Recent EVENTS

Launching a New Biography of Andrew Carnegie
A new account of the life of Andrew Carnegie by award-winning author David Nasaw was launched at Corporation headquarters in November, 2006. Nasaw, a Distinguished Professor of History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, explored a trove of new material, from Carnegie’s personal letters to his prenuptial agreement to private correspondence with the most famous names of his day. As a result, this impressive biography offers fresh insights on the immigrant turned industrialist who became the embodiment of the American Dream, and ultimately gave his fortune away.

In conjunction with the book’s release, Carnegie Corporation president, Vartan Gregorian, appeared with the author on PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer to discuss contradictory aspects of Carnegie’s life story that most trouble people today—in correspondent Paul Solman’s words, “a man who in his lifetime gave away more money in proportion to the economy as a whole than Bill Gates and Warren Buffet combined, yet squeezed his workers to the breaking point …”

Asked how he might have advised the pioneering philanthropist to handle labor conflicts, Gregorian responded, “I would have said, “You’re building libraries. You’re building museums. Give weekends off to workers to enjoy the libraries and the museums. As you’re building for the public man, allow the public man, the workers, to go benefit from these institutions.”

Solman asked Nasaw, “Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, George Soros, were they thinking of Andrew Carnegie when they gave away all their money?” “I think absolutely,” Nasaw responded. ”Buffett, when he gave away his money, quoted from Carnegie. When Carnegie said, ‘The man who dies rich dies disgraced,’ in the 1880s, his fellow millionaires looked on him like he was a lunatic, you know, an idiot, a madman….But only recently, in the last five to ten years, are millionaires understanding or at least telling us that the money is going to go back to society, because it is society, not the individual, that creates wealth, which is what Carnegie said.

Saluting MIT’s New Head of Investment
D. Ellen Shuman, Carnegie Corporation Vice President and Chief Investment Officer, rounded up some colleagues to celebrate an auspicious beginning for Seth Alexander, President of the MIT Investment Management Company. Mr. Alexander joined the university in May 2006 and shortly thereafter, MIT was making news for its 23.0% return on investment for the 2006 fiscal year—the highest of any educational institution in the country.

“Seth is a wonderful friend and colleague and one of the many former Yale Investments Office staff members who have gone on to lead the investment effort at a prestigious institutions,” Shuman said. “MIT is lucky to have such a talented person at the helm of its Management Company.”

Alexander was previously a member of the Yale Investment Office (where Shuman was a director prior to joining Carnegie Corporation in 1998) with areas of expertise including marketable securities, hedge funds and international investments. MIT, with an endowment of $8.4 billion in 2006, is the nation’s sixth “richest” university. The new president of MIT, Susan Hockfield, is also the newest member of Carnegie Corporation’s Board of Trustees.

Exploring U.S. Policy Toward Eurasia
A distinguished group of U.S. policymakers and experts on Russia and Eurasia took part in a roundtable discussion at the Corporation in September 2006. Deana Arsenian, chair of the International Peace and Security Program (now vice president of the International Division) led the meeting, which aimed to uncover key trends and weigh the impact of Russian and U.S. interests and policies in the region.

Attendees included representatives of the State Department and other relevant governmental agencies as well as leading academic scholars and authorities from think tanks who specialize in post-Soviet Eurasia and the broader Eurasian neighborhood.
The discussion was wide-ranging, touching on such ideas as Eurasia’s function as the fulcrum of an emerging system of multilateral relations; the growing importance of the region as a player in global energy politics and the the rise of China and Asia in the coming decades as a determinant of Eurasia’s future.

Honoring Vaclav Havel
In October 2006, the Carnegie Corporation held a reception welcoming Vaclav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic (1993 – 2003), to New York City for an eight-week residency at Columbia University. Born in Prague in 1936, Havel began his career as a writer and dramatist and later evolved into a leading dissident, helping to engineer the bloodless overthrow of communism known as the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Now retired from politics and devoted to human rights causes, he recently released his first book in 15 years, Prosim Strucne (Briefly, Please).

Columbia University and Carnegie Corporation are linked through a number of projects, including the Carnegie-Knight Journalism Initiative. Havel and Corporation president Vartan Gregorian have a long association built upon their mutual dedication to democracy, higher education, world peace and other global causes.

Getting the Inside Story from Colin Powell’s Biographer
Karen DeYoung, author of Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell, addressed an attentive audience at a breakfast hosted by Carnegie Corporation on behalf of grantee the Women’s Foreign Policy Group (WFPG), a nonprofit educational organization that promotes women’s participation in international affairs.

DeYoung, a veteran reporter for the Washington Post, gave an insightful and detailed accounting of her experiences writing the book, including six in-depth interviews with the four-star general who became secretary of state. Her depiction of the son of Jamaican immigrants who, DeYoung reports, could have run for president but didn’t want the job, covered in depth Powell’s stellar political triumphs as well as bitter betrayals, and left listeners eager to learn more.

Tracking Journalism Initiative Progress
Periodic meetings of Carnegie-Knight Journalism Initiative grantees spotlight recent accomplishments and let journalism school deans and other professionals share thoughts on developments in the field. Two recent occasions stand out for innovative and thought-provoking content.

The program for August 2006 focused on presentations by the Carnegie-Knight News21 fellows, journalism students involved in innovative, hands-on reporting projects. In progress since the previous spring, their reports had been picked up by leading news outlets nationwide—from The New York Times to LA Weekly. Students demonstrated websites featuring their reports, which they had designed under the guidance of school coordinators with hi-tech expertise. (See stories at www.newsinitiative.org)

The January 2007 conference of journalism deans featured a talk by Geneva Overholser, Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting, Missouri School of Journalism, Washington Bureau. The topic was, “On Behalf of Journalism: A Manifesto for change,” which Overholser describes as “a document of hope for a difficult time.” In it she offers the journalism profession “a panorama of possibilities…a reinvention of journalism that is richer and better than the old, with its essential values intact.” (The report is available online at: http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/Overholser/20061011_JournStudy.pdf)

At the same meeting, Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, unveiled two new reports on surveys conducted by the Task Force on the Future of Journalism Education. “Mandatory Testing and News in the Schools: Implications for Civic Education” found that preparing students for mandatory testing is stealing time that might be better used to discuss and study the news. “The Internet and the Threat It Poses to Local Media: Lessons from the News in the Schools” reveals that online news sources are trumping both television news and the daily paper as a mode of classroom instruction, and that national and international news sites are overtaking local news sites in America’s schools.1, 2

Welcoming the University of Dar es Salaam’s New Vice Chancellor
In February 2007 the International Development Program hosted a breakfast to introduce Professor Rwekaza S. Mukandala, the new Vice Chancellor of the University of Dar Es Salaam, to the Corporation. Tanzania’s leading university is a long-time grantee—one of the institutions supported by the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, a consortium of foundations that includes the Ford, MacArthur, Rockefeller, Mellon and Hewlett foundations as well as Carnegie Corporation.

Vice Chancellor Mukandala, a Ph. D. in political science with a long and distinguished teaching career at the university, updated Corporation attendees with a presentation on the institution’s accomplishments and long-range goals. He stressed the importance of building capacity and expertise in Information and Communication Technology and of promoting entrepreneurship education with the goal of graduating job creators rather than job seekers. An animated roundtable discussion followed. The breakfast was attended by Dr. Augustine P. Mahiga, Tanzania’s Ambassador the United Nations, and other representatives of the university.

1 http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/carnegie_knight/news_in_schools_web.pdf

2 http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/carnegie_knight/internet_in_schools_web.pdf