Editors’ Note: Jeremy Levine discusses the indeterminate meaning of ‘community’ and how it shapes nonprofit organization’s place in urban policy, a major theme of his 2021 book, Constructing Community: Urban Governance, Development, and Inequality in Boston (Princeton University Press). It is impossible to understand urban policy in the United States without appreciating the role of … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: The following is an adaptation of a lecture delivered in May 2022 by Olivier Zunz at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture on his book, The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville (Princeton University Press, 2022). When Alexis de Tocqueville, only 25 years-old in 1831, … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Claire Dunning introduces her new book, Nonprofit Neighborhoods: An Urban History of Inequality and the American State (University of Chicago, 2022). I first encountered the puzzle that inspired my recent book, Nonprofit Neighborhoods: An Urban History of Inequality and the American State, at a meeting I attended while working at The Boston Foundation … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Patricia A. Banks reflects on the significance of Black cultural patronage and diversity capital, key concepts in her new book, Black Culture, Inc.: How Ethnic Community Support Pays for Corporate America (Stanford University Press, 2022). In 2016, the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) opened its doors to the public. … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Ted Lechterman introduces his new book, The Tyranny of Generosity: Why Philanthropy Corrupts Our Politics and How We Can Fix It (Oxford University Press, 2021). When philosophers assess philanthropy, they tend to focus narrowly on the decisions of donors and the relationship between donors and recipients. Do individuals have a duty to give? … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Dan Royles reviews Sarah Schulman’s Let the Record Show: A Political History of Act Up New York, 1987-1993. This version of the review has been revised to reflect a response from Schulman. Sarah Schulman’s Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 is a sprawling, complicated chronicle of … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Ellen Aprill introduces her research on governmental and semi-governmental federal charitable entities. A version of this post appeared on Notice & Comment, a blog from the Yale Journal on Regulation and ABA Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice. Few American taxpayers know that they can make tax-deductible charitable contributions of cash and … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Jamie Levine Daniel introduces her research, done with Fredrik O. Andersson, on expanding the definition of nonprofit organization founding, recently published in the Canadian Journal of Nonprofit and Social Economy Research. “When is a nonprofit founded?” This seems like a straightforward question. However, the answer is anything but straightforward, because founding is a … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Joanne Meyerowitz examines the history of the “women in development” movement, based on material in her recent book, A War on Global Poverty: The Lost Promise of Redistribution and the Rise of Microcredit (Princeton University Press, 2021). Today “empowering women” is a ubiquitous buzz phrase in both the policy and philanthropy of global … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey introduces her new book, White Philanthropy: Carnegie Corporation’s An American Dilemma and the Making of a White World Order (2021), and underscores the research methodology at the foundation of the book’s historical narrative. Earlier this month, my first book, White Philanthropy: Carnegie Corporation’s An American Dilemma and the Making … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Peter Kaufman argues that the 1965 Carnegie Commission that led to the creation of the U.S.’s public television and radio systems can be a model for a philanthropic intervention to address our current epistemic crisis. With lies now so rampant on the Internet, television, and radio – with every printed page, moving image, … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Benjamin Márquez introduces his new book, The Politics of Patronage: Lawyers, Philanthropy and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, 1967-2000 (University of Texas Press, 2021). The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) is one of the best-known Latino/a political organizations. The scope of its involvement in Latino/a politics is … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Emma Saunders-Hastings introduces her new article in American Political Science Review on Frederick Douglass and his political theory of ‘dirty money.’ In 1844, the newly-formed Free Church of Scotland sent a fundraising mission to the United States. It raised about £3,000, largely from southern Presbyterian donors. Abolitionists in the United States and abroad … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Allison Schnable introduces Amateurs without Borders: The Aspirations and Limits of Global Compassion (University of California Press, 2021). This is Schnable’s recently-published book examining the rise of new actors in the international development world: volunteer-driven grassroots international nongovernmental organizations. In 1968, the radical priest and social critic Ivan Illich addressed a conference of North … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Benjamin Soskis reviews Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty. For a few weeks each summer for the last decade or so, one of my daughters has attended camp at the Smithsonian Institution. That meant that many July mornings and afternoons, when I was dropping off or … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: As the first contributor to an ongoing forum that HistPhil will be publishing over the next several months on the “uncivil” nature and histories of civil society, Chiara Cordelli illuminates the uncivil dimensions of philanthropy. Philanthropy, once again, has stepped in to meet unmet needs. The amount donated in response to the pandemic … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Introducing a 2020 article he co-authored with Bill Cooke in Academy of Management Learning & Education, Arun Kumar argues that elite US “foundations’ involvement in establishing B-schools globally is closely linked to a broader mission to establish the USA’s geo-political place and power in the world.” US philanthropic foundations, especially the ‘Big Three’ … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Lily Geismer continues HistPhil‘s mini-book forum on Lila Corwin Berman‘s The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex. You can read Ben Ratskoff‘s earlier review of the book here. Along with Brent Cebul and Mason Williams, I recently co-edited a volume called Shaped by the State: Toward a New Political History of the Twentieth Century United … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Over the next few weeks, HistPhil will feature several reviews of Lila Corwin Berman’s recently published The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex (Princeton University Press, 2020). Ben Ratskoff offers the first of these below. Lily Geismer follows with a review here. The climax of Lila Corwin Berman’s new monograph is the infamous fall of … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Peter R. Elson and Sylvain A. Lefèvre, co-editors (with Jean-Marc Fontan) of the recently published Philanthropic Foundations in Canada: Landscapes, Indigenous Perspectives and Pathways to Change (PhiLab, 2020), introduce the themes of the new book. An examination of the history of philanthropy can take one of two paths: A celebration of growth and accomplishment, or … Continue reading
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