This message paid for by the Koch bros.

Credit: Pat Bagley

Credit: Pat Bagley

Iowa State University’s school of journalism celebrated First Amendment Day earlier this week thanks to a “generous donation” from the Charles Koch Foundation. If the Koch brothers appreciate anything, it’s certainly the First Amendment, as the company has went to great lengths, and even cited the First Amendment, to deny members of the Senate information on its support of climate change deniers.

Here is Koch general counsel Mark Holden summoning said amendment:

The activity efforts about which you inquire, and Koch’s involvement, if any, in them, are at the core of the fundamental liberties protected by the first amendment to the United States constitution. I did not see any explanation or justification for an official Senate committee inquiry into activities protected by the first amendment … We decline to participate in this endeavor and object to your apparent efforts to infringe upon and potentially stifle fundamental first amendment activities.

But for Iowa State University to accept a donation from a subsidiary of such an overtly anti-scientific and anti-intellectual company like Koch Industries, which has, according to Greenpeace, provided an estimated $79 million since 1997 to groups that deny climate change, seems counter-intuitive for a publicly-funded institution of higher learning that, presumably, seeks to teach college students to think critically and to trust accepted science.