Corporate Funding Taints Public Debate

With Congress’ fund-raising hearings in their August recess, it is a good time to raise the larger questions of which they are a small part:

Is discussion of U.S. foreign policy these days being increasingly beset with conflicts of interest? Is America drifting into an era where the only money available to support public debate comes from those American companies or foreign governments with a direct financial stake in the outcome?

Such questions were occasioned by a recent conference at Georgetown University on America’s relations with Indonesia. The daylong session brought together the country’s leading scholars and public officials working on Indonesia, including senior State and Defense Department officials.

Prominently on display at the conference and in its written materials was the following notice: “This program has been made possible by the generous support of Freeport-McMoran Copper and Gold, General Electric Company, Mobil Corporation, Motorola Inc., and UNOCAL Corp.”

In other words, the session was sponsored by American corporations that tend to have a financial stake in promoting close ties between the United States and the authoritarian Indonesian government of President Suharto, and in minimizing complaints about Indonesia by human rights groups.

The point is not necessarily that these American companies were doing wrong by paying for the conference. Rather, the question is whether the sponsors of the conference should have relied for funding on companies with such a clear interest in what American policy toward Indonesia should be.

To take the most obvious example, Freeport-McMoran operates one of the world’s largest gold mines on the Indonesian island of Irian Jaya. The environmental problems caused by its mining operations were serious enough so that two years ago, the Overseas Private Investment Corp., a federal agency, canceled the company’s risk insurance for several months before restoring it.

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At one point, Freeport-McMoran tried to persuade the U.S. Agency for International Development to cut off funding to the Indonesian environmental group that had been criticizing the company’s operations. U.S. officials refused.

In other words, Freeport-McMoran has its own interests in Indonesia, and they do not coincide with those of the U.S. government. A conference funded by such a company inevitably raises the question of whether the discussion, agenda or conclusions are being skewed to please private interests.

There was nothing particularly unusual about this Indonesia conference. It serves merely as a small example of a larger problem.

Increasingly these days, American universities and think tanks that engage in area studies--that is, scholarship about particular countries or regions of the world--are raising their money either from foreign governments and companies, or from the American firms that do business in these countries.

In Asian studies, leading American universities are relying ever more on grants from foundations like the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, originally set up with money from Taiwan’s ruling party, or the Korea Foundation, with ties to the South Korean government.

As for think tanks, take as an example the Heritage Foundation, one of the pillar institutions of Washington’s conservative movement. It receives grants totaling $300,000 to $500,000 a year--a significant portion of the $1.7 million it spends each year on foreign-policy and defense studies--from three Taiwan companies, a spokesman said this week. Small wonder that Taiwan figures very prominently in Heritage’s view of the world.

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The scholars and institutions that accept these funds usually advance two arguments for doing so. The first is that the money does not dictate or compromise anyone’s views. The second is that there is no place else from which to raise the money.

The first claim is dubious at best. The corporations or foreign governments giving money for scholarship and conferences often say in public they are not trying to influence American foreign policy. But do they say the same thing internally? How do the companies justify these donations to their shareholders?

The second argument is more substantial. It points to a serious problem. Ideally, universities and think tanks ought to be able to raise their money from sources that do not have blatant conflicts of interest: independent American foundations, the philanthropy of private individuals or government entities comparable to the National Science Foundation, which supports scientific research.

The congressional fund-raising hearings have concentrated on an eye-catching allegation: that China tried to steer money to politicians to influence the outcome of an election. That’s certainly a claim worthy of investigation.

But the broader phenomenon is that our very discussion and scholarship about the rest of the world these days are increasingly being funded by the foreign governments and American corporations that have an interest in shaping U.S. foreign policy. That’s a problem no one wants to address.