Strike a pose, make a speech, you've got the Ayn Rand vogue-

Was 'the major plot premise of Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” is quite possibly lifted from The Fountainhead'? Daniel Davies, one of the philosophes at Crooked Timber, thinks it might, while meditating on a North Carolina businessman's gambit of promising huge sums to colleges if they will make students read Ayn Rand.

There seems to be some balking, which is odd. In day-to-day academic transactions, such an offer would be called a government grant (see, e.g. the Solomon Amendment).