The Devil Closes up Shop

Jason DeParle reports (“Goals Reached, Donor on Right Closes Up Shop,” The New York Times, May 29, 2005) that one of the major bankrolling agencies for the ideological far and neocon right, the John M. Olin Foundation” is closing up shop. It will have spent all of its endowment. And we all know that conservatives follow the dictates of the dollar.

The Olin foundation funded a variety of causes, organizations, and individuals: the Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution, the Philanthropy Roundtable, the Federalist Society, Charles Murray, Allan Bloom, David Brock who wrote The Real Anita Hill and then subsequently recanted his sleazy work, among other "journalists" and "writers."

Some “$68 million [was spent by the foundation] on law and economics programs, including those at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of Chicago, . . . Duke [a failure] . . . [and}the university of Pennsylvania [a failure]. . . "

Though DeParle doesn’t mention it, the law and economics connection was a notion sketched in the 1970s by Lewis Powell who we all know would later be confirmed as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. That's right, that Powell. Powell was alarmed at the “liberal” slant in the cultural apparatus and outlined a number of issues which his contemporaries such as David Horowitz are attempting to implement (e.g., “balanced” and “equal time” provisions) to advance the far right-wing agenda.

The liberal slant was being advanced by a minority of agents (e.g., professors) who were seen as disproportionately influential in promoting anti-capitalist sentiments. Linking economics, identified as a conservative subject, to law, was Powell’s answer. His proposal when advanced before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and received a luke warm reception.

However, the first president of the Olin Foundation, William Simon, Treasury Secretary in the Nixon administration, who would publicize what were termed the “culture wars” (remember that term?)helped direct Olin monies and energy into the law and economics agenda. And the success of this effort has transcended law inasmuch as many matters that were once the domain of marginal activities such as sociology (e.g., social “problems") became a part of economics-cum-policy work. Looking at the working papers at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) provides an insight into this activity.

The Olin agenda in its self-styled battle over ideas, media, and culture was joined by other similarly oriented foundations: The Sarah Scaife Foundation (Pittsburgh), The Smith Richardson Foundation (Westport, CT) and The Harry Bradley Foundation (Milwaukee). All following the Olin right-wing agenda even if using slightly different means to reach similar ends.

A spokesperson for Olin, writes DeParle, indicated that
comparing these foundations “with an equal number of liberal foundations, including Ford and MacArthur, Mr. Piereson found that the right spent $100 million a year to the left's $1.2 billion. ‘You don't have to have a lot of money to drive the intellectual debate’,’ the spokesperson said.

Goodbye Olin, we will not miss you at all. Nope, not even a little bit.