The following is the script for my presentation for the Philosophy, Disability, and Social Change 5 conference on Wednesday, December 11th at 14:50 GMT.
- Academic Ableism, Disaster Ableism, & Billionaire Philanthropy
Crip theory is a critical framework that challenges traditional understandings of disability and advocates for disability justice. As a crip Marxist feminist, most of my work has focused on the intersections of capitalism and ableist oppression. Other crip Marxists have noted that capitalism is, as Robert Chapman puts it, a “mass disabling event” (2023: 107). According to Marta Russell, disability is produced by “the exploitative economic structure of capitalist society: one which creates (and then oppresses) the so-called disabled body as one of the conditions that allow the capitalist class to accumulate wealth” (2019: 2). In short, capitalism first disables people through productivity schedules that benefit capitalist elites, and then misrepresents disability as, in Shelley Tremain’s words, “a natural human disadvantage, an inherent human flaw, and politically neutral human characteristic” (2016: viii) – that is, nothing to do with capitalism’s intense and inflexible productivity schedules.
In past presentations, I have explored how capitalism imposes exhaustion and fatigue on oppressed groups through unmanageable work regimes, inaccessible welfare bureaucracies, and forced institutionalization (Tremain 2021, Murthy 2023, Yancy & Lewis 2023). In the 19th Century, Marx and Engels had already recognized the exhausting nature of capitalist work schedules, which they described as a “miserable routine of endless drudgery and toil,” comparable to “the labour of Sisyphus” (Marx 1867, citing Engels 1845). The exhausting aspects of capitalism’s ‘endless drudgery’ are particularly salient to me as someone with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) – a condition caused and amplified by the mandate to work for a living under conditions dictated by corporate executives, or else deplete my limited energy applying for ‘social security’ cheques worth less than the minimum wage. That is, I face a “double bind” between disabling work regimes and disabling government bureaucracy (Frye 1983).
In this presentation, I plan to focus on capitalism’s disabling presence in academia, which Jay Dolmage identifies as one of the most disabling spaces in capitalist societies: “few cultural institutions do a better or more comprehensive job of promoting ableism” (2017: 7). Higher education perpetuates ableism, first, by adopting capitalist productivity regimes that are “rigidly patterned, isolating, labor-intensive, increasingly corrupted and corruptible, but for only the highest orders of society” (4) – i.e., nondisabled elites; and second, by misrepresenting disability as a natural, biological category, unrelated to academia’s own Sisyphusian productivity demands. Dolmage emphasizes that “the categories of normal and abnormal, able and disabled… [have] been created, and [are] maintained, through higher education” (6). Academia is one of the main drivers of ableist ideologies and social policies.
While the relationship between academic ableism and capitalism is too complex to address here in full, I will focus on an area of growing concern: philosophy’s increasing reliance on billionaire philanthropy, which allows capitalist elites to influence hiring decisions, scholarly activities, curricula development, and student affairs, steering them in a right-wing (ableist) direction. To simplify matters further, I will only address philanthropy from the Koch network, a system of nonprofits and think-tanks that “pour money, often with little disclosure,” into higher education, in an effort to “influence how Americans think and vote” (Mayer 2016: 48). The Koch network’s political agenda is to promote free-market capitalism, while disguising that agenda as non-partisan using sophistical reasoning and rhetorical slights of hand. Insofar as free-market capitalism is ableist in the ways discussed earlier (e.g., the enforcement of disabling productivity regimes), the Koch network’s agenda is decisively ableist. Therefore, when philosophers accept Koch money, and especially when they use that money to promote the Koch network’s agenda, they are contributing to structural ableism.
- Charles Koch’s Dirty Money
To say a bit more about the Koch network’s role in the mass disabling event that is capitalism, the Koch network is partially funded by Koch Industries, one of the top-25 polluters in the U.S. (Negin 2022), contributing to deadly and disabling environmental disasters like wildfires, heat waves, drought, famine, hurricanes, and tornadoes – crises that disproportionally harm disabled people. Tremain calls this disabling system of wealth accumulation “disaster ableism,” because it exploits crises for profits in ways that harm disabled people – for example, by making them more vulnerable to homelessness and poverty (2022). The Koch network contributes to disaster ableism by aggressively fighting environmental protections, worker rights, paid sick leave, and other policies designed to protect people from avoidable injuries and death caused by free-market capitalism (Greenpeace 2014; Feltz 2018). These corporate strategies contribute to ableist oppression.
In Dark Money (2016), Jane Mayer argues that the Koch family has used the banner of ‘philanthropy’ to justify the use of corporate funding to promote a right-wing agenda. Corporate philanthropy, whether from Pfizer or from the Kochs, has many harmful effects. It biases the recipients in favor of the gift-giver. It undermines public trust in professional organizations. It funnels money out of well-regulated public institutions into private ones with little oversight. It allows corporate executives to burnish their reputations by presenting themselves as “bleeding heart” altruists rather than greedy capitalists. Over time, it undermines democracy, leading to plutocracy or rule by the rich. As Sally Haslanger puts it,
Large-scale philanthropy is an exercise of power that is fundamentally undemocratic. Since charitable giving brings tax benefits, large-scale philanthropy can undermine the people’s will in favour of the donor’s own values. In effect, taxpayers subsidise the freedom of the rich to realise their own vision of what is good while simultaneously depriving democratically chosen programmes of valuable public funds. (2020)
In the case of the Koch network, the ‘vision of what is good’ is a free-market society that allows corporations to produce disabling conditions while evading public accountability.
Even if billionaire philanthropy didn’t have these effects, though, I maintain that it would still be wrong insofar as it involves the exchange of ill-begotten assets or ‘dirty money.’ As we saw, Koch philanthropy comes from Koch Industries and affiliated businesses that contribute to disaster ableism. Charles Koch’s network of nonprofits, lawyers, lobbyists, and academics fight policies that would make it easier for disabled people to make a living, take sick leave, obtain compensation for workplace injuries, and, in general, enjoy the safety and security that they deserve. Disaster capitalism deprives us of security, creating fatigue and chronic illness. Therefore, accepting dirty Koch money is inherently as well as instrumentally wrong.
The UnKoch My Campus (UMC) initiative has documented many instances of Koch interference in higher education. In what follows, I will argue that Koch funding has influenced the profession of philosophy in ways the harm democracy and disability justice.
- Koch Interference in Philosophy
UnKoch My Campus (UMC) “is a cooperative campaign dedicated to disrupting corporate power on campuses and in our communities nationwide.” UMC tries to “preserve democracy” by “protecting high education” from co-optation by corporate elites (ibid). The term “elite capture” is defined by Olufemi Taiwo as the co-optation of grassroots concepts, movements, platforms, and decision-making processes by powerful elites, who exploit those resources to advance their own interests (2020). My claim is that Koch-funded elites are capturing philosophical resources and exploiting them to promote a corporate agenda, while disguising that agenda as unbiased and non-partisan. The UMC website compiles reports on Koch interference across academia, including some philosophy departments and programs.
The most notorious example is Bowling Green State University (BGSU), which received a $1.6 million grant from the Koch Foundation in 2019 – three years after hiring Brandom Warmke, who was already affiliated with the Koch Foundation through a $42,000 grant for the first stage of his work on “moral grandstanding.” From 2019 to 2021, Warmke received an additional $60,000 from the Koch network. At the time of Warmke’s hiring, BGSU professor Christian Coons expressed concerns that the hiring process was unduly influenced by Koch funding (Gluckman 2021). His colleague Molly Garner agreed and further alleged that the selection involved discrimination against women, because Kevin Vallier (who has also receive Koch funding)[1] asked the committee to “rank the male and female candidates separately,” resulting in a “female candidate [being unfairly excluded from] the final vote” (Weinberg 2021).
Soon after Warmke’s hiring, Garner left the department, and Coons was suspended in 2023 “for sending some emails to his colleagues” about the hiring process (Wilson 2023).
After being hired to BGSU, Warmke was quickly appointed to leadership positions on departmental committees overseeing graduate admissions, graduate job placement, and conference speaker selections; “Suddenly a relatively new professor had a hand in almost every part of the graduate students’ experience,” noted the Chronical of Higher Education.
In 2020, 22 BGSU graduate students signed a letter to faculty members criticizing the choice of an invited speaker and asking the department to establish clear guidelines for selecting speakers, hoping to curtail the Koch Foundation’s influence. Some students felt that the Koch grant had created a hostile environment, with one stating that he was uncomfortable sharing left-wing opinions, and describing some faculty as holding a “join or die” cult mentality. Garner similarly worried that graduate students who did not endorse free-marking principles were being denied professional opportunities on ideological grounds.
This, at least, is the version of the story told by the Chronicle of Higher Education and Daily Nous. But the Chronicle disclosed that The Charles Koch Foundation underwrote a recent Chronicle virtual panel, and Daily Nous revealed that the Koch Foundation has advertised on its blog. On Twitter, Coons called the Chronicle article “inaccurate for its glaring omissions,” clarifying that the situation “is so much worse than described here.” Because the Kochs are known to intimidate and silence critics through aggressive litigation and financial leverage, we will never know the whole story. But the little that we do know resonates strongly with UMC’s reports on how the Kochs have used grants and gifts to infiltrate other departments.
Accepting Koch money is inherently wrong because it involves the transfer of dirty money – specifically, money from an organization that contributes to disaster ableism. But does Koch funding also influence philosophers to promote a right-wing agenda? In the field of medicine, a large body of evidence shows that even gifts worth less than $20 influence physicians’ prescription practices (Lexchin et al. 2020). Brandon Warmke has received over $200,000 from the Koch foundation according to his CV. Could this have influenced his philosophical practices in the same manner that pharmaceutical gifts influence physicians? To determine this, I will look closely at Warmke’s two Koch-funded books in the next section.
- Philosophy’s Koch Bros
Warmke has co-authored two Koch-funded books with Justin Tosi, who has also received funding from the Koch-funded Freedom Center and the Koch-funded Institute for Humane Studies. The first book, Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk, argues that moral discourse is corrupted by “grandstanding,” or “the use of moral talk for self-promotion” (2021: 4). Grandstanders, in short, use moral testimony for prestige and dominance. Tosi and Warmke would most likely think that I’m grandstanding as I read this presentation. Who’s to say that I’m speaking in good faith? How do we know when someone is ‘abusing moral talk’?
Warmke and Tosi don’t offer much guidance here, except to say that “many people use moral talk irresponsibly,” (11), and “people who hold more extreme political views (whether right or left) are more likely to grandstand for prestige than centrists” (32). In terms of “dominance grandstanding,” there is “roughly the same amount… across the political spectrum” (ibid). At first glance, this argument may seem balanced, since it doesn’t take a side on either the left or the right (although it warns us against ‘extreme’ opinions). But note that the Kochs don’t want their spokespeople to show their cards. This is why they channel funding through dark money networks that conceal their political alliances. What the Kochs want their spokespeople to do is sow distrust in public discourse, ensuring that no one can trust anyone’s moral testimony, especially moral claims from ‘extremists’ like environmental activists, critical race theorists, crip Marists – and, of course, the families who spent years in court trying to sue Koch Industries for compensation due to asbestos poisoning (Sainato 2024).
In an interview with the Guardian, one litigant, Lori Knapp, called the Koch family “evil” and “right up there with the Sackler family” (ibid). Is Knapp a good-faith moral claimant, or a bad-faith moral grandstander? For the Kochs, it’s sufficient that we doubt her moral integrity, as this ambivalence will prevent us from taking a stand on either side of the issue. The fear of (grand)standing behind a grandstander, in other words, prevents us from taking any stand at all. This is beneficial to the Kochs, who are on the wrong side of many lawsuits.
Knapp describes her late father’s condition after working with Koch-manufactured drywall as follows:
Every day I saw my dad deteriorate. My dad went from 183lbs to 121lbs. So in addition to suffering this cancer, it’s almost like the [victims are] starving to death because they can’t eat, they don’t want to eat … And then he passed, and we’re left here battling with a company that has far more money than needed. (Sainato 2024)
The Kochs need conceptual tools like ‘grandstanding’ to shield themselves from ‘moral talk’ like this – talk meant to hold them accountable and rally others around a public injustice, a disabling event that could have been prevented, and that ought to be promptly remediated by Koch Industries. The specter of ‘grandstanding’ fosters distrust towards moral testimony in general, protecting the Koch network from the moral claims of victims and activists demanding accountability. Are the plaintiffs in the Koch asbestos lawsuit money-grubbing grandstanders? Did they speak to the Guardian for clout and fame? The Koch family wants us not to be able to answer these questions, leaving the claimants’ testimony in moral limbo, unable to receive the credibility and uptake it deserves. According to plaintiffs and their lawyers, this is the same tactic the Kochs use in court – dragging out litigation for decades, waiting for the claimants to give up or die. This legal strategy is called the Texas two-step. When we cast doubt on moral testimony, we ‘two-step’ around victims’ moral claims, placing them in epistemic purgatory. We deny them a hearing in the court of public opinion and deprive them of political solidarity. Testimonial doubt doesn’t affect the Kochs in the same way, because they influence public opinion through dark money networks, not moral talk. Fear mongering about grandstanding hurts the Koch’s victims but has no effect on the Kochs.
Warmke and Tosi’s second book, Why It’s OK to Mind Your Own Business (2023), has similar implications. It argues that, “for all the messaging about solving social problems and changing the world, many of us live quiet lives and devote our energies to our families, friends, immediate communities—and even ourselves,” and there’s nothing wrong with that (5). Some people participate in activism and others take up a new hobby – who’s to say that one choice is better than the other? So far, this argument might seem innocent enough. But Tosi and Warmke go on to say that people who refuse to mind their own business are “moralizers,” “busybodies,” and “purists,” whose moral talk harms meaningful debate (1). Once again, this argument provides ammunition to Koch executives who want to protect themselves from ‘moralizers’ and ‘busybodies’ who ‘don’t know when to mind their own business’ – including, presumably, any litigants trying to sue them for disabling injuries.
Warmke and Tosi carefully sidestep the fact that political engagement is not a voluntary choice for many of us, including queer disabled folks like me, whose moral testimony is always already politicized as ‘public,’ ‘intrusive,’ ‘moralizing,’ and, above all, ‘other people’s business.’ Queer disabled people do not have the luxury of minding our own business, because our business is culturally defined as everyone else’s business. Our very existence is viewed as intrusive, offensive, and an affront to polite society. It is therefore impossible for us to ‘mind our own business,’ because our business, our bodies, and our testimony are already positioned as a public spectacle – fodder for moral debate. Warmke and Tosi do not address this double standard concerning whose business is ‘public’ versus whose is ‘private.’
By the same token, they resurrect the old false dichotomy (defended by ‘classical liberal’ theorists like John Rawls) between the personal or ‘domestic’ sphere of ‘your own business’ and the public or ‘political’ sphere of ‘everyone else’s business’ – the town square. As second-wave feminists affirmed in the 1970s, the personal is political; the notion of an apolitical private sphere of the home is a myth used to normalize, naturalize, and depoliticize the cis-hetero-patriarchal nuclear family, which both subordinates women as unpaid caregivers, and privatizes caregiving by defining it as women’s ‘domestic labor’ (Pateman 1988; Lewis 2022). In the so-called ‘private sphere,’ women are supposed to be ‘angels of the house,’ providing inexhaustible, uncompensated care to children and disabled dependents, to the sole benefit of the able-bodied male ‘head of household.’ The myth of the public/private dichotomy, which is smuggled into Why You Should Mind Your Own Business under the banner of bipartisan philosophy, makes it easier for the Koch empire to deny responsibility for the care of their poisoned workers, and to deny compensation to anyone else harmed by the Koch empire. With the help of Warmke and Tosi, the Kochs can re-frame healthcare as the private responsibility of family members, especially women.
Tosi and Warmke may be arguing from the heart – who knows? – but do their intentions matter if their work is giving false legitimacy to corporate ideologies by cloaking them in philosophical rhetoric and bolstering them with quotes from dead white men like Rawls? Whatever their intentions, their work is a threat to public trust, democracy, the possibility of justice for the disabled and deceased victims of Koch Industries, and disability justice in general.
- UnKoch My Philosophy Department
UnKoch My Campus is a grassroots movement to protect higher education from the harms of billionaire philanthropy, including the use of dark money to fund ableist, right-wing agendas, to gaslight the public with sophistical reasoning, and to undermine democracy.
Philosophers should apply the principles of the UMC campaign to their own departments. UMC has a number of active campaigns at universities across the United States. I urge my colleagues to join one of these campaigns, start their own, or do whatever else it takes to protect your department from Koch influence, if not for yourself then for disability justice.
References
Chapman, R. (2023). Empire of normality: Neurodiversity and capitalism. Pluto Press.
Dolmage, J. T. (2017). Academic ableism: Disability and higher education (p. 244). University of Michigan Press.
Engels, F. (1845). The condition of the working class in England. Otto Wigand.
Frye, M. (1983). Politics of reality: Essays in feminist theory. Crossing Press.
Gluckman, N. (2021, May 5). A New Hire, a Koch Grant, and a Department in Crisis. The Chronical of Higher Education. Retrieved 11/20/2024 from https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-new-hire-a-koch-grant-and-a-department-in-crisis
Greenpeace (2014). Koch Federal Direct Lobbying Expenditures. Greenpeace. Retrieved 11/20/2024 from https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/fighting-climate-chaos/climate-deniers/koch-industries/koch-federal-direct-lobbying-expenditures/
Haslanger, S. (2020). The Problem with Philanthropy. The New Statesman. Retrieved 11/20/2024 from https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2020/10/problem-philanthropy
Lewis, S. (2022). Abolish the family: A manifesto for care and liberation. Verso Books.
Lewis, T., &Yancy, G. (2023, October 19). Ableism Is the Driving Force Behind All Forms of Incarceration, Says Abolitionist Talila Lewis (Interview). Truthout. Retrieved 11/22/2024 from https://truthout.org/articles/incarceration-and-ableism-go-hand-in-hand-says-abolitionist-talila-lewis/
Lexchin, J., Mintzes, B., Holloway, K., & Gagnon, M. (2020, November 12). Guidelines governing Canadian doctors’ relationships with pharma companies under review. The Conversation. Retrieved 11/22/2024 from https://theconversation.com/guidelines-governing-canadian-doctors-relationships-with-pharma-companies-under-review-149519
Marx, K. (1867). Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Verlag von Otto Meisner.
Murthy, T. V. (2024). Against Arguing about Addict Agency. Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 10(1/2), 1-30.
Mayer, J. (2016). Dark money: The hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right. Anchor.
Mills, C. W. (2017). Black rights/white wrongs: The critique of racial liberalism. Oxford University Press.
Negin, E. (2022, March 31). It’s Time for Charles Koch to Testify About His Climate Change Disinformation Campaign. Union of Concerned Scientists. Retrieved 11/22/2024 from
Russell, M. (2019). Capitalism and disability: Selected writings by Marta Russell. Haymarket Books.
Sainato, M. (2024, January 22). Families Condemn Koch Brothers Over Ploy to Avoid Asbestos Compensation. The Guardian. Retrieved 11/20/2024 from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/22/koch-brothers-asbestos-georgia-pacific
Taiwo, O. (2020, May 7). Elite Capture and Identity Politics. Boston Review. Retrieved 11/22/2024 from https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/olufemi-o-taiwo-identity-politics-and-elite-capture/
Tosi, J., & Warmke, B. (2020). Grandstanding: The use and abuse of moral talk. Oxford University Press, USA.
Tosi, J., & Warmke, B. (2023). Why It’s OK to Mind Your Own Business. Taylor & Francis.
Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Tremain, S. (2022, June 3). My Virtual Presentation to philoSOPHIA, June 3, 2022: Disaster Ableism, Assisted Suicide, and Bioethics. BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. Retrieved 11/22/2024 from https://biopoliticalphilosophy.com/2022/06/03/my-virtual-presentation-to-philosophia-june-3-2022-disaster-ableism-assisted-suicide-and-bioethics/
Tremain, S. L. (2021). Philosophy of disability, conceptual engineering, and the nursing home-industrial-complex in Canada. International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies, 4(1), 10-33.
Tremain, S. (2021b, November 8). Dea, Data, and the Disabling Canadian University. BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. Retrieved 11/22/2024 from https://biopoliticalphilosophy.com/2021/11/08/dea-data-and-the-disabling-canadian-university/
Tremain, S. (2021c, December 11). A Note to/About Jason Stanley; And Here Is My Presentation to Philosophy, Disability and Social Change 2. BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. Retrieved 11/22/2024 from https://biopoliticalphilosophy.com/2021/12/11/a-note-to-about-jason-stanley-and-here-is-my-presentation-to-philosophy-disability-and-social-change-2/
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Weinberg, J. (2021, May 26). Koch Use Causes Rift in Philosophy Department. Daily Nous.Retrieved 11/22/2024 from https://dailynous.com/2021/05/26/koch-use-causes-rift-in-philosophy-department/
Wilson, J. (2023, March 20). The Crime of Email at Bowling Green State University. Academe Blog. Retrieved 11/22/2024 from https://academeblog.org/2023/03/20/the-crime-of-email-at-bowling-green-state-university/
[1] To my knowledge, Vallier has received Koch funding as assistant director to the newly-established BGSU Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law program, and as a member of the Center for Social Norms and Berhavioral Dynamics at the University of Pennsylvania.
BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 