IRVINE, CALIFORNIA, February 9, 2016 (Orange County Register by Teri Sforza): When donors gift millions of dollars to universities, it’s no surprise that they want to keep as close an eye on the money as possible. But how close is too close? A review of major donor agreements with UC Irvine suggests that the level of control sought by the controversial Dharma Civilization Foundation – in exchange for gifts of $3 million – is greater than that sought by other big donors with names like Samueli, Merage, Beckman and Bren.
The Dharma agreements fund professorships in the study of Eastern religions, and create advisory councils so Dharma can keep an eye on who UCI hires and what is accomplished. Some agreements specify the skills successful academics must possess – such as facility with Sanskrit – and effectively narrow the applicant pool to what some faculty members fear is Dharma’s own, hand-picked candidates.
(HPI Note: The article fails to explain why facility in Sanskrit should be considered an unreasonable requirement for a chair in Indian studies. A very informative analysis of the issue of university chairs, this from the Sikh perspective, is: https://archive.org/stream/ChairsInSikhStudiesInAmerica-ProblemsAndSolutions/ChairsInSikhStudiesInAmerica-ProblemsAndSolutions_djvu.txt)
Hundreds of critics, including UCI faculty and students, have gone on record demanding that UCI reject Dharma’s gifts. A university committee is reviewing those gifts, and is on the verge of recommending what to do.
All of which confounds the donors at Dharma, who say they are willing to consider rewriting clauses that people are uncomfortable with and are eager to meet face-to-face with their critics. “When we wrote the agreements, we did not consult other agreements,” said Kalyan Viswanathan, executive vice president for the Dharma Civilization Foundation. “We didn’t ask for any, and we didn’t compare any. We wrote what we thought we wanted, and the university administration guided us toward language that was acceptable to them. It went through several levels of review.”