Leasing the Ivory Tower: The Corporate Takeover of Academia Book

Award-winning writer Lawrence Soley gives details on campuses nationwide, including Columbia, Yale, Harvard, MIT, Michigan State, Johns Hopkins, University of Arizona, Catholic University, Brigham Young, and University of California. Impassioned, outraged, and meticulously documented, Leasing the Ivory Tower exposes the growing corporate threats to the future of intellectual inquiry and civil society itself.

Publishers Weekly

House Speaker Newt Gingrich's course ``Renewing American Civilization'' at a Georgia college, funded with Republican PAC money and tax-deductible corporate contributions, was only the most visible instance of the epidemic political and corporate corruption of higher education, contends media critic and investigative reporter Soley. He takes a critical look at industry-driven university research programs, corporate conflicts of interest among academic ``expert witnesses,'' right-wing think tanks on university campuses and expansion of business and applied-research programs that attract corporate money at the expense of the liberal arts. His case would be stronger if he did not also attack many basic aspects of university administration without explaining what is wrong with them: for instance, the fact that university presidents are expected to raise money for their institutions and that they often draw large salaries. He also relies too much on repetitive clichs like ``corporate fat cats'' and ``conservative tycoons'' and appeals to a pristine past in which universities pursued knowledge in an atmosphere of pure, high-minded academic freedoma utopian vision many otherwise sympathetic readers may question. (July)