a proponent of the new center, said in an interview that unlike the theory project, the center is not being funded by the Koch Foundation. Instead, it will be funded by an endowment built by individual donors, mostly parents and alumni who believe in the center’s goals, he said.

“They are from a broad array of the political spectrum,” Locke said of the donors. “Some of them are Democrats, some of them are Republicans, and what they want is a center that does this kind of work, and that’s a home for scholars and students who are liberal, who are conservative or anything in between—but who are working on these important issues alongside one another and learning from one another.”

Locke did not share the formal proposal for the center when asked, saying it remains an internal document. But he described the center as a faculty-led initiative that he was asked to help forward. Theory project faculty members were involved in early planning for the center, but the proposed unit became joint effort among the chairs and various professors of the philosophy, political science and economics departments. The proposed center’s governing board includes the three department chairs and three other tenure-line professors from additional programs, and departments will approve new faculty appointments to the center. The center would not be allowed to launch a new major without typical faculty approval.

Eric Patashnik, chair of political science, said the center would offer “many intellectual benefits for students, faculty and postdocs at Brown. Its core mission is to bring together people from diverse perspectives to explore and debate the issues that polarize society. In an era of political and social fragmentation, this mission is an urgent one.”

He added, “Our polarized politics is making it increasingly difficult for people to reach shared understandings of collective problems, from the pandemic to economic inequality. Research universities have an important role to play in promoting thoughtful dialogue across disciplinary and political divisions about the array of challenges we face.”

Not a ‘Referendum’

At a recent faculty meeting, Locke asked faculty members to focus on what the center aims to do and “not turn this into some sort of referendum on broader political issues.”

Yet it’s hard for some on campus to trust that the center won’t be the Political Theory Project 2.0, or that it won’t eventually accept funding from groups with controversial agendas. The latter concern is part of a larger discussion at Brown about vetting donations. Currently, the campus Advisory Committee on University Resources Management is considering a proposal, backed by Scholars at Brown for Climate Action and other groups, to restrict gifts and grants from organizations that support science misinformation. Some want that issue settled ahead of approving the center.

Seth Rockman, associate professor of history, told Inside Higher Ed, “Brown faculty are rightfully worried that the proposed PPE Center is a Trojan horse,” as it’s “still so clearly an artifact of the PTP’s ideological project.”

At the same time, Rockman said, “there are ways that the proposed PPE Center can escape the dark shadow of the PTP.”

Rockman’s pitch? A new center will “have to establish commitments that align with Brown’s investments in diversity, equity and inclusion, and it will have to stop pretending that pro-market ideology isn’t already dominant on a campus where economics and computer science are the top concentrations and where investment banks and management consulting firms eagerly come calling each year to recruit our most talented students—and where a shiny new center for entrepreneurship looms over Thayer Street” on College Hill.

The center also will need to abandon “both sides”–style programs featuring many Koch-aligned speakers, Rockman said, and “empower a wider segment of the faculty and student population to engage urgent questions as they apply in the quote-unquote real world, rather than in some imagined fantasyland of idealized markets and polities that have never existed and will never exist.”

John Friedman, chair of economics, said he only became chair last year, when plans for the center were already under way. From his perspective, the proposal is “trying to rebuild a center to realize the great possibilities that the PTP had not.”

The center is designed as a forum for faculty members and students from philosophy, political science, economics and other fields to come together and think through issues together, he said. The minimum wage, for instance, “involves a number of empirical economic issues, political considerations and the moral and ethical concerns. No forum on campus currently includes all of these perspectives.”

Friedman said he’s heard his colleagues’ concerns and shares many of them, especially those centered on how the theory project operated. At this point, however, “I’m confident that we have a robust governance structure in place that leaves the PPE no more at risk than any other center at Brown.”

The center is up for consideration by Brown’s faculty again next month.