The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research’s new Center for the American University is launching the “Veritas Fund for Higher Education,” aiming to funnel money from the centerright think tank to universities that are increasingly dominated by the left.

One of those spearheading the effort is James Piereson, the man who served as executive director of the John M. Olin Foundation, which worked with university law schools such as Harvard and the University of Chicago to nourish programs in law and economics.

“Our broad intellectual goal is to restore to campus the serious study of free institutions, how they developed, what principles lie behind them, how they have been challenged in the past and how they may be challenged in the future, what are the vices and virtues of free societies, etc.,” said Mr. Piereson, now a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “These ideas have largely been lost on the campus as a consequence of the emphasis on diversity, feminism, multiculturalism, and related intellectual fads. We want to work with faculty and administrators to restore them, to the ultimate benefit of students.”

Another senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute, David DesRosiers, said the centerpiece of the effort was “intellectual pluralism.”

In which groves of academe will the fund focus? “Where there’s talent,” Mr. DesRosiers said, noting the Veritas Fund already had amassed $2.2 million in contributions with much interest expressed. The Veritas Fund takes its name from the Latin word for truth. (The word “Veritas” appears in the Latin mottos of both Harvard and Yale.) Mr. Piereson said he hoped the fund would disburse about $3 million to $4 million a year. Managed by a firm called DonorsTrust, the fund is open to outside investment by philanthropists wishing to support higher education who want advice on their gifts.

Asked about the fund, a professor of history at Columbia University, Eric Foner, who is on the political left, said he had not read about the fund but from its description said it sounded as though it had a narrow definition of freedom as the “unimpeded operation of the market.” Mr. Foner disagreed with the view that there is not a wide range of opinion taught at elite universities. He said they could “call up our economics department or business school” to find out if the free market is not amply taught and discussed. He said he did not think such a fund was necessary but “if people want to fund high-quality intellectual work, that’s fine.”

Mr. DesRosiers said the fund was not aiming to support a rival monologue on campuses but an open, rigorous and civil dialogue. One such example of models already on campuses include the Political Theory Project at Brown University, said Mr. Piereson. Its director, John Tomasi, an associate professor of political science, said the Janus Forum brings together students of different ideological backgrounds to make Brown “the best place for political conversation in the country.” He said the program sought to attract “really smart people who take the founding principles of America seriously.”

A professor of political science at Colgate University, Robert Kraynak, who directs the Center for Freedom and Western Civilization, which began three years ago said that such centers and institutions are springing up around the country.

The author of “Christian Faith and Modern Democracy,” Mr. Kraynak, said the big buzzword on campus – diversity – tends to be applied to race or gender: “But they have left out the most important kind of diversity, which is diversity of ideas.” His program at Colgate invites speakers such as Alan Keyes and Dinesh D’Souza.”This,” he said,”is considered to be quite shocking.”

Mr. Tomasi said there was a Madisonian idea about American governance that applies to universities that was in danger of being lost, namely that a healthy polity is one with multiple centers of power. “In my opinion,” he said, “alumni need to be awakened and assume their rightful place as centers of power to help universities realize their highest ideals.”

Mr. Piereson said leading colleges and universities were very wealthy today, with more than 60 colleges and universities having endowments greater than $1 billion, largely because of the stock market boom in the last quarter century. “Our academic institutions have thus done very well financially even while they were abandoning their core mission of transmitting our heritage to new generations of Americans,” he said. A challenge for the fund in dealing with these wealthy institutions, he said, was appealing “to the academic and intellectual conscience of faculty and administrators, rather than to their financial interests.”

Mr. DesRosiers said, “We want to do for the university what the Manhattan Institute has done for the city – change the way the city thinks about the most important issues.” He said this was the type of “modest revolution” they were seeking to make in higher education.