Let’s face it: Brooklyn College of the City University of New York just isn’t going to make the news very much.
The last time anyone really heard from the taxpayer-funded school, it was when the current president spent over $100,000 to change the school logo because, in her twisted mind, the old logo looked too much like a giant penis. That was last August. (RELATED: Brooklyn College Spent $107,000 To Replace Logo President Thought Looked Like A Penis)
Now, Brooklyn College is back in the headlines because a business professor there has charged that leftist administrators flatly balked at the opportunity to negotiate for a $4.3 million dollar grant from the Charles G. Koch Foundation. The alleged reason? The bureaucrats would rather hate the libertarian Koch brothers than have a ton of money.
The professor is Mitchell Langbert, reports the New York Observer.
Langbert, who has taught at the school for 16 years, said he had made a grant proposal and had been communicating with representatives from the Koch foundation for about a year.
The multimillion-dollar Koch Foundation grant he envisioned would have gone toward establishing an institute for market-based economics on the Brooklyn College campus, according to Inside Higher Ed. It would have funded the salaries of several new faculty members and several graduate students. Other perks would have been an honors program and added support for the school’s attempt to gain accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Business Schools International.
However, Langbert claims, Brooklyn business school dean Willie Hopkins wanted no part of $4.3 million from the Koch Foundation.
The professor said Hopkins failed even to respond to several attempts to discuss the possibility of millions for the business school. Langbert told Inside Higher Ed that when he was at last able to speak with Hopkins, the dean “negated” the proposal in its entirety.
Langbert criticized the response. Reasonable school officials, he said, “will sit down with you and encourage proactive, creative problem-solving that will facilitate the acquisition of the resources.”
He said he also believes that Hopkins brushed him off because of politics.
“There have been these ongoing quarrels, and they often take the form of the political doctrine that you have to adhere to,” Langbert told the Observer.
“Given the shocking suppression – the almost total absence – of anyone who does not agree with far-left ideology at Brooklyn College, saying that there might be controversy because there’s a Koch grant is like saying that you will not tolerate any conservative viewpoint to be expressed here,” he added.
Earlier this month, the United Negro College Fund accepted a $25 million donation from Koch Industries Inc. and the Charles Koch Foundation. Almost immediately afterward, at least one Ivy League professor described herself as worried sick and a bunch of leftists took to Twitter to express their rage. (RELATED: Leftists RAGE After United Negro College Fund Accepts $25 Million From Koch Brothers)
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