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Has anyone written about the impact of the closing of the Olin Foundation in 2005 on the American right? Arguably it was huge.
So: the Olin Foundation was a big funder of the old high-brow neo-conservatism, trying to build an intellectual beachhead that could hold its own in academia & attract disaffected liberals. Fact it closed up shop in 2005 seems to mark the end of that tendency.
Olin lucre huge ($370 million) and created a distinctive niche for a style of high-brown conservatism that tried to make inroads in general culture (and sometimes did: Allan Bloom's Closing). Another big success was seeding Federalist Society.
Arguably one of the shifts on the right came when Olin money was supplanted by Koch money and Mercer money. Compare the Olin New Criterion of 1980s (genuinely high-brow) with the more partisan & coarser New Criterion of now thebaffler.com/latest/decline…
