Editors’ Note: John Thelin and Richard Trollinger, two scholars of philanthropy and higher education, put the recent higher education “donor revolt” in historical perspective.

Recent campus conflicts at elite American universities, The New York Times declared in a recent article, signal a “new politics of power” in which “wealthy donors expect money to buy a voice in university affairs.” Activist donors with their “new playbook” have used unrest on campus as an opportunity to advance a distinctive set of institutional reforms.

Their ambitious goal to change a university’s culture as well as its policies means that campus governance now goes beyond presidents and trustees to include philanthropists.  Specifically, these are prominent alumni who, as discontented donors, use both internal networks to engage with fellow alumni along with the added external leverage of using social media to orchestrate their plans and attract supporters. They made fortunes in such fields as high-tech and financial services. Their aggressive strategies resemble insider takeovers of business corporations transplanted to academic institutions. The most conspicuous of this new breed are Marc Rowan at the University of Pennsylvania and William A. Ackman at Harvard.

As historians of higher education and philanthropy, we sought to understand this brand of alumni donor activism in historical context and wondered whether there has been historical precedent for it. How new was the donors’ “new playbook” really?

Our review of classic works and secondary sources did not indicate many examples of mega-donors publicly withholding gifts or reneging on commitments for political reasons—a hallmark of this new donor activism.[i] In their classic work Philanthropy and the Shaping of Higher Education, Merle Curti and Roderick Nash noted that in the era of university building from 1890 to 1920, Harvard presidents Charles Eliot and Abbott Lawrence Lowell refused what at the time were large gifts because of the strings attached to them. Nonetheless, despite the paucity of documented cases, it seems that the fear of donors withholding support has been a factor in administrative and trustee thinking since colleges and universities first became dependent upon donor support for the advancement of their missions. This point is illustrated by Curti and Nash’s comment that the trustees of the College of New Jersey delayed for over a decade in changing the institution’s name to Princeton University in 1896 for fear that alumni might curtail their gifts. 

Our search for an iconic historical figure who presaged Ackman and Rowan as ultra-wealthy alumni who became donors and active participants in the mission and policies of Alma Mater has not been easy or obvious. Looking back to the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries there is no shortage of “Captains of Industry” who became “Captains of Erudition” with transformational gifts to colleges and universities. The snag is that few of them were alumni of colleges, as their formal education often was minimal. Ezra Cornell, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Leland Stanford, and Andrew Carnegie used their huge fortunes gained from building businesses to then be founders of universities. But it was hard to be an alumnus of the institution one created and endowed.

Donor engagement in educational programs was varied, and often minimal. Cornelius Vanderbilt, for example, wrote generous checks for his new namesake university but never found time to visit the campus in Nashville. An exception to this disengagement was Joseph Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania. He had been successful in metallurgy and manufacturing and was known for reliance on data on financial and industrial trends to guide his business decision-making. His namesake academic venture, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, started in 1881, was the first college of business within an American university. It also featured the first commercial studies course to lead to a bachelor’s degree. Wharton wanted to provide a broad liberal course of study for the education of future business leaders. His curricular plans encountered some internal resistance when Penn’s liberal arts faculty opted to retain a classical curriculum and rejected proposals to add economics, government, and history. These new fields were rescued from orphanage when they then were adopted by the new Wharton School.[ii]

Wharton’s initial gift of $100,000 provided the resources for an experiment in attempting to fuse liberal education and commercial education. Indeed, today the Wharton School is prominent and influential within the entire university (its donors, including Rowan, an alum, were especially prominent within the “donor revolt” at the school). But an irony of Joseph Wharton’s bold curricular innovation was that although it was distinctive and respected, it was not widely imitated elsewhere. At most universities, the “commercial course” remained a “trade school” outside the bachelor’s degree curriculum. Also important to note is that Joseph Wharton did not rely on “hostile takeovers” or coercion to carry out his curriculum plans. He relied on discussions with leaders of Philadelphia’s business community as well as with administrators, trustees and faculty from the University of Pennsylvania.

One feature of the recent campaigns waged by discontented major donors has been the use of social media as a tool in the strategy of gaining attention and support from other alumni. In looking for historical precedent of “media activists,” we considered newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. Hearst was a major donor to the University of California, Berkeley, and he was (in)famous for pioneering “yellow journalism” via his numerous newspapers to promote national policies and kindle the United States’ declaration of war against Spain. But we found no evidence that he used his media empire in his involvement with university donations. Rather, he appears to have been highly supportive at Berkeley, building a state-of-the-art Mining Engineering building, a distinctive Greek Theatre for university commencement and other events, and one of the first modern gymnasiums for women.

Current arguments over university governance often are internal disputes and turf wars. This is unusual because college and university boards historically have been more concerned with stewardship that protects the university from external threats – such as hostile legislatures or city councils. A possible precursor of the insider alumni discontent surfacing today were clashes between internal corporations within the university structure over the past two decades. Many universities had created auxiliary nonprofit corporations representing such groups as the alumni association, the university research foundation, or the university athletic association – sources of strong affiliation and loyalty and with large endowments. A good example of this structural arrangement was Indiana University’s creation of “The IU Foundation.” Other major state universities have emulated the IU model.

What was intended to be a complementary, cooperative arrangement within the over-arching university structure has at times become divisive. We provided an example of these conflicts in our 2014 book on philanthropy and higher education. “[D]uring the years 2003-2004 the University of Georgia was involved in a contentious quarrel with its own University of Georgia Foundation, which is in charge of fund-raising, receipt of donations, and management of the university’s $400 million endowment. It also has a subsidiary, the UGA Real Estate Foundation. One entanglement was the Foundation paying more than half of the university president’s salary. Power to pay also could mean the power to withhold presidential compensation when foundation trustees were dissatisfied with the president, quite apart from the university regents’ decisions. These family quarrels became severe, leading the university regents to declare a ‘divorce’ from the Foundation. After a trial separation the university regents and the foundation board eventually reconciled – but this left unanswered questions for all universities’ concerns about authority and autonomy within the university.”

A historic figure who might be cited as anticipating today’s activist university donor is Herbert Hoover. Like Ackman and Rowan, he made a fortune in a cutting-edge field, gave generously to Alma Mater, and then was active as a leader in university affairs over several years. Hoover was a member of the first entering class at Stanford in 1891 and then among the first graduating class in 1895. He was outstanding in engineering and business, leading him to make a fortune as a mining engineer in South America. His entrée into philanthropy included not only donations to Stanford, but extended to leadership roles in war relief during and after World War I. His planning and leadership for food relief in Belgium endures as a model of effective, compassionate philanthropy.

Hoover’s work was national in scope. His lifelong work extended beyond high-tech engineering and business, as he applied these principles of capitalism to national service, first as Secretary of Commerce and then as President of the United States. “Hoover’s legacy as a philanthropist and administrator often has been obscured by criticism of his record as President of the United States at the onset of The Great Depression. In the 1940s Hoover’s intelligence and planning skills carried over to his service to his alma mater – as a trustee and major donor to Stanford University during the years in which Stanford transformed itself from a comfortable campus into a dynamo as the prototype for the modern research university of the Cold War era.”[iii]

Hoover was an experienced executive who emphasized cooperation and organization in his varied works. And here his historic example contrasts markedly with the demeanor and behavior of the conspicuous alumni philanthropists of 2023-2024. Ultimately, we conclude that, on balance, the aggressive alumnus as major donor and activist is a product of our own times. A recent New York magazine profile of Ackman, with the provocative title, “Raging Bill,” reinforces this interpretation, outlining how Ackman became transformed into “Activist Man” through his engagement with social media. One wonders how effective Ackman and his Penn counterpart Rowan would be if they resisted the temptation to be hostile, opting instead for the approaches of earlier philanthropists such as Wharton or Hoover.

An important order of business now will be for boards of trustees to give serious attention to codes of conduct for alumni and donors. The recent high-profile cases of activist donors who wish to shape institutional policies and practices without holding an appointment on the board of trustees or other related official body are exceptional. However, their style and model probably will continue to be prevalent at a growing number of institutions. In sum, alumni participants who are major donors such as a Harvard’s Ackman or Penn’s Rowan should not be ignored. Nor should they necessarily be encouraged or followed.

Resolving these questions about major donors and alumni as part of academic governance would greatly benefit when scholarship by researchers with leadership experience is connected to fresh, thorough reports from such national groups as the Association of Governing Boards (AGB), the American Council on Education (ACE), and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) in decoding the influential characters and connections in high stakes philanthropy associated with American universities in the 21^st century.[iv]

John R. Thelin and Richard W. Trollinger are co-authors of Philanthropy and American Higher Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). In 2011 they received the CASE annual award for outstanding scholarship on philanthropy and education. John Thelin is University Research Professor Emeritus at the University of Kentucky. Richard W. Trollinger is Vice President Emeritus at Centre College.

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[i]  Among the key classic works and secondary sources we consulted are: Merle Curti and Roderick Nash, Philanthropy and the Shaping of American Higher Education (Rutgers, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1966); Robert H. Bremner, American Philanthropy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University: A History (New York: Random House, 1962).

[ii]  Earl Cheit, “Business Administration: Trade Comes to the University,” The Useful Arts and the Liberal Tradition (New York: McGraw Hill, 1975), ch. 5; John R. Thelin, “Commerce in the Collegiate Curriculum,” A History of American Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019 3^rd edition), 86-87.

[iii]  John R. Thelin and Richard W. Trollinger, Philanthropy and American Higher Education (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) p. 26. See also, Rebecca Lowen, Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

[iv]  See, for example, John V. Lombardi, How Universities Work (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) and Robert A. Scott, How University Boards Work (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018).