One count from the Anti-Corruption Data Collective estimates that seven Russian billionaires have given away as much as $435 million to 200 institutions in the United States over 20 years.
Do donors have too much influence over universities?
“I scarcely know anybody who works in the academy these days who isn’t concerned about donors’ influence,” Professor Denise Réaume told me resignedly. “It’s almost unheard of for someone to make a big money gift that is not targeted in some way. Nobody calls up a university and says, “Here’s $20 million, now go do good stuff with it”.
For this University of Toronto (UT) law professor as well as for Vincent Wong, a Toronto lawyer and former lecturer at the university’s law school, Exhibit A for undue donor influence is not the expected perk of naming of a building – as it is in so many American colleges and universities which have accepted gifts with strings attached from foundations such as Charles Koch Foundation.