Shortly after joining the Corporation in 1997, I asked my colleagues what I hoped were provocative questions designed to stimulate innovative ideas about our future directions. I wondered, What are we doing? Why are we doing it, and how well? Such queries, admittedly, do not have easy answers and indeed, as the staff, board and I worked together to decide how best to use the Corporation’s resources in the years to come, we found ourselves ending some programs and embarking on new ones. And now—astonishingly, it seems, since one never gets used to how quickly time passes—some of the initiatives we began at the turn of the century have reached their five-year mark. A good time to consider, again, not only what we are doing and why, but also, what we have accomplished.

In 2000, along with the Ford, Rockefeller and MacArthur foundations, we announced the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, an important element of the Corporation’s interest in strengthening selected universities in sub-Saharan African nations. Our work aims to help these universities serve not only as models of successful transformation into institutions characterized by excellence, but also to assist women’s higher education and support efforts to expand and improve the education of the next generation of African leaders. The four foundations originally pledged $100 million to this initiative over a five-year period; $146 million in grants has already been made. Carnegie Corporation expects to continue working with universities in Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda to help them further improve research, teaching, access to technology and all the other factors that make an institution of higher education exemplary. But in South Africa, we are embarking on a different strategy that aligns with the nation’s announced intent to transform its higher education system to reflect the development of a diverse post-apartheid society ten years into democratic reforms. Specifically, the Corporation is supporting three universities in order to achieve wider institutional impact aimed at the development and retention of academic staff and scholars, particularly those who are black and/or female. South Africa is anchoring its future in the ability of its universities to embrace all the nation’s citizens, and we are proud to participate in reaching that goal.

During periods of profound change, universities become more central to the intellectual and spiritual soul of a country. We believe that is true for the nations of Africa, but also for Russia, which, in the post-Soviet era, is undergoing enormous social, political and economical upheavals. Working with the MacArthur Foundation and the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, the Corporation, over a five-year period, has established nine university-based Centers for Advanced Study and Education (CASEs) in Russia and four CASE-like centers in the Caucasus and the western part of the post-Soviet region, which serve to stimulate research in the social sciences and the humanities, bridge research with teaching, transform curricula and create academic linkages within Russia and between Russia and the United States. CASEs also help to promote the development of an intellectual culture throughout the Russian regions—an antidote to centralized power and a stimulant to democratic reform. To date, the CASEs have engaged over 3,500 scholars in their research agenda and supported close to 500 academics through additional fellowships. Moscow-based CASE director Andrei Kortunov says, of the initiative, “Creativity and entrepreneurial spirit has begun to emerge in these universities, which will lead them to become incubators for new ideas and learning.”

The Carnegie Scholars Program—another effort that has marked a five-year milestone—is also concerned with generating new knowledge to enrich our understanding of the increasingly complex and globalizing world we all inhabit. In 2000, the Corporation resumed its historic support for individual scholarship in harmony with the concerns of Andrew Carnegie, who believed deeply in the power of the individual to change the world, and in knowledge and scholarship as the tools that can bring about that change. While in the past we selected scholars whose projects could help extend the boundaries of the Corporation’s programs, this year’s class is focusing exclusively on Islam in the modern world in order to build a cohesive body of thoughtful and original scholarship about Islam as a religion as well as about the cultures and civilizations of Muslim societies and communities, both in the U.S. and abroad.

An appreciation for how knowledge can both enrich an individual’s life and transform societies undergirds all the Corporation’s work. This is certainly true of Schools for a New Society (SNS), the Corporation initiative announced in 2000 and designed to help reinvent high schools so that all students have access to a high-quality education that will prepare them not only for college but also for economic success and full participation as citizens of a vibrant democracy. The core concept of SNS is district reform, meaning that entire school districts must create new, more effective ways of delivering education and involve the whole community in reform efforts. SNS was conceived as a five-year, $60 million initiative (which has also been supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation). So far, there are encouraging results: on a recent visit to Chattanooga, for example, one of the cities participating in SNS, I heard that interim statistics about student performance in algebra and reading, on ACT tests and in freshmen promotion rates are all improving. This kind of success is a harbinger of hope not only for students but for their communities as well, especially in urban areas: an excellent school system is the heart of urban revitalization.

To answer the question, “How well are we doing?” the Corporation has created a Council on Evaluation to formulate an approach to assessment. More generally, of course, we know that change can take decades. Though what I’ve written about here is work done over just five years and encompassing only a portion of the efforts we support, these programs represent the essential, underlying values of all the Corporation’s grantmaking: that excellent education, accessible to all, is the lynchpin of democracy; that scholarship matters to an educated and informed citizenry; and that partnership with other foundations expands the impact of our resources. After all, as Thomas Jefferson said, America is an idea, “a crusade against ignorance,” and if that crusade is to be sustained, it requires the efforts of all of us, working and learning together. At the Corporation, these are ideas that we honor through our work.”

Vartan Gregorian
President

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