Editors’ Note: Nicolas Duquette highlights the history of the charitable contribution income tax deduction, in a preview of an upcoming article in Business History Review. The US charitable-contribution income-tax deduction marked its centennial in 2017. Relative to nearly every other aspect of the federal income tax, the workings of the deduction have changed little since its creation in … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Kellie Carter Jackson makes the case for a fuller scholarly engagement with black abolitionists and their “profound understanding of the idea, experience and value of violence,” the subject of her new book, Force and Freedom. John Anderson was an escaped slave who fled to Canada. On July 5, 1861 the Toronto Globe recounted the speech he … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Reflecting on her new book, co-authored with Jeffrey Henig and Rebecca Jacobsen, Outside Money in School Board Elections: The Nationalization of Education Politics, Sarah Reckhow draws our attention to Los Angeles and details a new trend among mega donors in coordinating their philanthropic giving and political contributions. Reckhow argues that this behavioral shift … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Examining how the animal protection and effective altruism movements have come to intersect, Garrett M. Broad explains the ways that these communities have contributed to each other, what conflicts have emerged, and what the future holds for ‘effective animal advocacy.” In this essay, Broad draws from an academic article he wrote, published this past December in Agriculture … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Ellen P. Aprill reviews Philip Hamburger’s Liberal Suppression: Section 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech. Hamburger introduced his book’s central arguments in a previous HistPhil post and replies to Aprill’s review in the comments below. Philip Hamburger’s Liberal Suppression: Section 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech opposes on constitutional grounds the limitation on lobbying and … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Philip Hamburger introduces some central arguments of his recently published book, Liberal Suppression: Section 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech. Ellen Aprill will follow later this week with a review of the book. Last spring I published a book on a revenue subsection—not something that would ordinarily stir the passions of readers. The subsection in … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: HistPhil’s forum on Rob Reich’s Just Giving: Why Philanthropy is Failing Democracy and How it Can Do Better (2018) has included three separate reviews of the book by HistPhil co-editors Stanley N. Katz, Maribel Morey, and Benjamin Soskis. The forum closes with a response to these reviews from the book’s author, Rob Reich. In Just Giving: … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Jamie Goodwin introduces her research on the informal giving network of immigration communities at the U.S. Southern border. [Haga clic aquí para la versión en español de este artículo.] “Our principal thesis is that a river of care rises…and that we must trace its flow through all its branches, including all those hidden yet … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Comparing the strategies of the Ford Foundation and Carnegie Corporation in promoting the behavioral sciences in mid-20th century U.S., Emily Hauptmann concludes the essay by noting that: “though there were important differences between how Carnegie and Ford chose to publicize their aims, both devoted considerable resources to building what they hoped would be congenial, … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Collecting and analyzing three decades of NGO research, Allison Schnable, Jennifer N. Brass, and Rachel S. Robinson have asked: “what have we learned, and how have we learned it? Where should NGO scholarship go next?” Recently published in World Development, the authors share their findings. The 1980s were dubbed “the NGO decade.” In fact, however, these … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: This post, from Bruce A. Kimball and Daniel R. Coquillette, is adapted from their book, On the Battlefield of Merit: Harvard Law School, the First Century (Harvard University Press, 2015), which was awarded the Peter Dobkin Hall History of Philanthropy Prize by the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Associations in 2017. … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Brian D. Goldstein introduces his recent work, The Roots of Urban Renaissance: Gentrification and the Struggle Over Harlem (Harvard, 2017). The January 29, 1977 front page of the New York Amsterdam News offered grim news to any Harlemites hoping to own part of the land they inhabited. “Harlem Commonwealth Council Fails to Sell Shares to Residents,” … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Maoz Brown previews his article, “The Moralization of Commercialization: Uncovering the History of Fee-Charging in the U.S. Nonprofit Human Services Sector,” which was recently published in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. Finances are often viewed as vital signs in the nonprofit sector, as in the much-discussed (and much-lamented) case of using administrative expense … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Nicholas Tampio, author of the recently published Common Core: National Education Standards and the Threat to Democracy, discusses the role the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation played in the establishment of Common Core. I recently gave a talk at a local bookstore about my new book on the Common Core, a set of … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Sarah B. Snyder discusses her new book, From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U. S. Foreign Policy. Americans and human rights have had a long, interconnected history. After all, Thomas Jefferson used the language of “rights” in his 1776 Declaration of Independence. And, Americans were active in shaping human rights commitments … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Robert Grimm and Nathan Dietz discuss the findings of the new report from the University of Maryland’s Do Good Institute, “Good Intentions, Gap in Action,” on youth civic engagement. Over the past several weeks, the students of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida have proved that young people have the civic … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey reviews Shomari Wills’s Black Fortunes: The Story of the First Six African Americans Who Escaped Slavery and Became Millionaires (New York: Amistad, HarperCollins Publishers, 2018). Detailing a history of the “first cohort of black millionaires” in the United States, journalist Shomari Wills begins Black Fortunes by correcting the popular myth that … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Ronald A. Brown provides a history of charitable gift annuities, based on his new book, A History of Charitable Gift Planning: How Gift Annuities Shaped American Philanthropy (1830-1959). In the ecosystem of American philanthropy, money is not only given, it is actively raised. There are only a few major histories of charitable fundraising, … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Previewing his new book Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), Daniel Bessner places particular attention on the work’s engagement with philanthropic history. In the last several decades, the history of the social sciences and philanthropy has experienced something of a renaissance. Books and articles by … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Heather D. Curtis discusses her new book, Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid. On September 2, 2015, the body of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up ashore near the Turkish resort of Bodrum. Originally from Damascus, the boy and his family were refugees from the Syrian civil war seeking to reach the Greek … Continue reading
