Ivanka Trump Fuels a Cancel-Culture Clash at Wichita State
By Jane Mayer, The New Yorker
13 June 20
A showdown over who rules America's college campuses came to a head in
Kansas on Wednesday, in a clash that might be called Cancel Culture vs. the
Big Donors. It began last week, when a technical college affiliated with
Wichita State University scrapped plans for a virtual commencement address
by Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka, in a bow to student and faculty criticism
of the President's response to the nationwide protests over George Floyd's
killing. On Twitter, Ivanka blamed "cancel culture," calling it
"antithetical to academia." In a compromise brokered by the university,
Ivanka's remarks, instead of headlining the event, were demoted to being one
in a menu of choices during the ceremony, on June 6th. If they wished,
students could click on a link and see her dressed for the occasion, in a
regal white sheath and turquoise earrings and brooch, as she addressed them
as "wartime" graduates.
The approach of Wichita State University's president, Jay Golden, won praise
from students and faculty members who had circulated petitions opposing the
address. But the decision roiled the school's conservative corporate donors,
including, reportedly, the billionaire libertarian oil magnate Charles Koch,
the owner of Koch Industries, the largest company in Wichita and one of the
two largest private companies in the country. According to the Wichita
Eagle, Koch Industries threatened to withdraw its financial support for the
university; its basketball arena bears Koch's name. The newspaper's story
cited a letter, sent to the Kansas Board of Regents, by another corporate
booster of the school, Steve Clark, which called for Golden to be fired and
warned that Koch Industries and other major corporate donors-including Dan
Carney, the founder of Pizza Hut-were "very upset and quite vocal in their
decisions to disavow any further support."
In his letter, according to the Eagle, Clark described a conversation that
he'd had with Koch Industries' chief financial officer, Steve Feilmeier, the
chair of a fund-raising campaign for a new business building on campus. "He
advised me he's resigning . . . from any further association with the
University," Clark reportedly wrote. "He is also advising that Koch
Industries rescind all their financial support for programs at the
University they've previously funded." In an interview, Clark told the
Eagle, "We had Koch in the fold. Now we're going to lose them, and they'll
never be back." To avoid risking the loss of millions of dollars in
financial support for the university, Clark called on the Board of Regents
to fire Golden.
Instead, the board held a closed-door session on the matter on Wednesday,
while students held a rally and circulated a campus petition in support of
Golden, which has now garnered eighty-seven hundred signatures. After
meeting for four hours, the board issued an equivocal statement supporting
"freedom of speech and diversity and inclusion." Tajahnae Stocker, one of
the W.S.U. students who helped organize the rally, told the Eagle, "The Koch
brothers have had a huge influence for way too long, and now is about time
to start supporting us instead of supporting a check to the university."
Clark, who had called for Golden's dismissal, declined to comment.
The political pressure that wealthy donors exert on universities rarely gets
aired so publicly. But there's no mystery in why W.S.U. might quake at the
prospect of alienating the Kochs. Charles Koch, whose fortune is estimated
to be slightly more than fifty billion dollars, has reportedly given or
pledged some fifteen million to W.S.U. in the past seven years. In addition,
Koch has committed $3.6 million to fund the university's Institute for the
Study of Economic Growth. Although W.S.U. is a public university, the
Koch-funded center is a think tank devoted to promoting the billionaire's
personal political philosophy, which promotes private enterprise, and not
government, as the panacea to virtually all societal problems. In recent
years, exposing college students to his libertarian ideology has been a
major focus of Koch's philanthropy, and there are now similar Koch-funded
programs at some three hundred American colleges and universities. Despite
reportedly bridling at the disinvitation of Ivanka Trump, Koch has not been
a full-throated supporter of her father, nor a donor to his campaigns.
However, Koch and his private political operation have enthusiastically
backed a number of Trump Administration policies, including the 2018
corporate tax cuts and the Administration's rollbacks of environmental
regulations.
In a statement sent to me on Wednesday, a spokesman for Koch Industries
tried to distance the company from the controversy. "Steve Clark is a
private citizen who is not affiliated with Koch Industries," the statement
read. "His views were inaccurate and do not represent Koch Industries." The
statement went on to say that the company "is continuing its commitments to
WSU" and believes in "academic freedom." Yet it also said, "We object to
speaker disinvitations," adding that "universities offer students
opportunities to encounter new ideas and think for themselves. Limiting
access to unpopular speakers, viewpoints, and scholarship doesn't protect
students, it cuts off the chance to engage, debate, and criticize."
A wealthy donor casting the controversy as a matter of free speech sounds
noble. But some of the professors and students who led the protests against
Ivanka Trump's commencement address dismissed that argument as specious.
Jennifer Ray, an associate professor of photo media at Wichita State, who
wrote an open letter to the administration opposing the address that
gathered nearly five hundred signatures, pointed out that "any student who
wants to opt-in and hear Ivanka Trump's speech can. It wasn't cancelled, or
censored. It's on a menu of speakers they can listen to. So, this First
Amendment talk doesn't really apply. The people who are complaining know
full well that the speech is available. They just don't like the politics.
It was all about the symbolism."
Ray acknowledged that her reason for opposing the speech was symbolic as
well. "It would have sent a message that the university was against the
protesters," she said. "Instead, the university tried to neutralize the
situation. They did the right thing. It was quite brave."
Amira Coleman, an aspiring opera singer who is a senior at W.S.U. and an
African-American supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, noted that
"Ivanka's speech is still available for anyone who wants to watch it. They
just didn't want it to be the headliner. It was a compromise, yet the donors
said they wanted to pull their donations. It was not an act of censorship.
It was a shift of focus from Ivanka to the needs of the black community
here. And now the president is getting punished for listening to the
students here. That's sad."
If, in fact, there is any threat to free speech on campus, Ray suggested,
the episode showed that it is posed by the school's big donors. "The real
peril is these business partnerships," she told me. "They think they own the
school. That's the First Amendment issue."
