Western Carolina University stood on the brink of a battle with its faculty after it announced plans last fall to take $2 million from the Charles Koch Foundation to establish a Center for the Study of Free Enterprise. The Faculty Senate overwhelmingly adopted a statement criticizing the gift agreement as a threat to both academic freedom and the university's reputation. The free-market-oriented Koch Foundation fueled tensions by seeking to obtain the emails of its critics on the faculty through North Carolina’s open-records law.