How Not to Donate Money in Honor of Your Intellectual Hero

[Last week I posted five quotations from Ludwig von Mises indicating his opposition to anarchism. Several commentators mentioned the Mises Institute’s drift toward anarchism. That reminded me of some personal history.]

I arrived at Rockford University as a newly-minted Ph.D. in the early 1990s. In addition to the normal excitement of becoming an Assistant Professor at a college with a liberal arts mission, I was very much looking forward to becoming a colleague of Rockford’s Ludwig von Mises Chair of Economics. I learned from reading the university’s catalogue that a prosperous businessman had donated over one million dollars to endow that chair in honor of his intellectual hero.

Wow, I remember thinking, what are the odds? And: How cool this will be!

Upon my physical arrival on campus, I sought out the Ludwig von Mises Chair of Economics — and discovered that he was a left-wing anarchist whose favorite thinker was Noam Chomsky.

Surprise!

Apparently, the first holder of the Mises chair had been a scholar of Mises, but he had retired or moved on soon after the endowment was made. The Economics Department then appointed the Chomskyan anarchist to replace him. To be fair, Robert Von Der Ohe* was a pretty smart guy, and in the 1990s we team-taught a few classes on Mikhail Bakunin’s God and the State, a 19^th-century anarchist essay.

I once asked Professor Von Der Ohe what he thought of Mises. He replied: “He’s kinda conservative, isn’t he?”

So philanthropists have a challenge: How do I make sure that my money works toward the achievement of my goals? Different strategies make sense for each individual and institution, but successful donation requires upfront planning and follow-up monitoring.

(And a question: Is it to be limited-government Ludwig von Mises’s inauthentic destiny to become the poster-name for anarchism — whether left-wing or right-wing?)

* Coincidentally, Von Der Ohe died this year, and perhaps uncoincidentally in 2010 he pleaded guilty to three counts of criminal sexual abuse of underage girls.