Given the widespread tendency to direct budget cuts in higher education toward areas perceived as less essential to economic productivity, there is not a single college or university humanities program in the United States that would not benefit from philanthropy. However, because some moneyed interests use the current crisis as a pretext to further diminish publicly sponsored opportunities for the less well-off, there is good reason to be wary of some donors' motives. Many of those teaching in North Carolina's public universities know that a philanthropist to whom this principle strongly applies is Art Pope, a conservative multimillionaire. Pope came to national prominence last October, thanks to Jane Mayer's superb "New Yorker" profile of him, appropriately titled "State for Sale." That profile mostly concentrated on Pope's influence on state legislative races, although it devoted a few paragraphs to Pope's role in higher education in North Carolina. This article focuses on conservative philanthropy in North Carolina that comes at a price.