Cato Indoctrination for Educators by Thomas Ultican
The Education Week Advertiser just notified me about an opportunity to be indoctrinated into the Cato Institute’s culture and education views. The ad proclaims, “The Cato Institute and the Sphere Education Initiative are excited to announce the return of Sphere Summit: Teaching Civic Culture Together for the Summer of 2021!” They generously offer impressive full scholarship programs for educators and administrators.
The money for all this comes from Charles Koch and associated libertarians. It is funneled through the Cato Institute which was originally called the Charles Koch Foundation, Inc. when he and fellow libertarian Edward Crane founded it in 1977. It is one of the many organizations and businesses that Charles Koch uses to advance his personal interests which are often referred to as the Kochtopus.
Sphere Summit Speakers
Ryan Bourne – According to libertarianism.org, he is “the R. Evan Scharf Chair for the Public Understanding of Economics at Cato.” Bourne writes about fiscal policy, inequality, minimum wages, infrastructure spending and rent control.He is a contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the UK website ConservativeHome.
Arnold Kling – A Senior Affiliated Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University to which the Charles Koch Foundation contributed a total of $29,156,700 in 2017 and 2018 (EIN: 48-0918408). He specializes in housing-finance policy, financial institutions, macroeconomics, and the inside workings of America’s federal financial institutions. He also is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC.
Clark Neily – He is vice president for criminal justice at the Cato Institute. Neily served as co-counsel in the District of Columbia v. Heller case in which the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment rights had been violated. The ruling overturned the District of Columbia’s handgun ban and requirement that lawfully owned rifles and shotguns be kept “unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.”
Tom G. Palmer – He is a senior fellow at Cato Institute and director of Cato University. He is also a VP of the Institute for Humane Studies (HIS) at George Mason University and a VP for International Programs at the Atlas Network. HIS was co-founded by Charles Koch in 1974. An outgrowth of HIS, the American Energy Alliance, had a central role in Koch’s successful campaign defeating the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill to limit greenhouse gasses (Kochland pages 448-449).
Jonathan Rauch – He is a senior fellow in the governance studies program at the Brookings Institute and author of books and articles on public policy, culture, and government. His many Brookings’ publications include the 2015 ebook Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy.
Jeffrey Rosen – He is President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Nadine Strossen – She was president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) between1991 to 2008. Veteran National Review fans may be familiar with Strossen, because she was a friend and frequent sparring partner of William F. Buckley.
Darrell West – He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of TechTank. His current research focuses on artificial intelligence, robotics, and the future of work. West is also director of the John Hazen White manufacturing initiative and vice president of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institute.
It appears that the first four presenters will be delivering the libertarian message and the second four will be delivering a mixture of pro-edtech and pro-American positions. All eight speakers have two commonalities. They are professionals who will be paid well for their appearances and none of them have any k-12 teaching or administrating experience.
Four professional development workshops are to be presented by:
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education which was founded by Alan Charles Kors in 1999 to dismantle the so-called liberal bias in higher academia. Source Watch reports that they were part of the right wing State Policy Network.
The Bill of Rights Institute, established in September 1999 by the Charles G. Koch Foundation, is a Virginia based nonprofit that promotes teaching a conservative interpretation of the Constitution.
The National Constitution Center is a nonprofit institution devoted to the Constitution of the United States.
iCivics is a non-profit organization offering teachers digital civics education curriculum including games, digital tools, and lesson plans.
For more than fifty years, Charles Koch has been pouring money into advancing his libertarian free market philosophy. Koch has taken Austrian economic theory from its 1950s fringe thinking status to an influential force in American governance. This is a continuation of that effort. Targeting teachers and school leaders is designed to expand Koch’s ultra-conservative low tax and small government agenda.