Editors’ Note: Dana Brakman Reiser and Steven Dean discuss the significance of the rise of philanthropy limited liability companies, and place it within historical context, based on material from their new book, For-Profit Philanthropy: Elite Power and the Threat of Limited Liability Companies, Donor-Advised Funds, and Strategic Corporate Giving (Oxford 2023). The history of U.S. … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Matthew Wyman-McCarthy examines the role of British abolitionism as a case study and model for the longtermism movement in William MacAskill’s What We Owe the Future (Basic Books, 2022). Throughout the eighteenth century, most Britons who bothered to reflect on the transatlantic slave trade at all would have considered it an unalterable fact … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Gregg Gardner introduces his new book, Wealth, Poverty, and Charity in Jewish Antiquity (University of California Press, 2022), The ancient rabbis of the first centuries tell a story about a king, named “Munbaz.” Munbaz is loosely based on a historical figure – Monobazus II, the scion of a royal dynasty from Mesopotamia that … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Bruce Kimball and Sarah Iler discuss the deleterious consequences of the financial rivalry among higher education institutions, as detailed in their new book Wealth, Cost, and Price in American Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). A version of this post appeared in Inside Higher Education. Over the last four decades, public esteem … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Leonard Cassuto and Robert Weisbuch discuss the decline of U.S. philanthropic foundation support for the humanities in higher education, based on their book The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education (Johns Hopkins, 2021). And then there were none. As the millennium unfolded, humanists have watched as funders have deserted U.S. higher … Continue reading
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
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