The introduction to the interview:

In May 2017, I had the pleasure of speaking with Samantha Parsons from UnKoch My Campus, a non-profit organization with a particularly tricky mission: organizing, empowering, and arming members of university communities with the information, tools, and support they need to uncover and untie their classrooms and research from partisan and agenda-setting private funding. I knew very little about their work and the challenges they face before conducting this interview. What I learned—as my reactions below might suggest—is troubling and complicated. American colleges and universities rely heavily on private donations, and the need for funding is only escalating.1 Thus, academic giving remains an admirable and important form of philanthropy, benefitting both students and myriad advances in research. What Ms. Parsons described, however, is not the business of giving as usual.