Big oil's influence on major universities

Democracy Now!:

Over the past five years, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips have given millions of dollars to support energy research at top US universities. The private funds might fill a gap left by declining public investment, but a new report from the Center for American Progress warns that they also pose the risk of hijacking the universities’ research agenda and compromising academic independence. In the largest deal, British oil giant BP has a $500 million collaboration with three major publicly financed research institutions: the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.