BY JOHN K. WILSON

The corruption at George Mason University has prompted some conservatives to jump to the defense of giving wealthy donors more influence. Jim Geraghty at National Review argues that “A Washington Post Scoop about the Koch Brothers Falls Apart.” But actually it’s Geraghty’s argument that quickly falls apart.

According to Geraghty, “The headline in the April 28 Washington Post sounded dire: ‘George Mason president: Some donations “fall short” of academic standards.’” He’s objecting to a lame headline that consists entirely of an accurate quote from the university’s president.

Geraghty is appalled that UnKoch My Campus “painted the university as trying to cover up a corrupt deal.” Geraghty seems to hint (without actually making an argument) that this is some kind of crazy conspiracy theory. But in fact, George Mason has been in court trying to keep these deals secret from UnKoch My Campus, deals that were in fact corrupt. (Full disclosure: I’ll be on a panel with UnKoch My Campus at this summer’s AAUP conference in Arlington, Virginia; we tried to find a Koch defender willing to debate the topic, but we were unable to find any takers.)

Then Geraghty goes on to attack an editorial in the Washington Post that cited “documents showing the conservative Koch Foundation had been given a voice in faculty selection and evaluation.” According to Geraghty, “Except that no evidence has surfaced indicating that the foundation actually selected or evaluated any faculty.” No one has claimed that the Koch Foundation by itself selected the faculty. But there is overwhelming evidence, kept secret until now, that they did have “a voice”—just like the Washington Post editorial asserted. And that’s morally wrong

Geraghty argues, “George Mason’s agreement with the Koch Foundation was entirely standard in academia.” Geraghty goes on, “The agreements, accepted from 2003 to 2011, and all expired except one, allowed the Koch Foundation to appoint members to a search committee who could also serve on a separate advisory board for personnel decisions for the Mercatus Center. And this is far from rare in the academic world.”.

Here is Geraghty’s key evidence:

Policies explicitly permitting donors to serve on faculty search or selection panels in some capacity (but not selecting faculty single-handedly) are in place at Auburn University, Chapman University, the University of Florida, Georgia State University, Illinois Wesleyan University, the University of Missouri system, the University of New Mexico, New York University, the University of Richmond, San Francisco State University, Southern Methodist University, and Virginia Commonwealth University.

There’s a very serious problem with this list: I can’t find anything like what Geraghty claims in most of his links. Some of these links are to policies that explicitly prohibit donor involvement. Most of them do not say anything I can find about donors. Out of the 12 colleges hand-picked by Geraghty to prove his point, I can only find provisions at five of these colleges (Chapman, Georgia State, New Mexico, SMU, VCU) that give donors this power, and some explicitly forbid it, such as the University of Richmond: “the agreement should not contain a provision giving the donor or his or her designee the right to participate in the selection of the endowed chair holder.”

But even if he had found 12 colleges that allow donor influence in faculty hiring (instead of five), how is that a convincing argument? Why is “rare” suddenly the standard for moral correctness on campus? If I wanted to defend campus speech codes that suppress free speech (which I don’t), I could cite literally hundreds of colleges that do this. Would Geraghty agree that we can’t criticize any colleges for suppressing free speech if repression is common?

According to Geraghty, “It’s a familiar story: Figures villainized by progressives — in this case, the Koch brothers — take an ordinary, legal, charitable act, and it’s deemed unusual and menacing.” So what happens when a figure villainized by conservatives, such as China, makes a similar “legal, charitable act”? Why, the National Review finds it very menacing and goes into a chicken-little panic asking for the government to stop it. The AAUP has uniformly condemned donor abuses by any side. Intellectual consistency in principles is not too much to ask.

Geraghty ends his article in conspiracy nut territory: “This kind of chicken-little panic over routine donations and agreement language is a good way to ensure no one pays attention when there’s a real academic scandal.” Apparently Geraghty imagines that no one could possibly ever care about the influence of rich donors over faculty hiring, and the only reason why anyone would raise a fuss is to help conceal the “real” academic scandals that go unnamed by Geraghty.

But in reality academic integrity does matter, and unqualified donors should not be making judgments about faculty hiring. The story is real, and it’s not falling apart just because the National Review thinks rich people should be granted more control over our universities, our politicians, and our lives.