In the early 1970s, George Mason College had been a nothing University of Virginia satellite campus in the Washington suburbs. By the 1980s, it was a well-funded research university, still funded by the state of Virginia, now with a specialty in libertarian political economics featuring Buchanan, the new Nobelist. Charles Koch funded two libertarian nonprofits, a think tank that became the Mercatus Center and an academic networking outfit called the Institute for Humane Studies, and transplanted them to George Mason. They’ve both been influential, Mercatus particularly aggressive and effective
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