NEBRASKA
World-Herald
POSTED: SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2014
By Steve Jordon / World-Herald staff writer
Creighton University is now part of a loosely connected but growing network of U.S. universities with economic teaching and research funded, in part, by Charles Koch, the Kansas billionaire and backer of conservative candidates and causes.
Critics of the new Institute for Economic Inquiry say it favors a brand of economics that contradicts long-established Catholic social thought, endorsed by Pope Francis and his predecessors. One Omaha priest accuses the Charles Koch Foundation of pushing its ideas “to the very doorstep of the Vatican.”
The institute is funded 50-50 by pledges totaling $4.5 million over five years by the Charles Koch Foundation and the family of Omaha trucking entrepreneur C.L. Werner.
Gail Werner-Robertson said she approached the university, her alma mater, last year about a new economics program because she thinks too few college students, including her own children, get information about the different economic systems at work in the world.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.