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The University of California, Riverside has shut down an economics research center after some faculty members urged an investigation into an arrangement with private consulting firm Beacon Economics to run the center, using what the faculty members said was corporate funding for reports “attacking proposals to improve the lives of working Californians," the Los Angeles Times reported.
The website for the research center was taken down in late February, after the Times revealed financial details of the arrangement with Beacon Economics as well as concern by faculty. UC Riverside spokesperson John Warren said in an emailed statement that Beacon Economics will no longer operate the research center.
An open letter from concerned faculty members said that “there is no faculty oversight committee for the Center for Economic Forecasting and Development, according to Beacon management” and that “none of the staff of the Center for Economic Forecasting are UCR faculty according to the UCR business school faculty directory and UCR profile directory.”
That UC Riverside collected royalty revenue from the center is “completely reprehensible” and a “blatant invitation to various forms of ethics violations,” said Dylan Rodriguez, a media studies professor at Riverside and former chair of the university’s Faculty Senate, who helped to circulate the faculty letter.
