Inside Higher Ed: This Course Brought to You By….
It’s standard practice these days for colleges to depend on corporate philanthropy to see campus buildings or endowed chairs with company names. But are there lines that shouldn’t be crossed? At the University of Iowa last year, professors objected to a plan to name the School of Public Health after a company.
What about a course? Can it be “sponsored”? If so, what should that mean?
At Hunter College of the City University of New York, some professors are asking those questions — and a Faculty Senate committee is considering a formal complaint about violations of academic freedom — over a course sponsored last year by the International Anticounterfeiting Coalition (known as the IACC), an organization of companies that are concerned about low-cost knockoffs of their products. The companies involved include some of the biggest names in fashion and consumer goods — Abercrombie & Fitch, Chanel, Coach, Harley-Davidson, Levi Strauss, Reebok and so forth.
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