Koch Money Brings Distress Over a University’s Well-Being Institute

For a place that takes its name from a Greek word for happiness, the new Eudaimonia Institute at Wake Forest University certainly generates its share of tension and worry. The unease stems not from anything the institute has yet done, but from its chief source of financial support: a $3.7-million donation from the Charles Koch Foundation, a major bankroller of university programs that promote libertarianism and faith in the free market.
The foundation’s involvement has aroused enough ire in the Faculty Senate that it appears likely this month to call for an overhaul of the university’s gift-agreement policies, to require much more faculty oversight.