type: timeline_event
William E. Simon, former Treasury Secretary under Nixon and Ford, becomes president of the John M. Olin Foundation, transforming it from a relatively inactive charitable organization into a strategic engine of conservative institutional capture. Simon brings both government experience and deep connections to corporate networks, implementing a focused grantmaking strategy that targets universities, think tanks, and legal institutions in alignment with Powell Memo objectives. The Foundation, which had been energized in 1969 when 80-year-old John M. Olin witnessed the Willard Straight Hall takeover at Cornell University, now gains the leadership to execute systematic conservative philanthropy. Under Simon's direction, the Olin Foundation becomes a major funder of law and economics programs at elite universities, supporting scholars who advance corporate-friendly legal theories and economic deregulation. Simon's appointment in 1977 - the same year Feulner transforms Heritage and Charles Koch founds Cato - demonstrates the coordinated timing of conservative infrastructure building across multiple institutional fronts. The Foundation's strategic approach, later replicated by Bradley Foundation under Michael Joyce, establishes the model for using tax-exempt philanthropy to reshape academic disciplines, legal scholarship, and public policy in service of corporate interests.