Is Big Tech using philanthropy to influence universities?

A few weeks ago, a former Harvard misinformation researcher named Joan Donovan filed a whistleblower complaint against the university.

It accused officials there of bowing to tech giant Meta when she was ousted from her position last year following a $500 million donation from the charity of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who famously launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room. Donovan had been working on a project involving documents leaked by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen. She then became known as a whistleblower herself.

Harvard denies Donovan’s accusations, but the fallout spotlights the influence Big Tech can have on academic institutions.

The Tech Transparency Project analyzed this issue in a recent report titled “Zuckerberg and Meta Reach Deep Into Academia.”

Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, about the report. She said industry money can come with strings attached.

The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Katie Paul: When tech companies are providing funding, they’re seeking to influence something. And that may not necessarily come in the form of saying something in favor of a particular policy. But sometimes it comes in the form of how certain views are silenced. We saw this, of course, with Harvard and the silencing of Joan Donovan, who recently came out as a whistleblower. Meta is not trying to explicitly launder an ideology or trying to get the university to say something in its favor, but they’re silencing efforts.

Lily Jamali: Since you mentioned Joan Donovan, we should mention that Harvard and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative have both denied her allegations. How did that response strike you?

Paul: Well, of course you’re dealing with serious allegations from someone who is identifying as a whistleblower, so it’s not surprising that there are denials from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative or from Harvard University. But I think that this is an important case to follow. And really, it’s just one prong of a broader ecosystem of how big tech companies use academics, activists and other third-party groups to launder their efforts and their influence in a way that removes them directly from influencing particular policies. The companies are leaning on and providing funding to the individuals that are often sought for their expertise by members of Congress and policymakers.

Jamali: What kinds of projects are Meta and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative funding?

Paul: Some examples include efforts on AI development and areas of health. Health is an area where we see a lot of tech companies expanding today, trying to find new ways to collect data and capitalize on that. There’s also more around schools and education.

We know that after the pandemic, Meta really tried to use its Meta Portal and other videoconferencing technologies to try to break into the video classroom world that we were all in. And so, we see a lot of donations related to education. There’s just a wide variety of things that are particularly related to Meta’s biggest efforts. But especially over the past year, you see a lot of their funding related to their AI Learning Alliance, which is where we see Meta really moving its efforts to join the AI race and stay in the game.

Jamali: You write about how it’s not always money that’s being donated to these institutions. For example, there’s an instance of virtual reality headsets being donated as well. Can you talk about that?

Paul: Yeah, that’s a great example of an instance where the physical technology being provided, which can often be expensive, is being provided to universities that otherwise wouldn’t have the funding to acquire it. And there’s just enough given that they can create certain initiatives around this or certain classes. But ultimately, it puts them in a situation where they have to continue acquiring that technology to keep their efforts going. And it’s really a way for the tech companies to indoctrinate their technology that they profit from into these ecosystems. We’ve seen similar efforts more broadly with, for instance, Google Chromebooks in classrooms across the United States. There’s always an effort for tech companies to get their technology into schools as critical technology. And ultimately, they’re creating an ecosystem that requires continued acquisition of that technology to keep the programs and the virtual reality projects that they have going.

Jamali: The database that TTP compiled looks at grants to institutions over the last five years. One of the biggest grants made by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was for artificial intelligence research at Harvard. Meta and these other big tech companies have obviously been investing very heavily in AI and then you have, on the other side, researchers trying to understand the technology. I wonder how concerned you are by potential conflicts of interest specifically when it comes to AI.

Paul: With AI right now, there’s a lot of potential for conflict of interest because we’re not just seeing a race when it comes to the development of this technology, but also a race to see who can influence Congress the fastest. As there’s more interest in regulating this kind of technology, particularly generative AI and its potential for disinformation, we see a lot of efforts on the part of major companies to try to influence these pending AI policies before Congress has a chance to catch up on the harms.

If this sounds familiar, it should. Just about a decade ago, we were kind of at this same crossroads when it came to broader social media technology and Section 230 [of the Communications Decency Act]. Those efforts to regulate Big Tech and its impacts on society are still ongoing while these companies spend record amounts of money lobbying to try to stifle any efforts at regulation. And now we’re just seeing that focused effort on steroids when it comes to artificial intelligence. A university like Harvard carries major weight just in name alone and is often tapped by members of Congress in hearings when they’re seeking information on how to regulate these policies. And by giving such a major donation for AI specifically to a university like Harvard that may be tapped, there’s certainly conflicts of interest because you don’t know what kind of lines Meta is asking Harvard to push in exchange for such a large gift.

Jamali: There are rules and ethics codes that are designed to prevent corporate influence in academic research. Do those protections not go far enough?

Paul: Ethics codes are something that is important, but they’re only as good as their enforcement. It’s also worth keeping in mind that these are not laws. And so, when it comes to ethics codes, it’s really up to the public and up to whistleblowers like Joan Donovan to hold universities accountable for failing to comply with the ethics codes when it comes to this kind of corporate funding. At the same time, there’s not a whole lot of transparency around what goes on behind the scenes with regard to these really large gifts to universities, like the $500 million we saw given to Harvard by Meta and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Jamali: How have Meta and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative responded to your project?

Paul: We did reach out to Meta and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, but they did not provide a comment related to this project. And I think it’s important to note that the research that we did draws entirely on open-source data and public disclosures. Many of the resources on our website and our databases pull from open-source information, but it’s often buried quite deeply in a way that it is technically accessible, but not to the average person. We want to just shine more sunlight on that kind of information to give the public a seat at the table on these issues.

More on this

This issue of companies potentially influencing academia is hardly a new one. Think back to the 2008 financial crisis. In the run-up, sellers of mortgage-backed securities actually paid economics professors who downplayed the risks involved. The American Association of University Professors has acknowledged this happened, saying academics found themselves under mounting pressure to become more commercially relevant and generate private revenue. The Washington Post writes that pressure even extended to disciplines outside of economics.