Las Vegas bookies are betting on the University of Kentucky to win the NCAA men’s basketball title, ESPN reported [1]. But that’s not where left-wing billionaire George Soros has his money.
With the Final Four facing off next weekend, Soros has focused on the long game. He put his money into the other three remaining schools, albeit for non-sports related reasons.
While Soros likely won’t care which school wins March Madness, he bet millions of dollars that three of the schools in Final Four would play their part in promoting his liberal views. Soros contributed a combined $2,271,397 to University of Wisconsin, Duke University, and Michigan State University from 2000 through 2013 through his Open Society Foundations.
These contributions illuminate Soros’ broader game plan. He gave more than $400 million [2] between 2000 and 2011 to higher education institutions around the world to indoctrinate students and teach them to promote liberal, and in some cases extremist causes. On issues including environmentalism, feminism, the labor movement, and social justice, Soros funded programs and classes at universities that promoted his radical ideology.
Soros made a particular impact through his contributions at the University of Wisconsin’s left-wing School of Journalism [3]. The school worked with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on the “Critical Information Needs” project, which would have invaded newsrooms and abused 1st Amendment rights. The FCC tasked two schools, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Communication and Democracy, with coming up with criteria for what information was “critical” for Americans to receive. The study would have covered newspapers, websites, radio and television, according to The Washington Post, but was suspended by the FCC in 2014.
The School of Journalism also housed the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, to which Soros gave an additional $535,000 between 2000 and 2013. That center narrowly avoided being banned from the campus when Gov. Scott Walker vetoed [4] legislation that questioned the use of state funds to support a journalism operation with a liberal agenda.
The center has been a member of the Investigative News Network since 2011. This liberal network of journalism groups received $300,000 from Soros from 2012 through 2013.
Soros worked to avoid leaving victory to chance. He far outpaced the Koch brothers in funding of higher education, contributing 50 times [2] more to colleges and universities than the conservative philanthropists. In the world of sports, this would qualify as a blowout.
Despite Soros’ major spending advantage in the propaganda wars, the media overwhelmingly focused [2] their attacks on the Kochs instead. The Kochs were described as everything from “the ubiquitous Koch brothers: the Zeligs of questionable funding” by The New York Times to the “implacable ideological foes of organized labor” by the Los Angeles Times.
When Soros took a direct interest in sports, media generally failed to mention his political views or activity at all. Soros’ $25 billion Fund Management Group bought 7.9 percent [5] of Manchester United’s Class A shares in August 2012. But many news reports about the deal, including from Reuters, Associated Press (AP), and BusinessWeek, excluded any indication of Soros’s politics or his controversial history. The man who broke the Bank of England, who has spent billions to underwrite political operations and liberal higher education, wasn’t even called “liberal” by most news outlets.
Soros Contributions to Final Four Schools:
- University of Wisconsin – $1,779,987
- Duke University – $291,260
- Michigan State University – $200,150
Methodology: Funding numbers for Final Four colleges are current through 2013. Total education funding has only been categorized through 2011. The actual number that Soros has given to education to date is tens of millions more, but only the 2011 total number was included for the sake of accuracy.