In March of 2019, Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, wrote a scathing criticism of Charles Koch’s “role in parasitizing America’s free market economy and poisoning its democracy and rule of law” on the foundation’s blog.
At the time, Koch was “distancing himself from his increasingly toxic public image,” but de Waal wasn’t buying it. “The ‘Kochtopus,’” he wrote, “includes think tanks, supporting charlatans intent on inverting the enlightenment maxim that evidence should guide policy” and who “have been hyperactive in discrediting scientific expertise.”
Well, it turns out that de Waal wouldn’t have to go far to find an example. In fact, just a few months prior, the Tufts student newspaper had done a four-part series on how the Charles Koch Foundation pledged $3 million to the school’s Center for Strategic Studies. Why would the Kochs care about security and defense? Perhaps because in 2013 the Koch brothers bought a defense technology company!
But Koch influence at Tufts doesn't end there. New reporting by Dana Drugmand at Desmog shows that Koch influence is taking a slightly more circuitous route to Tufts, first passing through Emergent Ventures, a grant program of the Koch’s Mercatus Center at George Mason University, before landing at Tufts’ new Center for State Policy Analysis.
Though posing as an independent think tank providing budget analyses and the like, the fact that the new center is funded by fossil fuel money means we’re skeptical of their analysis of the Transportation and Climate Initiative to reduce emissions from vehicles, as it would ultimately mean less business for Charles Koch.
(For those wondering, no, it’s not just a Koch-shop for climate propaganda. One of its other founding funders is the biggest private health insurance company in the state, and one of its first projects is to look at a state ballot question on rising prescription drug costs.)
Given that its initial projects appear to hew pretty closely to its funders interests, we’ll be interested to see if the materials this group produces support Charles Koch’s material interests.
But for now, we’ll leave you with the reaction of one displeased alum we spoke to: “WTF, Tufts?”
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