Leasing
the Ivory Tower: The Corporate Takeover of Academia
by Lawrence C. Soley
Reviews
From Booklist, July 19, 1995
Soley returns fire here in the escalating
battle between liberals and conservatives over "political correctness"
on college campuses, university curricula, and control of the U.S. educational
agenda. He confronts Dinesh D'Souza, author of Illiberal
Education (1991), and Roger Kimball, author of Tenured
Radicals (1990), head-on; and he charges that the debate over "political
correctness" is a red herring. Soley counters that big business, the military,
and conservative think tanks have taken control of major campuses, such
as Columbia, MIT, Brigham Young, and Michigan State. He argues that many
universities have become research and development centers for major corporations
and that almost all money donated to universities comes with strings. He
also targets professors who spend more time consulting than teaching and
university presidents more familiar with corporate boardrooms than classrooms.
Soley documents his accusations and observations well, and his book will
provide balance to any collections recently dominated by a barrage of conservative
works. David Rouse - Copyright© 1995, American Library Association.
All rights reserved
Synopsis
Soley argues "that big business,
the military, and conservative think tanks have taken control of major
campuses, such as Columbia, MIT, Brigham Young, and Michigan State." (Booklist)
Index.
Reviews
From Sanford R. Silverburg
- Small Press
Universities committed to
research or those that demand it from their faculties become 'hubs of corporate
influence,' argues the author. The traditional concern is that funding
of scholarship - which is supposed to be value-free - by corporate or government
sources taints those efforts. There are universities that rigorously screen
funding sources, to be sure; they are also few in number, and how they
support their research is not documented by the author. This is not a particularly
well-balanced approach to the topic, but one that does lay out a great
deal of information and is certainly grist for the mill.
From Publisher's Weekly
- Publishers Weekly
House Speaker Newt Gingrich's
course "Renewing American Civilization" at a Georgia college, funded with
Republican PAC money and tax-deductible corporate contributions, was only
the most visible instance of the epidemic political and corporate corruption
of higher education, contends media critic and investigative reporter Soley.
He takes a critical look at industry-driven university research programs,
corporate conflicts of interest among academic "expert witnesses," right-wing
think tanks on university campuses and expansion of business and applied-research
programs that attract corporate money at the expense of the liberal arts.
His case would be stronger if he did not also attack many basic aspects
of university administration without explaining what is wrong with them:
for instance, the fact that university presidents are expected to raise
money for their institutions and that they often draw large salaries. He
also relies too much on repetitive clichés like "corporate fat cats"
and "conservative tycoons" and appeals to a pristine past in which universities
pursued knowledge in an atmosphere of pure, high-minded academic freedom
and utopian vision many otherwise sympathetic readers may question. (July)
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