Tom Lewis, the founder and primary funder of the now-defunct T.W. Lewis Center at Arizona State University (ASU), revealed that he pulled his annual contribution of $400,000 due to the majority of the institution’s faculty reacting to conservatives, particularly guest speakers, with open hostility.
Lewis made the remarks during an appearance on The Mike Broomhead Show, describing “a steady beat down of realization” in which he determined universities “want your donations, but they don’t want your input, and they certainly don’t want your influence in the classroom or even selecting speakers.”
The T.W. Lewis Center closed after Lewis, an Arizona real estate investor, pulled his annual funding months after most professors at Barrett, the honors College where the center was housed, signed a petition calling conservative speakers Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager “purveyors of hate” and aiming to prevent them from speaking at a February 2023 event.
“It took me awhile to realize that, how hostile the faculty has become towards donors,” Lewis told Broomhead. “One faculty made the comment that the protest was not even about Prager and Kirk, it was about a donor attempting to influence the speakers.”
Lewis cited incidents involving former T.W. Lewis Center executive director Ann Atkinson, telling Woodward “a lot of faculty were outright harassing her” and the university’s deans “didn’t really want to get involved.”
Instead of promoting the event, Lewis said faculty “wanted to make sure these speakers stuck to certain topics; they didn’t want them to wander into politics and a few other areas” and “really tried to suppress free speech.”
