U. of Missouri to Settle Lawsuit by Giving Hillsdale College $4.7 Million

The University of Missouri announced this week that it will give conservative Hillsdale College a $4.7 million grant to honor the wishes of a libertarian donor. University alumnus Sherlock Hibbs donated a multi-million dollar sum to the University of Missouri in 2002 for the purpose of establishing a department dedicated to Austrian economics. Mizzou’s failure to meet the conditions of the grant was the subject of a lawsuit earlier this year.

According to a report by The College Fix, the University of Missouri has agreed to pay Hillsdale College $4.7 million over their failure to satisfy the conditions of a $5 million donation. Alumnus Sherlock Hibbs ordered the University of Missouri to use the funds to hire faculty focused on the Austrian school of economics. Hibbs said that the funds should go to Hillsdale College, a small conservative college in Michigan, if the University of Missouri should fail to satisfy the grant’s conditions.

The University of Missouri was sued earlier this year over its failure to uphold the grant’s conditions. Last week, the University of Missouri settled with Hillsdale College. As a result of the settlement, the University of Missouri will give Hillsdale $4.7 million of the grant’s total, which had grown to $9.2 million in investment accounts.

Although the University of Missouri failed to uphold the end of the arrangement with Hibbs, spokesperson Christian Basi said that the University of Missouri will use their remaining portion of the donation to educate students about free markets.

“This settlement keeps $4.7 million of the endowment at MU and will allow us to continue our work of educating students about free and open markets in our College of Business with professors who are strong proponents of such markets,” Basi said in a press release. “We also will use some of the proceeds from the gift to sponsor a biannual symposium on the MU campus that will focus on Austrian economics, which was of particular interest to Mr. Hibbs.”