Recent EVENTS

Hate as a Contagious Disease
In February 2007, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity organized a reflective seminar, hosted by Carnegie Corporation of New York, to discuss and clarify the origins, manifestations, and possible remedies for hatred throughout the world.

Understanding hatred is the most important challenge of our time, maintains Elie Wiesel, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Humankind is threatened by genocide and ethnic cleansing, prejudice and fanaticism, tensions and conflicts, religious and civil wars. Without a solution to the problem of hatred, he contends, we cannot hope to deal with emerging threats or find remedies to today’s most pressing security problems. A distinguished panel including scientists, diplomats, physicians and scholars from various fields exchanged ideas and helped to set the agenda for a series of follow-up meetings in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere around the world.

A Word to the Wisemen
Members of the senior corporate communications leaders’ group, the Wisemen, flocked to Carnegie Corporation in March, 2007. The monthly meeting, hosted by Susan King, Corporation vice president, external affairs, featured a talk by Vartan Gregorian on his experiences in philanthropy, emphasizing the need for transparency and accountability. Andrew Carnegie saw himself as a trustee of public wealth, according to Gregorian, while today’s foundations are stewards of public trust. As a field, philanthropy can’t be afraid to point out where we have failed; we can’t simply communicate a stream of successes, he argues. “If we don’t tell the public about our failures, as well as our successes, we will lose the public’s trust. It is as simple as that.

The Challenge in Iraq Carnegie Corporation of New York is the principal sponsor of the Kennedy Library-Boston Review special project on Challenges in Iraq. As part of this project, a forum took place in April 2007 on “the gravest foreign crisis that we face in our country today: the crisis in Iraq,” in the words of John Shattuck, CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation. Three distinguished panelists shared their views on current U.S. policy toward Iraq and discussed likely outcomes of the conflict, then took questions from the audience of 600. The panelists were: Ali Allawi, who has held successive cabinet positions as Minister of Finance, Minister of Defense, and Minister of Trade in the Iraq Governing Council and in 2005 was elected to Iraq’s transitional National Assembly; Ambassador Barbara Bodine, who was appointed to the position of interim governor of Baghdad immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government following the March, 2003 U.S. intervention and is presently a fellow at MIT’s Center for International Studies; Ambassador Peter Galbraith, noted critic of current U.S. policy in Iraq, and author of The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War without End. In Fall 2000 a seminar will take place in New York and follow-up articles and books by the Boston Review will extend the lessons gleaned from these discussion.

The Partnership for Higher Education in Africa Looks Ahead The Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, established in 2007 with Carnegie Corporation and the Ford, MacArthur and Rockefeller foundations as charter members, exceeded its original goal of providing $100 million in five years by an additional $50 million to build core capacity and support special initiatives. It was renewed in 2005 with an expanded commitment of $200 million in additional support over the next five years and with the Hewlett, Mellon and Kresge foundations joining as contributors. A meeting of the Partnership foundations’ presidents took place in April 2007 at the Ford Foundation and focused on building momentum for university growth that will result in social change and development in the countries involved.

2007 Carnegie Fellows at ABC News
Journalism students from uni-versities across the country com-peted to become Carnegie Fellows and to be assigned to ABC News in New York City for the summer of 2007. The six young reporters who were chosen worked in the television network’s investigative unit, led by Brian Ross, traveling to military bases across the country to file stories on the problem of drug abuse among returned veterans of the Iraq war. Their work will be featured on Nightline, World News Tonight, ABC News Digital and ABC News Radio. The 10-week Carnegie Fellows program, now in its third year, offers students from across the country paid internships and hands-on reporting experience in one of America’s most respected news organizations. This year, students represented graduate journalism programs at the City University of New York; Columbia, the University of Illinois, University of California at Berkeley, University of Missouri and the JFK School of Government, Harvard University. Kerry Smith, Senior Vice President for Editorial Quality at ABC oversees the program.

A Carnegie’s Take on Philanthropy
William Thomson, great grandson of Andrew Carnegie, came to New York from his home in Scotland in May 2007 to take part in the announce-ment of this year’s winners of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy, considered the Nobel Prize of philanthropy. Thomson, past chairman and honorary president of the Carnegie UK Trust, shared his views on philanthropy trends with president Vartan Gregorian and the staff of Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Compared to early philanthropists like his great-grandfather, funders today are “target-achievement based,” according to Thomson, tending to “tick off results as an initiative progresses to see that it is going on track.” He believes there are more people interested in philanthropy today than ever before, perhaps due to the Internet, and more awareness of what can be accomplished. Areas of need, he says, haven’t changed all that much since Andrew Carnegie’s day: health, education and, “dearest to his heart towards the end of his life—peace and conflict resolution.”

To find out more about the Carnegie Medals of Philanthropy, go to Carnegiemedals.org.
Reaching Adolescent Readers Why are the same students who excel on reading tests in the third grade struggling several years later?

To find the answer to this question, in 2002 Carnegie Corporation formed a task force on adolescent literacy under the guidance of education program officer Andres Henríquez. Recognizing that many students arrive at middle and high school without the skills needed to do the work assigned there, and that without essential literacy skills, students cannot succeed in school and society, they sought information on the unique needs of adolescent readers and best practices for meeting them. In September 2007, the task force held its last meeting, focusing on a final publication that will disseminate their five years of inquiry. The upcoming report on adolescent literacy and the urgent need for action is slated to be released in 2008. Several books produced in conjunction with this project can be found in “Recent Books”click here.

Outstanding American by Choice
In June 2007 Vartan Gregorian president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, was honored by the United States Citizen and Immigration Services as an “Outstanding American by Choice.” The presentation was made by Emilio T. González, Director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), who explained that the purpose of the award is to highlight the importance of citizenship rights and responsibilities through recognition of the exceptional achievements of naturalized U.S. citizens. The pledge Vartan Gregorian made early in life to become “a person of learning and consequence,” has served him well, states the biography on the USCIS website, which highlights Gregorian’s achievements in the fields of academia, public libraries and philanthropy.