We recently reported that the Koch brothers made a major gift to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), primarily for scholarships .

The reaction of some educators is filled with as much “tolerance” as we have come to expect from progressives.

….When the UNCF announced one of its largest gifts ever on Friday, several took to Twitter to express shock and anger. One person wrote: “#UNCF Literally Sells Their ‘Souls To The Devil’ Accepting Checks From The #KochBrothers W/Out Knowing Their Evil History. Craziness.” Another tweet: “#Koch donation to @UNCF tells children everywhere that money is first and integrity is unnecessary. Sends the wrong damn message. Period.”

…In the case of the gift to UNCF, $18.5 million will be used to create the UNCF/Koch Scholars Program, which will provide funds to “exemplary students with demonstrated financial need and an interest in the study of how entrepreneurship, economics, and innovation contribute to well-being for individuals, communities, and society.” An additional $6.5 million will provide support for the UNCF and for its member colleges, with $4 million of those funds reserved to help the 37 UNCF member institutions help students who have been hurt by the denial of PLUS loans (a parent loan program). The shifts in PLUS eligibility standards have resulted in many parents of students at black colleges having their loan applications denied, and those denials have been cited as the reason many students have dropped out.
…Marybeth Gasman, a professor of higher education and director of the Center for Minority-Serving Institutions at the University of Pennsylvania, has written several books about black colleges and philanthropy, including Envisioning Black Colleges: A History of the United Negro College Fund (Johns Hopkins University Press).

She said that she didn’t doubt that many individual students might benefit from the scholarships and that the UNCF “does need money” to help its member colleges. But she said that it was “wrong” to take these funds.

Koch organizations have been “deeply affiliated with the Tea Party,” which has repeatedly tried to undermine the interests and political activities of African Americans and institutions that support them, she said. “I think it is very, very important to think about who you are taking money from,” she said. “Yes, that money can do a lot of good for students. But it allows that organization to have quite a bit of influence,” she said. Letting an organization like Koch have two of five seats on a selection panel “is not something we should be O.K. with,” she said…..