Free Speech and Koch Money: Manufacturing a Campus Culture War

"An insightful dive into the ways higher education has been impacted—indeed, manipulated—by conservatives. Read it and fight back."—The Progressive

Cancel culture is running wild on college campuses. Student, faculty, and the media are outraged. Or is something else at work. Take a deep dive to fund out how the infamously conservative Koch Brothers and their donor network is funding and activating outrage in an attempt to frame their arguments about the dangers of liberalism.

In recent years hundreds of high-profile “free speech” incidents have rocked US college campuses. Milo Yiannopoulos, Ben Shapiro, Ann Coulter and other right-wing speakers have faced considerable protest, with many being disinvited from speaking. These incidents are widely circulated as examples of the academy's intolerance towards conservative views. But this response is not the spontaneous outrage of the liberal colleges.

There is a darker element manufacturing the crisis, funded by political operatives, and designed to achieve specific political outcomes. If you follow the money, at the heart of the issue lies the infamous and ultra-libertarian Koch donor network.

Grooming extremist celebrities, funding media platforms that promote these controversies, developing legal organizations to sue universities and corrupting legislators, the influence of the Koch network runs deep. Chapters include:

*The Donor Strategy
*The Student Groups
*The Provocateurs
*The Media amplifiers
*The Lawyers
*Changing the Laws
*The Free Speech International

The authors believe we need to abandon the “campus free speech” narrative and instead follow the money if we ever want to root out this dangerous network from our universities.

They write, “We hope this book serves as a useful tool for refocusing the debate about campus free speech. We recognize that navigating the complex intersection of free speech, academic freedom, campus safety, and institutional inclusion is not easy. What speech crosses the line? Who determines this? How does an institution protect a wide range of speech while also making sure that all students and faculty free included and welcome within the campus community? These are difficult questions, especially in a deeply divided country, Asking these questions by themselves, however, also misses the fact that the growing outrage over free speech on campus is not a concern necessarily organic to the school in question. It was—and is—international and manufactured.