Thread by @el_blanc0

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy Actually, I've never made that direct and specific claim. But all of your major donors, over $20,000, are conservative organizations, no?

Actually I've done some research on several of them.

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy So let's start with the Einhorn Family Foundation. They support Ultra right-wing organizations like the Heritage Foundation, the neocon Commentary magazine, TFAS and they accept donations from the right-wing Bradley Foundation. All partner organizations to the Koch Institute.

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy Next, the Thomas W Smith Foundation, longtime partner of the Charles Koch Foundation, that helped to fund James Otteson's presidential chair in business ethics at Wake Forest and the Eudaimonia Institute there also funded by Charles Koch.

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy Okay, where were we? Oh yes, the Richard Lounsbury Foundation. Self-described 'top conservative funder of colleges', that sponsors the George C Marshall Institute, a right-wing climate change denial group as well as the Singer Foundation which leads us to...

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy ... the Paul Singer Foundation. Another private, conservative Foundation with deep links to the Koch Network through DonorsTrust. Singer is also the CoB at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a climate denial think-tank funded by the Koch & Bradley Networks.

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy The next HxA top donor is Gerry Ohrstrom, director of the Reason Foundation, a climate-denying right-wing Think Tank funded by, guess who? The Koch Network (David is a trustee) and the Bradley Network.

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy So why is this important? Isn't this just the left's version of the right-wing Boogeyman?

People need to decide for themselves. While the amorphous evil left consists mostly of overzealous protesting students, I would submit that this is an organized network with specific goals.

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy What goals? How do universities fit into their political strategy?

Richard Fink, Charles Koch's ideological advisor:

"What we needed to do was build the foundations for a spontaneous order for freedom that included a multi-faceted integrated 'structure of social change'..."

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy And what are the elements of the social change? It's an attempt to repackage conservative ideology into more consumer-friendly language and push it back into the mainstream.

According to Fink, funding university centers and selecting the right faculty we're keys to this process.

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy Fink explained that the process included taking the intellectual output of these academic programs, ideas "often unintelligible to the layperson and seemingly unrelated to real-world problems" and refining them into a "usable form".

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy The final part of this process was creating the illusion of a grassroots groundswell. The professors would agitate for the same policies that the think tanks had refined into talking points.

Academics pushing for those policies became their 'sales force', witting or unwitting.

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy And guess what one of those repackaged-for-general-consumption talking points was?

"VIEWPOINT DIVERSITY"

A generic, manufactured academic crisis that professors of all ideologies could rally around.

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy You can read all about Richard Fink's strategy in his Politico interview. They're all very open about it:
politico.com/magazine/polit…

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy So, it strikes one as very curious that #HxA is primarily funded by foundations from this conservative Network and it echoes the same concerns and uses the same language to call for actions and define solutions.

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy That academics like @sapinker are now part of the amplification of this messaging through #HxA is simply testament to the genius of the repackaging that Fink oversaw.

Witting or unwitting salesman, I suppose he has to answer that for himself.

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy @sapinker As I said previously, I'm not calling #HxA some evil organization, I am just demanding transparency. Honesty.

My contention is that the dangers posed to academic free speech by this network are far greater than the disorganized (ocassionally misguided) student campus activities.

@czar_nicholas_ @HdxAcademy @sapinker You can disagree with this assessment, but do it out in the open #HxA.

Let's all show our cards and discuss this in an open forum.

Why hide your ideological intentions? What are you afraid of? Do you think if the branding is pulled off, the Marketplace will reject your ideas?