Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

by Jane Mayer

At Florida State University, where a Koch foundation grant in 2008 gave the foundation a say on faculty hires, criticism erupted into a public fight. Students complained that the Koch influence was nefarious and omnipresent. Jerry Funt, an undergraduate, said that in the public university’s introductory economics course, “We learned that Keynes was bad, the free-market was better, that sweatshop labor wasn’t so bad, and that the hands-off regulations in China were better than those in the U.S.” Their economics textbook, he said, was co-written by Russell Sobel, the former recipient of Koch funding at West Virginia University who had taught that safety regulations hurt coal miners. The textbook, which Funt described as arguing that “climate change wasn’t caused by humans and isn’t a big issue,” had been given an F by an environmental group. But when critics raised objections, the Kochs defended their purchase of influence over public universities as merely providing “fresh” college thinking.