来源：《洛杉矶时报》
原文刊登日期：2021年11月2日
本文适合2023考生
The saying goes that a discount isn’t a bargain if the item on sale isn’t what you really wanted. The same wisdom could easily be applied to philanthropy in higher education: A donation isn’t much of a donation if it’s not used for something a university would have spent its own money on, if it had it.
俗话说，如果打折的东西不是你真正想要的，那么打折买到的就不是便宜货。同样的道理也可以很容易地应用到高等教育的慈善事业中：如果一笔捐款没有用于一所大学本来会花自己的钱去做的事情，那它就算不上是一笔捐款。
But many universities don’t seem to agree. In recent years donors have increasingly offered gifts with strings that direct research, teaching and even healthcare in line with the donor’s beliefs. Now that problem has spread to architecture, with UC Santa Barbara planning to build a massive block of student housing in which only a few of the bedrooms would have windows. The dorm plans are based on the design of billionaire and would-be architect Charles T. Munger, who’s kicking in $200 million to the $1.5-billion project, but only if his plan is followed.
但许多大学似乎并不同意。近年来，捐赠者越来越多地提供带有附加条件的赠与，根据捐赠者的信念指导研究、教学甚至医疗。现在，这个问题已经蔓延到建筑领域，加州大学圣巴巴拉分校计划建造一个巨大的学生公寓，其中只有少数卧室会有窗户。宿舍计划是根据亿万富翁和未来的建筑师查尔斯·芒格的设计而制定的，他将为这项15亿美元的工程捐助2亿美元，但前提是他的计划得到遵守。
Universities historically have been seen as bastions of freedom of thought and expression. But efforts to grow their prestige and wealth — along with the need sometimes just to keep operations going — have led some to accept questionable gifts in recent years.
历史上，大学一直被视为思想和表达自由的堡垒。但近年来，为了提高声望和财富，以及有时只是为了维持运营，一些大学接受了有问题的赠与。
Three years ago, UC Irvine touted its health services’ offering of homeopathy — an alternative medical treatment not validated by scientific evidence — after receiving a $200-million donation for integrative medicine from the Henry and Susan Samueli Foundation. Susan Samueli is an avid proponent of homeopathy. The mention was deleted from its site after widespread criticism.
三年前，加州大学欧文分校从亨利和苏珊·萨缪尔利基金会获得了2亿美元的整合医学捐款后，大力宣传其健康服务提供的顺势疗法——一种没有科学依据的替代疗法。苏珊·萨缪尔是顺势疗法的热心支持者。在遭到广泛批评后，该大学网站删除了这一消息。
Foundations of the conservative Koch brothers have given millions to support university study on the free-market economy, along with some restrictive strings, while a foundation of liberal George Soros has donated to promote research into the effects of political campaign donations. Meanwhile, the head of a highly respected program at Yale University resigned from that post this year after what she described as the university’s willingness to cave to unacceptable interference by conservative donors.
保守派的科赫兄弟的基金会已经捐赠了数百万美元，支持大学对自由市场经济的研究，同时还要求了一些限制性条件，而自由派乔治•索罗斯的一个基金会则捐赠了数百万美元，以促进对政治竞选捐款影响的研究。与此同时，耶鲁大学一个备受尊敬的项目的负责人今年辞去了这个职位，她说，原因是耶鲁大学愿意屈服于保守派捐赠者令人无法接受的干预。
What makes the dormitory situation at UC Santa Barbara even more outrageous is that Munger isn’t picking up the full tab for the dorm, or even most of it. He’s leveraging other money — probably most of it from taxpayers — to test his crackpot theory that students can happily live in windowless cubicles despite substantial evidence that natural light is tied to better mental health, sleep and performance.
加州大学圣芭芭拉分校的宿舍情况更令人气愤的是，芒格并没有支付宿舍的全部费用，甚至大部分费用。他正在利用其他资金——可能大部分来自纳税人——来验证他的疯狂理论，即学生可以快乐地生活在没有窗户的房间里，尽管有大量证据表明自然光与更好的心理健康、睡眠和学业表现有关。
If UC leaders had used their budget and hired an architect to design a dorm just like this — well, then they’d just be guilty of bad taste and worse decision-making. But this flub and others in which universities allow donors too much sway over teaching, research and operations wear away at the reputation of higher education and make the public wonder whose interests they really serve.
如果加州大学的领导们用他们的预算，雇佣一个建筑师来设计这样的宿舍——那么，他们只会为糟糕的品味和更糟糕的决策而感到内疚。但这一瞎搞，以及大学允许捐赠者过多地左右教学、研究和运营的其他瞎搞，侵蚀了高等教育的声誉，并使公众怀疑大学真正服务于谁的利益。