University funding through industry contracts

Lately, I've found myself in conversations with various people here at the University regarding providing university funding via contracts/agreements with industry partners wherein some of the projects are directed by industry interests and questions.

Today, there is an interview with Jennifer Washburn on Democracy Now on just this topic. From the interview:

Nine of the ten agreements allow the industry sponsor to basically control the overall governance of the research alliance on campus. The reason that’s important is because these alliances are long-term alliances that last anywhere from five to eight to ten years. So they really institutionalize the relationship between the outside oil company sponsors and the university. In eight of the ten agreements, the industry sponsors control the evaluation and selection of research proposals. None of the agreements that I looked at require any kind of independent expert peer review of faculty research.