The Arsenal Files 4/The Arsenal Files 4 (Arsenal Computer).ISO/misc/yale1.txt

Text File | 1995-03-21 | 4KB | 79 lines

Yale donor will get his $20 million returned


By Carol Innerst
THE WASHINGTON TIMES National Edition 3/20/95


A $20 million donation to Yale University in 1991 was one of the
worst investments Texas billion aire Lee M. Bass ever made, but he
has asked for and is getting his money back--with interest

"I regret to announce that Yale University has not implemented a Bass
Program of Common Studies in Western Civilization, as required by the
terms of my $20 million gift," Mr. Bass said in a prepared statement.
"Yale has agreed at my request to return the entire gift."

"The details of the return are now under consideration," the
university said in its own prepared statement.

In designating his gift for a Western civilization program, Mr. Bass
discovered he had plunged into the campus "culture wars."

Faculty hostility to Western civilization delayed and ultimately
derailed implementation of the program, according to Patrick Collins,
a Yale student who blew the whistle on Yale's attempts to subvert the
purposes of Mr. Bass' grant in an article he wrote for the
conservative student publication Light and Truth.

The Bass Program was to have begun in the fall of 1992.

"Yale, until recently, had not informed me of its failure to
implement the program as originally conceived, nor of the appointment
of a committee last April to con- sider how tbe university might
otherwise expend the program funds," Mr. Bass said in a statement
released by his attorney, Dee Kelly.

"I have attempted since December of 1994 to arrive at a new agreement
with Yale for the proper implementation of the program. As part of
this effort . . . I requested the opportunity to approve the
designation of professors named as Bass Professors. The university's
reluctance to enter into such an agreement led to our mutual decision
that the gift should be returned."

Peter Buchanan, president of the Council for the Advancement and
Support of Education, said: "To the best of our knowledge, this is
the largest gift that has been returned to a donor at his request. I
don't in my lifetime recall anything of this nature. This is
aberrantto an acute degree, taking into account that alumni give $3
billion annually to higher education and virtually none of it is
returned." "It's exceedingly irregular," said former American
University President Richard Berendzen, recalling his years of fund
raising.  "Over the last 25 to 26 years, I don't recall any such
request," said Robert A.  Reichley, executive vice president of Brown
University. "We've had donors change the designation of a gift from
time to time, from one activity to another, because they got upset
over something, but they've never asked us to ~ive it back."

Sometimes if a gift collides with a university's philosophy and
plans, the university may say "No, thanks," he said.  "If other
university donors follow the principled course of Mr. Bass, a return
to genuine learning would quickly replace the trendy politics of
today's college class- room," said T. Kenneth Cribb Jr., president of
the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.  ISI is a nonprofit
educational organization based in Bryn Mawr, Pa. It supports Light
and l~uth financially.  "Professors have the right to teach any~ing
they wish in the name of academic freedom, but this does not mean
that they also have a right to fund their enthusi- asms by
appropriating donations restricted to other purposes by the donor,"
Mr.  Cribb said. "I hope that the refunding of the Bass gift will
serve as a wake-up call for alumni donors that their gifts are
frequently used to fund politically correct agendas, and that the
best hope for reform is to change their giving practices." Yale
PresidentRichard C. Levin denied in his statement that ideology
played a role in the university's failure to implement the Bass
Program.