Would like fries with your education and research results sir?
Why Stanford Works Against the Public Interest
On several occasions we have discussed how Stanford repeatedly takes positions that are bad for the average person and how they house and fund a neo-con and neo-liberal fake economics research “institute” on their campus. The Hoover Institute is a place that combines both bad economics, with bad policy and with the worst possible ethics. Their poster boy for behavior is Donald Rumsfeld, who they made a senior fellow after his 2nd Pentagon performance.
However, it was not until recently that we understood Stanford’s elitist and unethical past goes back to its founding. This excerpt is from the book University Inc.
The Edward Ross case at Stanford was particularly important in mobilizing the faculty. Ross was a highly regarded economist and the secretary of the American Economics Association. After Leland Stanford died in 1893, his window, Jane Stanford, assumed control of the university founded by a Republican railroad magnate — who had built his empire on the backs of cheap immigrant labor — Ross dare to call for municipal ownership of utilities and a band on Asian immigration. He also spoke out in defense so socialist Eugene V. Debs and was a proponent of free silver when most economists of the time were gold Republicans. For years Jane Stanford pressed the university president, David Jordan to silence Ross, and eventually to fire him.
The reason Stanford works against the public interest is simple…Stanford is funded by concentrated power. Thus is reflects its interests in its teaching and research. Professors who don’t tow the line can go and teach someplace else. The Hoover Institute is just one example, but a country club and corporate loving philosophy runs through the entire institution. The reason is simple; Stanford has no charter to serve any interest higher than its corporate donors. All of its education and research must be interpreted in this light.
Private Companies Want Zero Freedom of Speech and Zero Transparency
There is a serious problem with any private company doing research. Private companies do not respect or support freedom of speech. There is zero freedom of speech in private companies and people are fired all the time for taking the unpopular or ethical view. Furthermore, private companies also have no respect and do not act in a transparent manner. A freedom of information request cannot be submitted upon a private company; only a government body is required to respond to freedom of information requests.
Thus the problem is that private companies are highly undemocratic and run essentially as hierarchical tyrannies. Everything for a private company is either proprietary or a trade secret. In fact, according to their corporate charter, they have a fiduciary responsibility to take as much information from the public sphere, while giving as little back as possible. If a CEO were to have his company make a contribution to the public good (that could not be used as a PR stunt to increase the company’s image or otherwise benefiting the company.) he could be sued by shareholders for not maximizing the shareholders’ stock price. Private companies undermine science at every turn. For instance, it was GE that took the case of patenting on oil eating bacteria to the Supreme Court, which resulted in the verdict that life could be patented. That one decision has now mushroomed into the patenting of sequences of the human genome, and patenting remedies that have been known for 1000s of years. Biotech companies are now great employment centers for lawyers, as every area of human DNA must be legally researched before it is scientifically researched in case someone else “owns” it and would lay claim to the research results. Monstanto and other seed companies now patent seeds that they never genetically modified, just because they were the first to submit a claim upon the patent office. This is the type of research, and ethics, you get from private companies who by charter have zero public interest function.
Since they only have an interest in taking from the commons, they should be removed from the position of being able to steal so much government supported research, while contributing nothing back but falsified research studies that support the profits of a product they either already make, or intend to take to market. Here is the essential question. How can an institution that supports neither freedom of expression or transparency be taken seriously in making a contribution, any contribution to objective teaching or objective research? The answer is it can’t.
Private Takeover
Universities not only own private universities they are taking over public universities as well. Many UC schools used to take 50% of their funding from the government that number is now down to around 35%. The question would be, if the university takes less than 50% of its funding from California or the federal government, why is it still called the University of California. If it were named the University of Merck or Exxon, would this impact the interpretation of the results of its research? We think it would. This is precisely why private companies have the best of both worlds. They fund research that they control the outcomes to (though legal agreements, funding certain programs, placing industry representatives on committees — and these are just a few of their techniques) while pretending that the university that they are buying the research from is objective.
In and Out Burger University
This is not to say private companies cannot create their own research institutes for their narrow minded and parochial needs, only that they should not be accredited by the state. For instance, In and Out Burger has a university in Southern California. However, you can’t get a four
year degree there. Also, they don’t pretend to do any research and they don’t teach graduates how to work at Wendy’s. In and Out Burger University is far more honest than the vast majority of universities in the country that pretend to be one thing, while heavily influenced by private corporate power. Intel does a lot of research on new microprocessors and that is fine. However, let’s not pretend Intel could publish an objective study of how their microprocessors compare to their competitors. Furthermore, if they pay a university to perform this “study,” it does not make it any more valid.
Private universities should be impossible to incorporate. Private universities mean the values and research interests of those with the most money predominate. There is nothing wrong with the wealthy doing research independently, but why the need to pervert the public sphere with the parochial viewpoints of the ultra wealthy? Are the values of Leland Stanford or Bill Gates, men who cheated and stole their way to the top, the values we want guiding our research?
Naive
The word “naïve” is used repeatedly by conservatives who want to make another person feel stupid, without actually presenting any evidence. This is why the term is used by John Bolton, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly and by right leaning propagandists generally. We will use the word accurately here. For those proposing that private companies and universities can engage in “partnerships” that can meet the standards of academic freedom…they are naive.
