Andy Mitchell’s insightful column Sept. 25, 2000, explored the role that major corporations have in students’ education: they fund us. Just looking around campus, the buildings are a who’s-who of major St. Louis megacorps: Mallinckrodt, Monsanto Anheuser-Busch and McDonnell-Douglas.
Mitchell began by presenting a claim from a purported ex-Monsanto employee who advised to only drink organic milk for health reasons. While rightly being skeptical of that claim, Mitchell did give an example of the moral problem inherent in accepting corporate money.
Many corporations with relations to Washington University, he wrote, have done things that don’t jive with the University’s values. Mallinckrodt, for example, “buried thousands of tons of radioactive material and other noxious substances about 10 miles straight west of Washington University,” and never paid for the clean up. McDonnell was a leading manufacturer of military planes.
Which is not to say that they are all bad. Monsanto, for example, could solve the global hunger problem with its biotech crops. And its leading product, an herbicide, is one of the most effective and eco-friendly products in its class. Finally, corporations fund much of the scientific research that improves our quality of life.
Some corporations, like Enterprise, now fund students directly through scholarships. Others, like Anheuser-Busch, fund events that both interest and benefit students, including the presidential debate.
The University is deeply entwined in other ways, too. The Board of Trustees is full of corporate leaders, including executives from McDonnell-Douglas, SBC, May Department Stores, Bank of America, Nestl‚ Purina, Laclede Gas, Monsanto, Edward Jones and Mallinckrodt. Corporate contributions comprised the second-largest source of private gifts to the University in fiscal year 2003, barely behind alumni giving, at $24.5 million.
The ethical question remains: should students, directly or via the University, benefit from unethically earned corporate profits? It certainly seems bizarre to name buildings after major polluters, weapons manufacturers and people who don’t want you to know what’s in your vegetables.
But if the University doesn’t get corporate donations, who will pay for, for example, the new cancer research center? Certainly not the government, and parents cannot afford a sharp tuition hike. Alumni might seem plausible-but the major alumni gifts are from alumni that, unsurprisingly, got that money by succeeding in business.
The role of corporations in society and what it means to be a good corporate citizen are two of the most important social questions today. Yet they are exceedingly complex. The University, as a strong partner of business as well as an overseer of tremendous intellectual resources, is in a unique place to lead the effort to resolve these ethical questions.