Ford Foundation

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The Ford Foundation is a charitable foundation based in New York City created to fund programs that promote democracy, reduce poverty, promote international understanding, and advance human achievement.<ref>Mission Statement. Ford Foundation. Retrieved on 2006-07-23.</ref> The current president is Susan V. Berresford.

Since it was chartered in 1936, the Ford Foundation has operated as an independent, nonprofit, nongovernmental organization.<ref>Mission Statement. Ford Foundation. Retrieved on 2006-09-16.</ref>

The foundation makes grants through its New York headquarters and through twelve international field offices. In fiscal year 2005, it approved $512 million <ref>Financial Statement. Retrieved on 2006-09-16.</ref> in grants for projects that focused on strengthening democratic values, community and economic development, education, media, arts and culture, and human rights.<ref>2005 Annual Report. Retrieved on 2006-09-16.</ref>

1 History
2 Critics
3 References
4 Further reading
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] History

The Ford Foundation was chartered on January 15, 1936 by Edsel Ford and two Ford Motor Company executives "to receive and administer funds for scientific, educational and charitable purposes, all for the public welfare"<ref>Bak, Richard. Henry and Edsel: The Creation of the Ford Empire.</ref>. During its early years, the foundation operated in Michigan under the leadership of Ford family members and their associates, and supported such organizations as the Henry Ford Hospital, Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum, among others.

After the deaths of Edsel Ford in 1943 and Henry Ford in 1947, the presidency of the Ford Foundation fell to Edsel's oldest son, Henry Ford II. Under Henry II's leadership, the Ford Foundation board of trustees commissioned a report to determine how the foundation should continue. The committee, headed by California attorney H. Rowan Gaither, recommended that the foundation should commit to promoting peace, freedom, and education throughout the world. To provide funding for various projects, including the pre-existing network, National Educational Television, which went on the air in 1952 and was shut down and replaced by the Public Broadcasting Service in October of 1970, the board of directors decided to diversify the foundation's portfolio and gradually divested itself of its substantial Ford Motor Company stock between 1956 and 1974. Through this divestiture, the Ford Motor Company became a public company in 1956.

Based on recommendations outlined in the Gaither report, the foundation’s grants began to include support for higher education, the arts, economic development, civil rights, and the environment, among other areas.

In 1951, Ford made its first grant to support the development of the public broadcasting system.<ref>Current.org. Retrieved on 2006-11-27.</ref> These grants continued, and in 1969 the foundation gave $1 million to the Children’s Educational Workshop to help create and launch “Sesame Street”. <ref>IMDB. Retrieved on 2006-11-27.</ref>

In 1952, the foundation’s first international field office opened in New Delhi, India.

Throughout the 1950s, the foundation provided a series of arts and humanities fellowships that supported the work of figures like Josef Albers, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, e.e. cummings, Flanner O’Connor, Jacob Lawrence, Robert Lowell, and Margaret Meade.

In 1976, the foundation helped launch the Grameen Bank, which offers small loans to the rural poor of Bangladesh. In 2006, the Grameen Bank and its founder, Mohammed Yunus, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering micro-credit. <ref>Norweigan Nobel Committee. Retrieved on 2006-11-27.</ref>

In the late 1980s, the foundation began making grants to fight the AIDS epidemic, which included support for the establishment of a $4.5 million program to improve AIDS education and treatment in communities around the country.

In 2000, the foundation launched the International Fellowships Program (IFP) with a $280 million grant, the largest in its history. IFP provides scholarships for students from poor communities outside the U.S. to pursue graduate and post-graduate studies at universities anywhere in the world.<ref>Foundation Center. Retrieved on 2006-11-27.</ref>

Other than its name, the Ford Foundation has not had any connections to the Ford Motor Company nor the Ford family for over thirty years. Henry Ford II, the last family member on the board of trustees, resigned from the foundation board in 1976, encouraging foundation staff to remain open to new ideas and work to strengthen the country’s economic system.

[edit] Critics

The Ford Foundation supports many progressive causes and has been heavily criticized for many of the programs it funds for a variety of reasons.

The Ford Foundation is a major donor to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a self-described progressive media watchdog group. The Ford Foundation has been criticized for its support of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Planned Parenthood and other Abortion-Rights groups.<ref>Ford Foundation. DiscovertheNetworks: A guide to the political left. Retrieved on 2006-07-23.</ref>

In 1968, the foundation began disbursing $12 million to persuade law schools to make "law school clinics" part of their curriculum. Clinics were intended to give practical experience in law practice while providing pro bono representation to the poor. However, critics charge that the clinics have been used instead as an avenue for the professors to engage in left-wing political activism. Critics cite the financial involvement of the Ford Foundation as the turning point when such clinics began to change from giving practical experience to engaging in advocacy.<ref>Mac Donald, Heather. "Clinical, Cynical", Wall Street Journal, 2006-01-11, p. A14. Retrieved on 2006-07-23.</ref>

In 2005, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox began a probe of the foundation. Though the Ford Foundation is headquarted in New York City, it is chartered in Michigan, giving the state jurisdiction. Cox is focusing on its governance, potential conflicts of interest among board members, and its poor record of giving to charities in Michigan. Between 1998 and 2002, the Ford Foundation gave Michigan charities about $2.5 million per year, far less than many other charities. Cox is hoping that this probe will prod the foundation into giving more to Michigan charities. <ref>Howes, Daniel. "Ford Foundation probed; AG claims Mich. left out", Detroit News, 2006-04-02. Retrieved on 2006-07-23.</ref>

Certain critics such as former Binghamton University professor James Petras have criticized the Foundation for alleged links with the CIA. Petras has accused the Foundation of being a CIA front, citing former Foundation president Richard Bissell's relationship with DCI Allen Dulles and involvement with the Marshall Plan during the 1950s. Petras further denounces the Ford Foundation for funding what he terms "anti-leftist" human rights groups that "...do not participate in anti-globalization and anti-neoliberal mass actions."<ref>Petras, James (2001-12-15). The Ford Foundation and the CIA: A documented case of philanthropic collaboration with the Secret Police. Retrieved on 2006-07-23.</ref>

Another American academic, Joan Roelofs, in Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (State University of New York Press, 2003,) argues that Ford and similar foundations play a key role in co-opting opposition movements: "While dissent from ruling class ideas is labeled 'extremism' and is isolated, individual dissenters may be welcomed and transformed. Indeed, ruling class hegemony is more durable if it is not rigid and narrow, but is able dynamically to incorporate emergent trends." She reports that John J. McCloy, while chairman of the Foundation's board of trustees, "...thought of the Foundation as a quasi-extension of the U.S. government. It was his habit, for instance, to drop by the National Security Council (NSC) in Washington every couple of months and casually ask whether there were any overseas projects the NSC would like to see funded." Roelofs also charges that the Ford Foundation financed counter-insurgency programs in Indonesia and other countries.

In 2003, The Ford Foundation was critiqued by pro-Israel U.S. news service Jewish Telegraphic Agency, among others, for supporting Palestinian NGOs that, according to them, undertook anti-semtic and anti-Zionist activites at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism. Under considerable duress by several members of Congress, chief among them Rep. Jerrold Nadler, The Foundation apologized and then prohibited the promotion of "violence, terrorism, bigotry or the destruction of any state" among its grantees, itself sparking protest among university provosts and various non-profit groups on free speech issues. <ref>Sherman, Scott. "Target Ford", The Nation, 2006-06-05. Retrieved on 2006-10-18. </ref>

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

Frances Stonor Saunders (2001), The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, New Press, ISBN 1-56584-664-8. [Aka, Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War 1999, Granta (UK edition)].
Edward H Berman The Ideology of Philanthropy: The influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller foundations on American foreign policy, State University of New York Press, 1983.
David Ransom, The Trojan Horse: A Radical Look at Foreign Aid, pub. 1975, pp. 93-116 "1970 Ford Foundation : Building an Elite for Indonesia".
Bob Feldman, "Alternative Media Censorship sponsored by CIA's Ford Foundation?"
"Target Ford" (2006), by Scott Sherman in The Nation.