It’s an implicit part of the job description for higher ed administrators: rake in as much money as you can. Therefore, it is noteworthy when a dean dithers away a chance at a grant that would have helped hire more faculty members with the credentials that matter to accrediting bodies. That is exactly what happened recently at Brooklyn College, though, and in today’s Pope Center Clarion Call, Professor Mitchell Langbert explains the lamentable circumstances.

Important if not decisive in the dean’s aversion to Professor Langbert’s efforts at procuring the grant was that the money would come from the Koch Foundation. Taking money from Koch often triggers a derangement among hard-core leftists, as I observed in this recent Forbes piece. It seems that the dean did not want to risk an outbreak in Brooklyn.

Professor Langbert argues that the failure of the dean to pursue a grant that could have probably been secured supports the case (recently made by Professor Henry Manne here) that there is really no distinction between for-profit and non-profit management. In “non-profits” the managers just take their profits in different forms, such as avoiding conflict.