Hate the donor and love the donation

Suppose that a nation, a company or an individual wants to give a lot of money to a university, a non-profit group or an individual researcher. Suppose that many people think that the potential donor is morally abhorrent, or has done morally abhorrent things.
Is it wrong to take the money?
A lot of real-world cases raise this difficult question.
Loosely analogising from those cases, here are some scenarios that capture what I have in mind:
A tobacco company proposes to give money to Princeton University, to support scholarships for poor students.
A big oil company proposes to give money to a climate researcher, to study the economic effects of climate change.
China proposes to give money to Johns Hopkins University, to support a new center studying road safety.
Reasonable people will disagree about how to evaluate the donors in these cases. For example, some people think that big oil companies are pretty terrible; others have no problem with them. No country is all good or all bad. Let’s assume, for discussion, that in all the cases, the donor either is morally abhorrent or at least has done morally abhorrent things.
Consider a simple rule: Just take the money.
The argument would be that if the money would be used for a good cause, it’s a lot better to have it than to decline it. If its source is morally abhorrent, the rule still holds. Isn’t it better if the money is used to help people, even to save lives?
An initial response would point to the possibility that a donor might impose unacceptable conditions. Suppose that an oil company says that it is eager to make a donation to a climate change researcher — but only if it reserves the right to approve publication of any findings
before they become public.
Or suppose that China proposes to give money to a university on one condition: The university agrees not to allow members of its faculty to say anything negative about the Chinese government. That’s a deal-breaker. We should be able to agree that some conditions are unacceptable, even if others are fine — and even if others can be debated.
If you accept money from someone, you will feel grateful and perhaps beholden. If an oil company pays for your research, you might feel compromised, even if no conditions are attached to the funding. You might know that you will try to please your donor. You might decline money for exactly that reason.
Many people despise the idea of accepting money from donors they consider to be morally abhorrent, on the ground that they are effectively “buying” an increase in legitimacy. They think that the money is dirty.
In another form, the objection is meant as an effort to establish a social norm, with the expectation that it will have good consequences. The goal is to punish and to deter abhorrent acts.
Refusing to accept money is a way of putting a price on wrongdoing. It is an effort to prevent wrongdoers from getting the reputational benefit that they seek. It is a little like the movement to get universities to divest South African assets during the apartheid era — or the current movement to get them to divest from oil companies. In some circumstances, the objection is convincing. In others, it really isn’t.
—Bloomberg

Cass R. Sunstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is the author of “The Cost-Benefit Revolution” and a co-author of “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness.”