To begin, this article was about the tobacco company, BAT (British American Tobacco) Industries, offering an amount of 1.5 million to finance a university in Great Britain. The focus of this article is on the morality of this concept and the compromise of academic freedom of Cambridge University, if accepting this offer. After all, all tobacco industries promote and advertise addictive substances every day with the purpose of receiving profits in doing so. So if Cambridge University accepts the money, who's to say this university won't become just another advertising ground for the tobacco industry?.
The author of this article, Douglas Carnall, basically just did some research on the tobacco industry, BAT, and found through his research that BAT Industry's profits went up 56% to a record 1.56 billion in 1995. This information means that the company is rolling in money right about now. But the BAT industry is saying the real reason that they want to finance the university is to honor their recently retired chairman, Sir Patrick Sheehy. The tobacco company wants to establish the "Patrick Sheehy professorship of international relations". BAT Industry supplies the information that Sir Patrick was a regional sales manager then worked his way up to chairman of the tobacco division and eventually to chairman of the board in 1982. BAT thinks that establishing this and financing a college with it is a wonderful idea because Sir Patrick's career began in the 1950's, when smoking cigarettes was not known to harm people's health. Carnall also found that Cambridge has recently made some education cuts. Therefore, Cambridge has even more reason to not think about the after-effects of accepting the money and the obvious advertising to college students that it will give BAT industries. .
The author, Douglas Carnall, basically came to the conclusion that if Cambridge University accepts BAT's offer then it gives BAT the opportunity to influence students through many different advertising schemes, through academics, and through policy makers.
