Charlotte Observer: Donor gave, and UNCC winced
$1 million with strings
BB&T CEO John Allison speaks before a large crowd during a forum, a prelude to the dedication of UNCC’s Ayn Rand Reading Room. The room was paid for with a grant from the BB&T Foundation.
As a college student in Chapel Hill, John Allison stumbled across a collection of essays by Ayn Rand and was hooked by her philosophy of self-interest and limited government. As he rose over the decades to chief executive of BB&T, one of the country’s leading regional banks, Rand remained his muse.
He’s trying to replicate that encounter through the charitable arm of his Winston-Salem-based company, which since 1999 has awarded more than $28 million to 27 colleges to support the study of capitalism from a moral perspective.
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