John M. Olin Foundation

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The John M. Olin Foundation was an American foundation . It was founded in 1953 by entrepreneur John M. Olin (1892–1982) and dissolved in 2005. The Foundation awarded over 370 million dollars in donations, which primarily at conservative think tanks and in the establishment of the discipline Law and Economics ( "Law and Economics flowed") at leading US universities.

Olin and his brother Spencer owned the Olin Corporation and ran it until 1963. The company founded by their father in 1892 initially produced explosives for coal mines and flourished as an arms manufacturer during the two world wars. In 1954 it was taken over by Mathieson Chemical Corporation and subsequently expanded into other product areas. In the 1970s, the Olin Corporation came into conflict with the new environmental protection measures because it was a major producer of the insecticide DDT and discharged large quantities of mercury into water.

For a long time, as usual, the Olin Foundation primarily supported hospitals and museums. From 1958 to 1966 it also served the CIA for money laundering . This involved $ 1.95 million, mainly used to support anti- communist intellectuals and publications. Olin saw it as his patriotic duty to help. In 1967 these secret CIA activities were exposed through press reports, and the CIA terminated this program without any knowledge of the Olin Foundation's involvement at the time.

When in 1969 at Cornell University , where he had studied and which he generously supported, around 80 black students appeared with outstretched fists, the symbol of the Black Power movement, and some with weapons on display, Olin was deeply affected. And he was particularly taken aback by the reaction of the president of the university, James Perkins, who went very far towards the radical demonstrators. Olin became convinced that students at other major universities were a threat to entrepreneurship and that he must do something about it.

Olin saw a socialist infiltration in the United States that threatened free enterprise. He began supporting conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation . However, his foundation only became significant when it was geared towards influencing research and teaching at universities. In 1977 he named former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon President of his Foundation. Like Olin, Simon was a staunch opponent of the regulating state and especially of environmental protection, and he described politicians acting in the name of a public interest as “new despots” who threatened the only legitimate power of the free market. Under Simon's leadership, the Foundation temporarily sponsored smaller universities that were open to the desired objectives. Later, however, one went over to generously sponsoring individual professors at leading universities such as Harvard , including Samuel P. Huntington and Harvey Mansfield . Huntington received $ 8.4 million to build the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies , and Mansfield received $ 3.3 million for a Program on Constitutional Government . Great care was taken to avoid any impression of the content being influenced. At Harvard alone, it financed the work of over 100 young academics, most of whom later pursued careers in universities and others went into politics or worked in think tanks.

In addition, the Foundation also promoted conservative authors such as Allan Bloom , whose book The Closing of the American Mind (dt. The decline of the American spirit was) a bestseller, and John R. Lott's influential book More Guns, Less Crime ( "More guns, less Crime"). However, she achieved her greatest influence in law , where she significantly promoted and financed the establishment of the discipline Law and Economics (German equivalent: Economic Analysis of Law ). The aim was to counteract the increasing importance of consumer and environmental protection and workers' rights in legislation and case law with a consideration of entrepreneurial interests. This began in the early 1970s with the support of libertarian law professor Henry Manne , when he was still an outsider. An opportunity to get right at the top came with the founding of the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard Law School in 1985 . As hoped, this became a model for other universities, and in 1990 almost 80 universities were already teaching this subject. The Olin Foundation invested $ 18 million in Harvard alone, and another 50 million went to other universities. This also included payments to students when they attended the relevant courses. In addition, the Foundation held free, well-attended training events for judges at luxurious conference venues, including leisure activities such as golf.

Olin died in 1982. He had decreed that while the current leadership was alive, the Foundation should give up all funds and dissolve in order to rule out that it could be taken over by Liberals. When Simon died in 2000, the other trustees began to dissolve the foundation within five years as planned.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jane Mayer: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Doubleday, New York 2016, ISBN 978-0-3855-3559-5 . Pp. 94-99.
  2. ↑ Jane Mayer: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Doubleday, New York 2016. pp. 93 and 104f.
  3. ↑ Jane Mayer: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Doubleday, New York 2016. pp. 92f.
  4. ↑ Jane Mayer: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Doubleday, New York 2016. pp. 100-106.
  5. ↑ Jane Mayer: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Doubleday, New York 2016. pp. 105-110.
  6. ↑ Lizzy Ratner: Olin Foundation, right-wing tank, snuffing itself . The Observer, September 5, 2005.