Lindsey Berger is a left-of-center activist who has worked at groups such as the Sierra Club and GreenPeace. She is most notable as a cofounder of the left-of-center UnKoch My Campus effort that campaigns against academic centers and intellectuals that receive funding from libertarian philanthropist Charles Koch and his late brother David. She was the effort’s executive director from November of 2016 to May of 2018. ¹

As of June 2020, she was listed as the senior campaign coordinator for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a left-progressive environmentalist group. ²

Career

Lindsey Berger is a career activist who has worked at a series of left-of-center environmentalist organizations, beginning as an organizer against coal in Missouri with the Sierra Club. She later worked as a trainer and organizer with Greenpeace. She later left Greenpeace to become a cofounder and campaign director with UnKoch My Campus. After eventually being promoted to executive director, Berger left UnKoch My Campus and began working as an outreach coordinator at the Union of Concerned Scientists. ³ She is still on the advisory committee of UnKoch My Campus. ⁴

UnKoch My Campus

In 2014 Berger became a cofounder of the Unkoch My Campus project that is dedicated to opposing financial support from libertarian philanthropist Charles Koch and his late brother David to universities and right-of-center academics. Berger became the executive director of UnKoch My Campus approximately two years after its founding. ⁵ She led the group’s campaign against any and all academic funding from the Charles Koch Institute or the Charles Koch Foundation. ⁶

Under her direction, UnKoch released a report in March 2018 entitled “Advancing White Supremacy Through Academic Strategy” which paints any affiliation with any Koch-funded entity as evidence of “neo-confederacy” and “white-supremacy.” ⁷

Also during her tenure as director, the project published an alleged anonymous letter from a concerned faculty member at Brown University. The letter calls for the Political Theory Project, which received Koch support, to be shut down. ⁸

These two examples are typical of the sensationalist approach taken by Unkoch My Campus both before, during, and after Berger’s tenure as director. Additionally, while UnKoch criticized Koch-institution grants as not open for public scrutiny, Unkoch My Campus’s own finances were made unclear due to the fact that it was not an independent entity, but rather a project of the left-of-center group Essential Information. ⁹

Union of Concerned Scientists

After departing from UnKoch My Campus, Berger began work at the left-of-center Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmentalist organization that has, among other campaigns, attacked Charles and David Koch. ^{10 11}

Political Activity

Berger has made at least one donation to the left-of-center PAC ActBlue. ¹²

1. “Lindsey Berger.” LinkedIn.com. Accessed May 7, 2020. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindseycberger/.
2. “Lindsey Berger.” Union of Concerned Scientists, 2020. https://www.ucsusa.org/about/people/lindsey-berger.
3. “Lindsey Berger.” LinkedIn.com. Accessed April 29, 2020. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindseycberger/.
4. “Advisory Committee.” UnKochMyCampus.org. Accessed April 29, 2020. http://www.unkochmycampus.org/new-page-3?rq=Lindsey%20Berger.
5. “Lindsey Berger.” LinkedIn.com. Accessed May 7, 2020. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindseycberger/.
6. “Lindsey Berger.” LinkedIn.com. Accessed May 7, 2020. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindseycberger/.
7. “Advancing White Supremacy Through Academic Strategy.” UnKoch My Campus, March 2018. Accessed May 7, 2020. http://www.unkochmycampus.org/los-preface.
8. “Koch’s Infiltration of Brown University: A Call to Action from a Concerned Faculty Member.” UnKochMyCampus.org, January 23, 2018. Accessed May 7, 2020. http://www.unkochmycampus.org/jan-23-2018-brown-university-faculty-letter/.
9. Ravold, Christine. “Unclear Funding for UnKoch: Masking Funders Through Essential Information.” CapitalResearch.org, June 6, 2018. https://capitalresearch.org/article/unclear-funding-part-2/.
10. “Lindsey Berger.” LinkedIn.com. Accessed May 7, 2020. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindseycberger/.
11. “Search: Koch.” UCSUSA.org. Accessed May 7, 2020. https://www.ucsusa.org/search?search_api_fulltext=Koch&field_issues=All.
12. “Lindsey Berger-Individual Contributions.” Fec.gov. Accessed April 29, 2020. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_name=Lindsey+Berger&min_date=01%2F01%2F2008&max_date=12%2F31%2F2020.