A battle rages over the renaming of a law school after Antonin Scalia

IT IS in part an accident of geography that George Mason University has become a sprawling public institution. It sits in the prosperous Northern Virginia suburb of Fairfax County, home to thousands of lawyers, lobbyists and bureaucrats who work in Washington, DC. Proximity to the nation's capital means that since it opened 44 years ago the university has become a well-financed perch from which public intellectuals and political figures attempt to influence federal policy.

Many of these idea-brokers are conservatives, backed by such benefactors as brothers David and Charles Koch, the Midwest industrialists. Now, a huge slug of cash donated to George Mason by conservative donors has caused a row at the university. In recognition of a combined $30 million gift—$20 million from an anonymous donor steered to George Mason by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal reform group, and $10 million from the Charles Koch Foundation—the university has said it will name its law school after Antonin Scalia, the late associate justice of the Supreme Court. The donor of the larger portion requested the name change.

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Source: United States http://ift.tt/1qesaYY

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