Point #1
I’ve grown up in the world of philanthropy and nonprofits. I’ve been a student of civil society and philanthropy. I’ve been a volunteer, a professional fundraiser, and now a grantmaker. Now I have only been in the foundation world for a year, so maybe I am naïve, or maybe it is just the foundation I am at, but I have never, ever seen this egalitarian attitude that poo-poos charity that you describe. I’ve seen only admiration, awe, and gratitude for the grants we give. For the grants we decline I see admiration, respect, frustration and disappointment. We don’t want to decline grants. Our whole purpose for existence is to give money away to charitable organizations! Charity *is* Philanthropy.

The big difference I see between the two is that the former derives from Latin (caritas “Esteem, affection, benevolence & costliness) and the latter Greek (philanthropia “humanity, benevolence,” from philanthropos (adj.) “loving mankind,” from phil- “loving” + anthropos “mankind.”) It’s all just semantics. Just because Rockefeller once said there was a difference doesn’t mean that is how foundations operate today. Even if a few foundations still operate that way, I would bet most of them don’t. Charity *is* Philanthropy

Point #2
I think any foundation would be fooling themselves if they every thought they could solve the “root cause” of a problem. I know my foundation isn’t. They never have. In fact, I think about the colleagues I have at foundations across the country, and I can’t think of one that claims to be looking to solve the “root cause” of any particular problem. You said it yourself Bill, these problems don’t occur in isolation but in a bigger context with social, political, and cultural issues that also have an impact of some kind. Most foundations just don’t have the kind of money it would take to make change on a level like that. A foundation could spend down its endowment in one fell swoop and not be able to fix a social problem. It’s unrealistic.

This is why I don’t think foundations are trying to find the “root cause”. They are experimenting with different approaches to see if one can make a difference. That is the key, making a difference. Could foundations do a better job communicating their successes and failures to the outside would. Hell yes. I totally agree that foundations have a long way to go to improve their connection with everyone outside of their foundation bubble. It is a big problem and it is something that needs to be pushed from the inside if there is ever any hope of change. But I think slowly and surely it will happen.

M

I give you credit for inviting responses from the other panelists to that particularly egregious remark by Mr. Piereson, so I misspoke when I called it a Bradley Center “claim.” I understand perfectly that you were pressed for time, and that part of your role was to encourage a diversity of opinions, but in the course of his remarks, Mr. Piereson uttered a great many more absurdities that were left unchallenged (e.g., “The big foundations created the diversity movement,” “The diversity movement destroyed
the underlying premise of the welfare state,” etcetera). His role on your panel was clearly that of a conservative voice, speaking in a conservative forum, presenting a conservative position. You’ve quoted him approvingly at other times, so I assume he was not there to play the psychotic wingnut, but rather to be a generally reasonable conservative interlocutor. This doesn’t mean that you or the Bradley Center need to agree with every sentence he utters within your walls, but it does mean, in my view, that you need to own them to some degree. The ACLU can’t invite Alan Dershowitz to represent the Liberal position on one of its panels, and then later decide, when things go awry, to disown everything he says—unless, of course, Mr. Dershowitz begins imitating a chicken and simply doesn’t stop.

That said, I very much appreciate the fact that there’s ideological diversity on Bradley Center panels. You deserve enormous credit for this. I wish Liberal institutions would return the favor.

Like Sean’s blog, stimulating genuine discussion is one of the central purposes of Hudson’s Bradley Center. As you noted earlier, Albert, “We can also debate some of the claims the Center makes through its conservative interlocutors, like for example, the claim that ‘Today social science has retreated into the academy, where it proceeds more like a cult – identifying villains, dispensing arcane knowledge about the world, and yearning for the good old days of welfarism and peace marches – than an enterprise dispensing useful knowledge about the world,’ and other such nonsense.”

Not only can we debate that, but we did, at the Bradley Center, in this panel discussion from which Jim Piereson’s comment is drawn. What may not be apparent from the isolated quote is that the panel wasn’t a conservative political rally, but rather was a discussion of Alice O’Connor’s new book Social Science for What? Philanthropy and the Social Question in a World Turned Rightside Up, a powerful and insightful critique of conservative philanthropy and of the liberal philanthropy that, in her view, succumbed too quickly to conservative attack precisely because it hadn’t been clear about its own underlying moral and political assumptions.

When I as the moderator asked Professor O’Connor to respond to Mr. Piereson, she expressed the wish “to dissent very strongly – in the strongest possible terms – to the rendition of what liberal social science is and what liberalism is that Jim Piereson just gave us. I actually – and in fact I write about it in the book – I consider that to be a caricature that has been very, very frequently repeated by conservative critics of liberalism and liberal social science.” Georgetown historian James Allen Smith added that, “in terms of the caricature of history, you have two historians here on the panel who wouldn’t recognize themselves in the narrative that Jim Piereson just outlined. As for the cultural revolution of the 1960s, I just wish conservatives would get over it.” And so the debate was joined, not about motives, but pretty much about the substance of what progressive philanthropy had or had not accomplished d since the Russell Sage Foundation was established a century ago, and how it came to be challenged by a conservative philanthropic movement.

Albert, you read the transcript and concluded that the real purpose of the panel wasn’t to have a discussion about these matters, but rather to advance “claims the Center makes” by having Mr. Piereson speak. Can the Center host a discussion like this, discussing a book written by a progressive scholar about a progressive foundation, involving an evenly divided panel - two progressives and two conservatives (the fourth panelist was Hudson adjunct scholar Joel Schwartz) - without it being regarded as merely a clever conservative plot? Sadly, given the intellectual climate today, fed by conservative and liberal commentators alike, this is not just a clever rhetorical question.

In criticizing “root causes” philanthropy, none of his examples have related to critiquing capitalism (through advocacy or think tanks or whatnot) - and it would be pretty hypocritical if they were, given that he’s employed by a think tank funded by philanthropic dollars.

Instead, he’s arguing that foundations should write checks to local orgs rather than designing grand projects and making them fit in. This is a distinction between two different approaches to *direct aid*. If he is subtly trying to undermine advocacy, he is so subtle that he appears not to be giving a single argument against it.

Moreover - do you really think that undermining *foundation*-driven advocacy is high on the conservative agenda? Who in their right mind is afraid that foundations are going to effectively attack capitalism? (Albert has made this point quite well before.) When I think of powerful media weapons, I think of Michael Moore and Jon Stewart … any foundation-funded think tank or “raising awareness” campaign (I would name some, but none of them have ever held my attention for more than a tenth of a second) is ~2398723975th on my list, just behind the guy who wrote “F@#$ Bush” on the sidewalk at 3rd St and 1st Avenue.

I prefer to take Mr. Schambra at his word. If he’s selling snake oil, a good conversation in the Sean vein (respond to what he says) will bring that out, pretty quickly - and unlike screaming at him that he’s being disingenuous, it will help get at the true nature and motivation of his biases, which I don’t think you could possibly be hitting with your “Mr. Schambra is afraid of what foundations will do to capitalism” theory.

Maybe you think there’s no point to this discussion, but if you just want to blow off steam, there are other places to do it. As long as Mr. Schambra’s here, we should challenge him in ways that he can/will respond to.

So we’re left wondering—at least I am—what’s really behind Bill’s antipathy to what he calls “root causes philanthropy”? I think the Nonprofiteer’s assessment (above) is probably accurate; WCT bloggers have argued as much here and here.

When I attended the Bradley Center Symposium, What’s the Big Idea?, a while back, I heard Francis “End of History” Fukuyama, Charles “Bell Curve” Murray, and other stars in the conservative firmament speak and I thought, “OK, this is the range of views the Bradley Center represents. Eeuuw.” The connection between what they were saying at the podium and what I knew of their ideological commitments was clear. The claws were out.

I think, Bill, you try to make it sound as if this root causes thing were about good sense and compassion for people like Cordelia Taylor. I believe that’s a smoke screen. It might be about that too, but isn’t it mostly about the fear conservatives have that Gates and other large foundations will support “mass movements mobilized behind the overthrow of capitalism in the name of radically egalitarian utopias”? Those are your own words. Haven’t you been pushing the root causes theme because you and the people you represent don’t like the idea of a mobilized underclass, of a reawakening of class consciousness in this country?

And if that, or something like it, is the case, isn’t that what we should be discussing and debating? We’re not good chums ideologically, as much as I respect your intellect and like you personally.

Bill’s desire to preserve “‘mediating structures’ – families, neighborhoods, voluntary associations, houses of worship, local community institutions” sweeps at least one of the big problems of communitarian thought under the rug: in conservative communities, gay people swing from the trees; in progressive communities, they don’t.

I use that as an illustration of how the commitments each of us brings to this discussion are hidden from view. We don’t confront Bill with the (possibly gay) elephant on the room: “You work on behalf of a conservative think tank. Social conservatives want to deny gay people basic human rights and deny women the right to an abortion; fiscal conservatives are often a bunch of tight-fisted sociopaths who don’t really care about the poor. How can you sleep with yourself at night, championing their cause, undermining their enemies—unless you’re one of them too? Do you really expect us to believe you’re a pariah to the conservatives, as you intimate?*”

It’s not about “preserving mediating structures,” as Bill suggests. It’s about what that ultimately means for gay people, black people, women, poor people, Muslims.

When Bill goes in for his annual performance review, how is he judged? Who’s paying whom to say what and why? What’s the cost to society of an organization that’s in the business of manufacturing consent for very powerful interests?

*For example, when Bills says that “[t]he libertarians at Reason magazine were not amused” by his critique of unfettered capitalism—bad conservative! Bad!

Ex-squeeze me?
Honestly, I don’t understand that, what does it mean?

I think that government is primarily responsible for eliminating harm and that it should both treat symptoms and look for root cause solutions. I think that foundations do well by helping in these efforts both directly and through advocacy. To me the basic elements of positive human experience and building community include life, knowledge, purposefulness, friendship, play, and aesthetic experience. I think that the greatest potential impact of philanthropy lies more in the positive realm of building community.

Bill I apologize for suggesting that you might “play” a dupe for a Fool. Play me. Play me please! This cramped civility is killing me. Let’s go to over to the Dumpster and settle this like bums in an alley, with eye-gouging, groin bashing, and leg-pulling allowed, then let’s spit out our teeth, and share a bottle of Thunderbird and a good laugh at the general public who don’t have any idea how the game of Think Tank Thuggery is played.

Civility - My God. Reminds me of that movie The Out of Towners. Jack Lemmon in a panic at night in Central Park accosting a man who carries a blackjack: “Exucse me Sir, we are from out of town…. Can you help me and my wife?”

(Sean, if you delete the comment, I will post elswhere. Then we can discuss how civility functions as repression and why. If Bill won’t play you, I will. How else can any of us learn the limits of our frameworks?)

Otherwise most readers will simply assume, correctly or not, that you are simply “throwing rhetorical bombs while giggling in the background”.