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: This post, by HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey, introduces HistPhil’s forum on waqfs, which will be featured on this site for the next weeks. If Andrew Carnegie invented modern philanthropy, Bill Gates has become its global evangelist. For many HistPhil readers, including myself at times, this statement might not seem to be controversial. After … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: In response to Black Lives Matter protests, #BlackInTheIvory, and nearly daily updates of leading U.S. philanthropies, nonprofits and for-profits proclaiming their allyship to the BLM movement, we have questioned what role we should and could play here on HistPhil. As a first step, we are amplifying the published works of Black scholars both … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: The following is an interview between HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey and the Berggruen Institute’s Vice President of Programs, Nils Gilman, which took place over email this week. An intellectual historian by training and author of Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (2004), Gilman discusses how his orientation as a historian has shaped … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: In anticipation of “An American Dilemma for the 21st Century” conference at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in NYC next Wednesday (where she will be presenting), HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey encourages here on HistPhil some dialogue on the relative constraints and freedoms of the funder-grantee relationship, a topic of mutual … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Continuing HistPhil‘s forum on Rob Reich‘s Just Giving (2018), HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey relates Just Giving to another much-discussed book on philanthropy published earlier this year: Anand Giridharadas’ Winners Take All (2018). In Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (2018), journalist Anand Giridharadas introduces readers to a network of elites taking on “social change as … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Bringing historical context to the NAACP’s decision in 2017 to change its tax status from a 501(c)3 to 501(c)4, HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey argues that the NAACP’s announcement “should be understood as yet another move by an organization long deciding between accepting political silence and financial viability as a 501(c)3 or gaining political voice and financial vulnerability as … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Adding to HistPhil’s forum on Money Well Spent, HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey considers the democratic importance of pushing back against Paul Brest and Hal Harvey’s commitment to value neutrality throughout the book, and particularly in their discussion of social problems. Relating her historical work on Carnegie Corporation’s response to Black nationalism in the 1920s, Morey stresses: “As democratic citizens—as human … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey introduces HistPhil‘s forum on the second edition of Paul Brest and Hal Harvey’s Money Well Spent (2018), published earlier this summer. With this new edition, Morey reasons that it is “a great moment to engage critically and historically with the book, both as a cultural artifact in the practice of philanthropy and as a … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Last August, I shared with readers my syllabus for a graduate seminar on the history of philanthropy. In a similar spirit, I am including below an undergraduate version of that class which I will be teaching this fall. Of course, and as always, please feel free to reach out with feedback and suggestions both on … 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: This HistPhil forum on philanthropy in Sweden opens with an essay by HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey. It will be followed by contributions from Lars Trägårdh, Johan Vamstad, Noomi Weinryb, Johanna Palmberg, Pontus Braunerhjelm, and Jaakko Turunen. Though planned for some months, we are publishing this forum right as a national conversation in the United … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Prompted by an emailed request from University of Minnesota doctoral student Reba Juetten, I have updated a syllabus on the history of philanthropy that I drafted in 2015 and whose introduction I include on my personal website. Never used, it has remained a dream course that I would love to teach one day. … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: In response to a recent SSIR piece describing Julius Rosenwald as a philanthropic hero, HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey reflects on the distinction between an effective philanthropist and a heroic figure. “Julius Rosenwald is one of our philanthropic heroes.” This is how Bridgespan’s William Foster, Gail Perreault, and Elise Tosun begin their essay on “Ten Ways to Make … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey discusses the Gunnar Myrdal symposium in the latest issue of Humanity, and explains its relevance for scholars and practitioners of philanthropy. Americans generally remember Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987) as the astute Swedish observer of American race relations who authored the monumental study of black Americans that had been commissioned and funded by Carnegie Corporation of … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey reports on her impressions of a forum on populism, the world order, and the Trump era hosted by the Carnegie Corporation and Time Magazine at the foundation’s offices last week. At the Carnegie Corporation offices in midtown Manhattan this past Tuesday, I attended a panel discussion coordinated by the foundation and Time Magazine on “A Populist … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: The following is an interview between HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey and Hewlett Foundation President Larry Kramer, which took place over email in the past weeks. For earlier Q&As between Kramer and Morey, please follow this link. Below, Kramer discusses the foundation’s forthcoming plans to establish formal archives and the organization’s use of its history in its decision-making … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: HistPhil’s Maribel Morey reviews Tiffany Willoughby-Herard’s new book, Waste of a White Skin: The Carnegie Corporation and the Racial Logic of White Vulnerability (University of California Press, 2015). In a 1914 editorial titled “World War and the Color Line,” African American historian W.E.B. Du Bois explained to Black readers of the NAACP’s Crisis why they should … Continue reading
The Law and Society Association‘s annual meeting will take place in Mexico City this upcoming June of 2017 and its theme will be “Walls, Borders, and Bridges: Law and Society in an Inter-Connected World.” I am reaching out to our readers in order to organize a potential panel on the history of American philanthropy and public policymaking on an interconnected, global stage. … Continue reading
The 12th International Conference of the International Society for Third-Sector Research (ISTR) is taking place next week (June 28-July 1) at Ersta Skondal University College in Stockholm, Sweden. The theme is “The Third Sector in Transition: Accountability, Transparency, and Social Inclusion.” Below, I am including events that would be of particular interest to HistPhil readers. Of … Continue reading
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