I happened to be going through some old blog entries and found a comment from 2009 (!) that is relevant to the recent discussion of Qaddafi-funded political scientists.
The context was a discussion of Peter Berger, the well-known sociologist who had accepted big bucks from the Tobacco Institute. One of the commenters pointed to the decision of some groups of anthropologists oppose U.S. military funding, to which I replied:
I actually have military funding right now, so this reveals where I stand on the issue personally. But I can see where the anthropologists are coming from, as a general principle. It’s all about where you draw the line. For example, I don’t know that I’d trust political science research funded by Muammar el-Qaddafi. It’s not unreasonable to think that funders are trying to get something for their money, and if you don’t trust the funders, I can see why you wouldn’t want them around.
Look how pure I was!
Seriously, though, I had no idea that political scientists were being flown on junkets to Libya. (Here’s the story of how Bob Putnam didn’t take the bait.) What we have to find now is a professor who took funding from both sources and then wrote papers saying why smoking should be promoted in Libya.