Abstract:
For more than two decades libertarian billionaires have made donations to universities to establish academic centers as part of an effort to restructure society around the notion of “individual freedom” and restrict the state’s role in the provision of public goods. In 2016, the first publicly funded libertarian academic center was established by a state legislature in Arizona, and since 2020 the Florida legislature has joined more than a half dozen other states in establishing conservative academic centers on its university campuses. This contribution assesses each of Florida’s three publicly funded centers by reviewing the origins, work, faculty, and staff of the centers, as well as faculty responses. It then compares the Florida centers with their privately funded predecessors, finding similarities in network and content but differences in funding, activity, and structure.
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