Industry groups rent university prestige to launder paid advocacy as academic scholarship

Evidence

It seems pretty clear that Duffie allows the Stanford trademark to mask his role as paid apologist: … Why should we take such work seriously—or any more seriously than other paid consulting work, for example, by a law firm or someone else working for the industry? … The answer presumably is that Stanford University is very prestigious. As an institution, it has done great things. And its faculty is one of the best in the world. When a professor writes a paper on behalf of an industry group, the industry benefits from—and is, in a sense, renting—the university’s name and reputation. Naturally, the banker at the CFTC roundtable stressed “Stanford” when he cited the paper. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 573

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the ‘thought collective’ thesis — economists’ academic prestige functioning as a rentable brand connects to the book’s continuous-portfolio argument about how neoliberal economics sustains itself. — connects to: A private fund strategized placement of market advocates inside US academia — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 258; Even neutral scholarship operates within enabling institutions and agencies — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 858; Business funding of libertarian academia was contested over membership composition — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1457 (+4 more)
• SHARE: The specific detail that an industry banker stressed ‘Stanford’ when citing a paid paper is a sharp, narrow anecdote for anyone studying how corporate money is laundered through academic institutions.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal freedom-of-inquiry rhetoric was aimed at promoting their own market views within academia #expands (0.75) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 122
• Neoliberal university governance subordinates academic freedom to institutional transactions #corroborates (0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 663
• Even neutral scholarship operates within enabling institutions and agencies #expands (0.72) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 858
• Business funding of libertarian academia was contested over membership composition #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1457
• Philanthropic funders controlled the political composition of academic advisory committees #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 756
• Tenured professors face their own subtle corruption via grant and fellowship politics #expands (0.70) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 323