Philosophers need to speak up about the capture of philosophy by capitalist elites, with the help of corporate shills in the profession. 

The term “elite capture” is used by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò to describe “how political projects can be hijacked in principle or in effect by the well-positioned and resourced,” as well as “how public resources such as knowledge, attention, and values become distorted and distributed by power structures” (2022: 10). Universities, which are supposed to serve the public interest, are being hijacked by billionaires and turned into propaganda machines, used to promote market deregulation, undermine democracy, and launder rich people’s reputations (viz. Haslanger 2020). By funding universities, “academic plutocrats” can build quid pro quo relationships that allow them to decide what programs get funded, what theories get taught, and what names get sanctified.^[i]   

A case in point is the University of Austin, a private liberal arts university that has received over $200 million in private donations prior to even opening its doors. (It is scheduled to open in the fall of 2024). This endowment could cover most if not all its operating budget for the year, if it is comparable to that of a small liberal arts college. For example, the 2022 fiscal year budget was $119 million for Bates College, $256 million for Pomona College, and $292 million for Williams College. UAustin is still raising funds, having recently attracted pro-Israel donors who believe that the left have “run amok.” 

UAustin is, in my opinion, a front for capitalist elites to disguise their right-wing ideology as objective knowledge. One of its main proponents is Peter Boghossian, famous for the “grievance studies” hoax, whereby Boghossian et al. published fake articles in academic journals to “reveal” the illegitimacy of critical race, queer, fat, and feminist theory. Boghossian recently told Fox News that “The University of Austin came into being as a result of the ideological capture of American universities… And it was a particular ideology promulgated by people on the far left. Sometimes it’s called ‘woke ideology.’” In a truly Orwellian turn, Boghossian is capturing the concept of elite capture itself and using it against the very people it is supposed to serve – disadvantaged groups. Universities, he says, have been “captured” by the “elite” on the left – the proponents of critical race, queer, fat, and feminist theory, who overwhelmingly come from minority groups. These groups have gained control over public knowledge, attention, and values.   

In reality, postsecondary education is increasingly being captured by billionaire donors and administrators, with help from their academic lackeys. Aside from Boghosian, other professors initially affiliated with UAustin (according to the university website) include anti-trans activist Kathleen Stock, anti-gay activists Leon Kass (who argues that “homosexuality” is “disgusting”), and Steven Pinker, the author of a book that whitewashes history and “rationalizes the violence of empire,” an advisor to podophilic sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s legal defence,”^[ii]and a supporter of the Effective Altruism movement, which Táíwò and Joshua Stein describe as yet another vehicle for elite capture. (Pinker has since resigned from UAustin “by mutual and amicable agreement”). 

While it is difficult to find public data on academics’ financial and political backers (in part because they usually want to remain hidden), it is clear that some of UAustin’s current and former affiliates have close ties with the rich. For example, Kass led the President’s Council on Bioethics for “horrific war criminal” and multi-millionaire George Bush from 2001-2005. And Pinker – who is still affiliated with Harvard – is currently on the advisory council for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which “has received major funding from groups which primarily support conservative and libertarian causes, including… the Charles Koch Institute.” The Koch Institute is named for its founder and primary financier, Charles Koch, one of the richest men in the world.

This is one of several recent incursions of the Koch family – famous for polluting oceans, suppressing unionization, supporting anti-immigration laws, and other superhero-villain pursuits – into academia. Another notable example is the funding of Bowling Green’s philosophy department in 2021, subsequent to the hiring of Brandom Warmke, the co-author of a book that accuses “people who hold extreme political views,” such as crip Marxist feminists like me, of being “more likely to [morally] grandstand” for clout and prestige (2021: 6). (Warmke has received funding from the Koch Foundation for several projects on moral grandstanding). Who is left out of Warmke’s list of “grandstanders”? The shadowy billionaires who support neoliberalism through secret backchannels like shell corporations, PACs, lobbyists, and grants for academics willing to do their dirty work. Who needs to “grandstand” when you can use your billions of dollars to control the conversation through secretive bribes, quid pro quo relationships, and predatory defamation lawsuits? Unlike Elon Musk, most billionaires prefer to stay in the shadows. 

While not all of these relationships involve the exchange of money, it is alarming that academic philosophers are rubbing shoulders with capitalist elites who have an interest in using them to varnish their public image and lend credibility to their neoliberal propaganda. 

Academics are just the public face of UAustin, however. The real backbone of the university is its donors, advisors, and administrators, including American businessman Marc Andreesen, former Treasury Secretary and World Bank Chief Economist Larry Summers, and venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale. These are the corporate elites who are going to make UAustin a viable business venture, and to whom the university’s faculty will be beholden. It’s worth looking at their track records to see where their interests lie.

Larry Summers:

Summers is one of UAustin’s top advisors. While working for Bill Clinton, he was “a leading voice within the Clinton administration arguing against American leadership in greenhouse gas reductions and against US participation in the Kyoto Protocol.” During the 2000 energy crisis, he argued that the main cause of the crisis was “excessive government regulation.” In the 1990s, he “lifted more than 6 decades of [banking] restrictions,” and opposed new restrictions on derivates, which some critics (including President Obama) believe led to the subprime mortgage crash. He once signed a memo stating that “the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable,” and “I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted.” (The memo’s author, Lant Pritchett, claimed that it was “sarcastic” as well as “deliberate fraud,” though this was never substantiated).  

Joe Lonsdale: 

Lonsdale, a founding trustee of UAustin, previously co-founded Palantir Technologies with Peter Thiel, a Republican mega-donor who supports “a mishmash of libertarianism and nationalism.” Palantir Technologies, which was started with backing from the CIA, is a data-mining company that supplies software to “governments, immigration agencies, and police departments around the world.” In the US, this software has been used to “help [ICE] round up undocumented immigrants,” leading “Amnesty International to issue a report saying the firm was failing its responsibility as a company to protect human rights with inadequate due diligence…” In addition, the company has “invested in nearly two dozen SPAC targets” or shell corporations that allow Palantir Technologies to sponsor political causes in secret. In 2013, Lonsdale was accused of “physically, emotionally, and sexually abusing” Ellie Clougherty as her mentor at Stanford. Lonsdale denies the allegations but doesn’t deny having sexual relations with Clougherty in violation of Standard’s policies. The lawsuit against him was dropped but he was banned from mentoring students at Stanford for 10 years. 

Marc Andreesen:

Andreesen financially backs UAustin. In 2016, Andreesen, who advises Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, posted a tweet opposing India’s decision to ban Facebook.org, which “suggested that anti-colonialism had been catastrophic for the Indian people.” (Facebook.org was designed to “increase Facebook’s users and revenue” under the pretext of promoting net neutrality). Andreesen has been accused of “conflict of interest” in his roles at Facebook and eBay. In 2021, he bought a house “for the “highest price [ever] paid for a California property at the time,” and then “advocated against the construction of 131 multifamily housing units in [his] affluent… town,” even though “he had previously argued for increased housing supply, in particular in California.” Andreesen has invested in Adam Neuman’s new residential real-estate company, Flow, in spite of Neuman’s previous role as CEO of WeWork, a “coworking space” company that has been sued for sexual harassment, gender-based pay discrimination, age discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, race discrimination, and breach of contract. Andreessen remains very confident in Neuman, having invested $30 million in his start-up, the “largest single investment that [his] venture capitalist firm has ever made.”  

Are these the people we want backseat-driving our institutions of higher learning? These super-rich, white, straight, cisgender men are not investing in UAustin out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re investing as venture capitalists expecting a return. That return will come in the form of the next generation of Americans supporting neoliberal policies like deregulation, privatization, austerity, incarceration, and policing.

UAustin is just the tip of iceberg. Billionaire philanthropists are constantly trying to co-opt public education and turn it into a profitable enterprise. In fact, this is a paradigm example of “disaster capitalism” as described by Naomi Klein. After Hurricane Katrina, corporations swooped in and “almost completely privatized” New Orleans’ public school system, providing families with vouchers for charter schools, disbanding the teachers’ unions, reversing the desegregation gains of the civil rights movement, increasing administrative funding, and bypassing district curriculum guidelines, allowing for a less humanistic and more “market-based” education. Capitalists are coming for post-secondary education next. College campuses have always been amongst the vanguards of political activism. Students were shot at Kent State and Jackson State College by police for protesting the Vietnam War. Today, students continue to protest the lucrative military-industrial complex. Anti-capitalist sentiment is rising in college students, especially in the Humanities. Corporate executives would love nothing more than to commandeer these spaces and turn them into recruitment sites for submissive worker drones.  

Why aren’t more philosophy news sites talking about this? Justin Weinberg posted once on UAustin, satirizing their claim to “care about the truth…, unlike you and your university,” which was a step in the right direction. But then he dithered and said that “it has some very talented and, I’m sure, well-meaning people involved, so we’ll see [if it lives up to its promise].” Another time, he posted non-satirically on Effective Altruism, referring readers to a New York Times article that spoke approvingly of Sam Bankman-Fried, a leader of the Effective Altruism movement who has since been convicted of felony fraud and conspiracy. This is alarming because what Effective Altruists have really done, as explained by Táíwò and Stein, is build a playground for billionaires with “few meaningful guardrails… to stop the rich from dictating what happens to the money hoarded in philanthropic organizations.” This makes embezzlement highly predictable. Weinberg missed the real story because he’s not critical enough of the incursion of private industry into education, or of neoliberalism’s growing sphere of influence in general. Effective Altruists have established clubs at many universities, including mine. This is an effective way of legitimizing the idea that billionaires are our kind-hearted saviours. Marx was wrong about the bourgeoisie – they’re the only ones we can trust!

Bankman-Fried, who defrauded ordinary people out of their life savings, was granted legitimacy by Oxford Professor Will MacAskill, Princeton Professor Peter Singer, and other Ivy-League academics in the Effective Altruism movement. Academics should not be in the business of burnishing the reputations of billionaires, who most likely have a hand in unethical business ventures, and most certainly have a stake in neoliberal policies that enrich them at the expense of ordinary people – that is, 99% of the population. We need to band together to protect academia against hovering vulture capitalists. 

The point is: don’t take money from billionaires, don’t write books under their aegis, don’t advise them on how to promote their philosophies and gain public approval – just don’t help them. Billionaires shouldn’t exist. The last thing we should be doing as philosophers is helping them justify their class privilege to the poor, huddled masses. 

^[i] Maeve McKeown has also published on the capture of academic philosophy by neoliberal elites (2022), a trend that has produced “unbearable working conditions” for professors while “stifling… creativity, diversity, and dissent” in the field, to no one’s benefit but “the corporate elites who run many universities and most academic publishers.” 

^[ii] Specifically, Pinker advised Epstein’s lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, but he later stated that “he was unaware of the details of the case and regrets his involvement,” just as he now regrets his involvement in UAustin, from which he has resigned.