by Richard Schulman
Sometimes guilt leads to great benefactions, as in the case of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. California Institute of Technology (“Caltech”), we fear, has not been so lucky. Yesterday one of its trustees, billionaire Stewart Resnick, and his wife Lynda, pledged $750 mn. to Caltech with some very burdensome environmentalist strings attached.
Caltech is one of the world’s great research universities, but for years it has suffered from an endowment just a fraction of that enjoyed by Harvard and other leading private US universities. Yesterday, the Resnick donation took a step toward redressing that situation. The gift, according to a university press release, is “the largest ever for environmental sustainability research, the largest in Caltech’s history, and the second-largest gift to a U.S. academic institution.”
So what’s not to like? Mr. Resnick, the donor, intends his pledge to help “comprehensively manage the climate crisis.” Climate crisis? That’s more a matter of Green and partisan Democratic Party dogma than established scientific fact.
Mr. Resnick’s “transformative commitment,” the university’s press release explains, “will support Caltech’s investigators as they pursue research in solar science, climate science, energy, biofuels, decomposable plastics, water and environmental resources, and ecology and biosphere engineering.” Astonishingly, Caltech, which up to now has offered what is arguably the best undergraduate science and engineering education in the world, will now be redoing its curriculum to give it a California-environmentalist flavor. In Caltech’s words,
“The Resnick Sustainability Resource Center will also feature lecture and interaction spaces as well as new state-of-the-art undergraduate teaching labs. Every first-year undergraduate student will rotate through these labs in conjunction with redesigned core educational courses that incorporate sustainability science and engineering.”
Translation: our world-famous science curriculum will now be given over in significant part to Green indoctrination.
Enrico degli Scrovegni was a wealthy Paduan money lender who provided the funds for the eponymous Scrovegni Chapel featuring frescoes painted by Giotto circa 1303-1305 AD. The tradition is that Scrovegni donated the chapel in order to atone for the sin of usury – the medieval Church’s foolish belief that accepting interest on loans is sinful.
Today it’s the Church of Environmentalism that defines sin. Its priests especially condemn energy- and water-intensive production. The Resnicks have been one of their targets. In the words of the New York Times,
“The Resnicks own the Wonderful Company, whose brands include Fiji Water, Pom Wonderful, Wonderful Pistachios and Teleflora, the flower delivery service. Their businesses are large consumers of water and plastic, and have at times been criticized by environmentalists.”
We don’t think the Resnicks are any more guilty of sins against the planet than banker Scrovegni was by taking interest on loans. But Signor Scrovegni left a treasure for the ages. While perhaps some useful research will come out of the Resnick pledge – and perhaps biodegradable plastic bottles for Fiji Water — we believe that much of the donation’s effect will be negative – corrupting one of the country’s last no-nonsense, no-affirmative-action, admission-by-merit-alone universities — in order to promote tendentious climate science.
Both the Resnicks and Caltech’s administration need to decide whether they wish to side with the petition to the United Nations of the Five Hundred Scientists or the media-hyped rant of a sixteen-year-old nut job. On present appearances, they’ve opted for the latter course. We suggest instead the $750 mn. be repurposed to what Caltech has always done well in the past: politics-free leadership in natural science research and education.
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