Goldcorp money to be found throughout academia and the arts

While expressions of outrage ring out over Goldcorp’s $10 million donation to SFU and the subsequent renaming of university’s new downtown arts campus as the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, it’s worth noting that the company's sponsorship of both academia and the arts is nothing new.

Arts Umbrella, Bard on the Beach, the Playhouse Theatre Company, the Vancouver Opera, and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra have all received funds from the local mining giant; the corporation is the VSO’s Masterworks Gold series sponsor, and the VO’s Golden Anniversary sponsor through to 2011. UBC is no stranger to the Goldcorp touch; its Liu Institute for Global Issues and National Centre for Business Law have both received Goldcorp money, and the Teaching and Learning Wing within its Earth Systems Science Building will be renamed the Goldcorp Inc. Teaching and Learning Wing after a $5 million donation over five years, according to the Goldcorp website. The University of Toronto, the University of Ottawa, the University of Nevada, and Montana Tech have all received Goldcorp money as well.

It’s interesting to see how different the story is elsewhere—specifically, in Argentina, where, in 2009, the National University of Cordoba’s Faculty of Psychology refused funds from Minera Alumbrera Limitada, a mining development in Argentina in which Goldcorp owns a 37.5 percent interest, with Xstrata and Yamana as joint venture partners. Raul Montenegro, a professor of biology in the Faculty of Psychology at UNC had called on his department to reject the mining money, and urged other departments and other universities to reject such donations.

Why is it only now that the alarm bells are going off in Vancouver? Is it because a corporate name is going up on the walls of an academic institution for all to see? Is it because of the juxtaposition of this corporate name in the middle of the Downtown Eastside? And is it realistic to expect a university—or arts groups, for that matter—to turn away huge sums of money? It’s a situation that raises many questions, and doubtless there are more to come.

Comments

1 Comments

tedster

Sep 29, 2010 at 7:15am

The Argentina university donation refusal facts are these:

Minera Alumbrera, which Goldcorp does not control, donated $22 million to be distributed amongst 40 universities in Argentina, including the National University of Cordoba (ranked 916th in the world). Donations were distributed to departments in each of the 40 universities.

At the behest of one professor, the National University of Cordoba's psychology department refused its share of the Minera Alumbrera funds. The amount refused might be something like $10,000-20,000 at the outside, assuming roughly equal distribution amongst all the departments of all 40 universities.

This is about as far from comparable to the SFU gift as it is possible to get. It is not a precedent, nor is it a trend.

SFU is entitled to be judged by the standards and practices of its own community.

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