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

by Jane Mayer

The Olin Foundation also backed what came to be known as the Collegiate Network, privately financing a string of right-wing newspapers on America’s college campuses. Among them was The Dartmouth Review, which infamously published an editorial in Ebonics proclaiming, “Now we be comin’ to Dartmut’ and be up over our ’fros in studies, but we still be not graduatin’ Phi Beta Kappa.” The paper hosted a feast of lobster and champagne to mock a student fast against global hunger, sledgehammered shantytowns erected by students protesting apartheid in South Africa, and published a transcript of a secretly taped meeting of students belonging to Dartmouth’s gay student association. The Dartmouth Review became an incubator for right-wing media figures like D’Souza and the future conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. Its counterpart at Vassar, meanwhile, gave starts in journalism to the ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl and Marc Thiessen, an online columnist at The Washington Post best known for his defense of the Bush administration’s use of torture.