Universities want money, but not accountability, for how they use federal funds. |
Earlier this month, Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN) became the fifth Congressman to write Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos requesting she investigate a university’s use of federal funds appropriated under Title VI of the Higher Education Act, this time at Yale. Writing at The American Spectator, MEF’s Washington Project director, Cliff Smith, notes that Yale’s faculty has a long history of ignoring the wishes of its funders.
In William F. Buckley’s inaugural book God and Man at Yale, published in 1951, then-famed Professor Henry Steele Commager was cited for his belief that university faculty should have total control over the educational marketplace. In Professor Commager’s view, consumers and financers of education should have no say. Buckley believed differently. He believed that much of the Yale professoriate was contemptuous of religious believers and sympathetic to leftist economic theories, out of step with both its student population, and parents and alumni who funded Yale. While professors claimed impartiality, Buckley believed this was both untrue and impossible in any event. Thus, a central argument to his book was the need for countervailing forces. Failure to do so would create “an elite of professional Untouchables.”
