Soley, Lawrence C. Leasing the Ivory Tower: The Corporate Takeover of
Academia. Boston: South End Press, 1995. 204 pages.
During the 1960s, students almost forced the university to give up its
military contracts. Then in the 1980s, the entire institution was sold to
the corporations. Today a professor on the medical faculty might own stock
in a pharmaceutical company, moonlight for this same company, and use
tuition-paying students as unpaid researchers to write an article for a
prestigious medical journal about this company's wonderful new drug. The
stock goes up and he sells his shares for a quick profit. To one degree
or another, this describes the modern American campus -- in biomedicine,
in other patent-grubbing, high-tech departments, and even in the social
sciences, which are littered with think tanks funded by conservatives.
Campus buildings are now named after tycoons, and the board of trustees is
packed with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. If the new university
president can't bring in the bucks, the trustees find someone who can.
A minor criticism: for the first few pages only, the author pays homage
to political correctness by blaming the corporations for the attack on PC.
It would be more accurate to say that PC diverted would-be activists from
recognizing the real threat. Anyone who has worked for large corporations
knows that they don't mind playing the multicultural card: it's a strategy
that keeps the workers balkanized, and precludes any class consciousness.
ISBN 0-89608-503-1
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