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FROM: Ángel Cabrera

TO: Members of the Faculty Senate

RE: Law School Naming Gift Resolution

DATE: April 29, 2016

Dear Colleague,

This past Wednesday I was asked by the Faculty Senate to share my thoughts on the

recent naming gift to the law school and to respond to a number of specific concernsincluded in a draft resolution that was later adopted. The various concerns covered

three topics: the appropriateness of naming a school after a Supreme Court Justice

whose opinions some consider objectionable and polarizing, the risk of undue influence

 by a donor in the academic affairs of the university, and the economic implications of

the gift for the university.

Let me offer some thoughts on each of these subjects.

In a large and proudly diverse university like ours, it is not surprising that the opinionsof an influential individual like the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would

generate a wide variety of reactions. I acknowledge and respect the fact that some of

you find some of his opinions objectionable and even personally offensive.

Agreement with his views is, however, not the reason why we are renaming the law

school for Justice Scalia. We are not endorsing his opinions on any specific issue. We

are recognizing a man who served our country at the highest level of government for 30

years and who many experts of diverse ideological persuasions—from facultycolleagues in our law school, to his peers on the Supreme Court, to the president of the

United States—consider to have been a great jurist who had a profound impact in the

legal field.

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Earlier this year we were the target of intense criticism for opinions expressed by some

of our faculty in the area of climate change prevention. Some colleagues at the time

suggested that I publicly condemn those views and distance the university from them.

My position then was clear and has not changed: we must ensure that George Mason

University remains an example of diversity of thought, a place where multipleperspectives can be dissected, confronted, and debated for the benefit and progress of

society at large. Rejecting a major naming gift in honor of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice

on the basis that some of us disagree with some of his opinions would be inconsistent

with our values of diversity and freedom of thought.

As per the perception that one donor may unduly influence the academic life of this

university, let me offer some context. Indeed, with the continuous decline in public

funding, philanthropy plays an increasingly important role for public universities, as ithas always been for private ones. However, compared to our research university peers,

philanthropy is still a very small percentage of our budget. In fiscal year 2017, all forms

of philanthropy will account for almost 5 percent of our $920 million budget. Four years

ago when I arrived at Mason, philanthropy provided 3 percent of our $730 million

 budget.

In a front-page story on Friday, April 29, the New York Times valued the gifts from one

donor, the Charles Koch Foundation, to Mason over the last decade at $50 million. Toput things in perspective, that would amount to about 0.6 percent of our average annual

 budget over this period. The suggestion that gifts of this magnitude can shape the

ideology of the largest public research university in Virginia is farfetched to say the

least.

The New York Times credits Charles Koch with having helped transform a “once sleepy

commuter school […] into a leading producer of free-market scholarship.” Sleepy is not

the first word that comes to mind to describe an economics department that deliveredone Nobel Prize winner in 1986 and a second one in 2002. It seems fairer to claim that it

was our academic strength in economics that attracted the support of individual donors

and foundations. I can only hope that our strengths in other areas—from public policy

to climate change and conservation, digital humanities, psychology, cybersecurity or

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molecular biology to mention a few—will one day attract a similar level of private

support.

I am proud that we are making great progress in increasing philanthropic support to

the university and I am grateful to our donors for believing in us—including theCharles Koch Foundation, one of our most consistent and generous donors. But we are

still far from the levels of many of our peer institutions in terms of the weight of

philanthropy in our finances. Our problem is not that we receive too many gifts, but

that we don’t receive enough. I will continue to work hard to raise more money to

support our faculty and students.

I take it as one of my most important responsibilities to protect the integrity of our

academic enterprise. Our donors understand that, no matter how generous they may be, they will have no authority whatsoever in our faculty selection and promotion

processes, our student admissions, or our curricular choices. If that’s not acceptable to

them, we simply decline the gifts.

Finally, let me clarify the structure of the $30 million gift to the law school. The entire

gift will fund scholarships. The tuition revenue generated by those scholarships will

provide additional resources to the school to hire new faculty, create new centers, and

strengthen existing programs. The new faculty positions will be funded with those

revenues. In fact, this is our plan as presented to the donors, not the other way around.

The new resources will help us raise the stature of the school and consolidate its

position among the leading law schools in the country. Our expectation is that the

 boost of resources will have lasting effects in driving future student demand beyond the

duration of the gift.

I want to emphasize that our commitment to diversity and inclusion will not waver. On

the contrary, the new gift offers significant resources to further pursue our goals. The

Board of Visitors’ resolution approving of the name requires that we create a new

scholarship program that will help attract diverse students to the law school. The Board

also requested the creation of a new committee, including two board members, to

monitor the improvements of student and faculty diversity in the law school. There is a

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lot more we can do for diversity and inclusion with the scholarships and the new

faculty positions than without them.

I extend my congratulations to Dean Henry Butler for raising the largest gift in

university history and to his faculty for what I expect to be a transformative milestonein the already remarkable trajectory of a leading law school.

These are exciting times for our university. Very few institutions have achieved what

we have in as short a time: a 34,000 student body, a position among the top research

universities in the nation, a culture of innovation and inclusion, and an extraordinary

record of student success. With your work and the support of our community, we will

continue to be an example of what a public university is about.

I thank you for everything you do to support our university.

Respectfully,

--Ángel Cabrera