The university has long since sold its soul. It's just selling its soul now in more ways, for a higher price.
Ralph Nader, Princeton Class of 1955
Dr. Heath Lowry is a professor at Princeton University whose recent appointment to a named chair funded by the Turkish government has prompted a firestorm of protest.
The manipulation of knowledge goes deeper than censorship and is more subtle than outright propaganda. It can include conditions under which research will be funded and given a forum, and also the designation of legitimacy to be conferred or withheld in specific fields of inquiry. Jobs, tenure, professional advancement, all can come to depend on taking the approved line.
The money doesn't have to come with strings, but there is always a natural inclination to be grateful to the donor.
It isn't enough that you're smart and knowledgeable, you have to have independent allegiance, that you're not consulting with these companies on the side the way some [Princeton] professors were.
Regulatory policy is increasingly made with the participation of experts, especially academics. A regulated firm or industry should be prepared whenever possible to coopt these experts. This is most effectively done by identifying the leading experts in each relevant field and hiring them as consultants or advisors, or giving them research grants and the like. This activity requires a modicum of finesse; it must not be too blatant, for the experts themselves must not recognize that they have lost their objectivity and freedom of action.
A university invites the sitting President of the United States to deliver its commencement address. The university gives said President an honorary degree. The President proposes a new education subsidy. The university already receives millions each year from the federal government. Because the university is Princeton, no one suspects any impropriety.
[Government funding] has twisted the focus of many universities away from teaching and towards the goal of securing more funding.
In connection with Federal assistance, the more Federal assistance you get, of course, the more Federal control of your institutions there is, because there is a great deal of truth in the old adage "He who pays the piper calls the tune."
The long arm of the Turkish state has enlisted, directly and indirectly, some prominent academic spokespersons (both Turks and non-Turks) who have outrageously muddied the waters of truth by obscuring and distorting the story of Armenian genocide in the 1915-18 period.
