About Carnegie Corporation

Some Preliminary Thoughts

President's Essay - From the 1997 Annual Report

Vartan Gregorian

On June 9, 1997, I joined Carnegie Corporation of New York as its twelfth president. Besides the founder and first president Andrew Carnegie, I am the only naturalized American to head this great organization¹ and the first chief executive since 1923 to be appointed from outside. I was born of Armenian parents in Tabriz, in northern Iran near the Soviet border. I received my elementary education in Iran and my secondary education in Lebanon, arriving in this country in 1956 to pursue undergraduate studies at Stanford University, where I obtained my B.A. and Ph.D. With the exception of eight years as president of the New York Public Library, I have spent my entire career in academia, as a historian on the faculty of various universities and as an administrator, most recently as president of Brown University. I have lived in many cultural spheres and have had to learn as many as seven languages, some well, some adequately, some hardly at all.

In more ways than one, therefore, I bring to Carnegie Corporation the perspective of an insider-outsider. I love my adopted country with the passionate intensity of the convert, yet I can see its flaws with a certain clarity and objectivity while viewing its potential with great optimism. Like many others before me, I have immersed myself in American history, literature, and folkways, yet I carry the indelible memories of an early youth in other countries, among other peoples, cultures, and religions. Finally, I can savor the full liberating spirit of democracy, yet I can be acutely sensitive to its contradictions in practice.

To me, the American dream is real. Usually, when we talk about the American dream, we do not specify what it is all about. For millions, it represents freedom and opportunity. For me, it is also about dignity and justice, and about creative coexistence between the individual and the community. The latter idea was articulated in 1835 by Alexis de Tocqueville, who coined the term "individualism" to describe the American character. But his concept of individualism is different from what it has come to mean today. To Tocqueville, individualism as expressed in the American character had a social component — a sense of community going beyond the self. That is the significance to me of "e pluribus unum" — to be part of one nation where diversity can survive, where individual identity and universal identity are conjoined. America is strong, in my opinion, because it has drawn from many legacies and many sources of inspiration in forming its own unique civilization.

Having emigrated to this country when he was twelve years old, Andrew Carnegie was mindful of what America had given him. In his most famous article, The Gospel of Wealth,² in which he made the crucial distinction between philanthropy and charity, he wrote that the best means of benefiting the community is "to place within its reach the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise." But Carnegie also believed — and this aspect of his thinking is less well known — that if society is to advance, having the means to improve one's circumstances is not enough: "Every man must be allowed to sit under his own vine and fig tree, with none to make afraid" [italics mine].

Freedom from fear, in other words, is the a priori condition for improving one's circumstances; it comes before the means. That, to me, is the essence of Andrew Carnegie's "Gospel," to which he added, with slight tongue in cheek, that "it is no argument against it that it is not lived up to; indeed it is an argument in its favor, for a Gospel must be higher than the prevailing standards."

In another way, I bring a different perspective to Carnegie Corporation's mission. Having been embroiled for so many years in the arduous though rewarding business of raising money for one's own institution, it is quite sobering to find oneself in the position of giving it away responsibly and creatively to other institutions. Actually, it is not so large a leap, for I have served four years as a pro bono advisor to the Annenberg Challenge grants program for school reform, inaugurated with $500 million from the great philanthropist Ambassador Walter H. Annenberg; I have served on the board of the Aaron Diamond Foundation, on the boards of many nonprofit organizations, and on foundation study groups and projects. My work at Carnegie Corporation is on a continuum with my previous career, and my scholarly endeavors match the foundation's, "the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding."

Withal, there is much to discover about this world of organized philanthropy and about the Corporation's place in it. I approach the task with all the humility of one preceded by such philanthropic giants as Frederick Paul Keppel, president from 1923 to 1941, who had a lasting influence on the Corporation's policies and on the foundation field generally; and most recently John W. Gardner and Alan Pifer, who, together with my distinguished immediate predecessor David A. Hamburg, presided over forty-two years of the foundation's history — nearly half of its existence. Each of these presidents in unique ways contributed profoundly to our understanding of the proper stewardship of tax-exempt wealth. Through their prolific writings, they sharpened our thinking as to the legitimate purposes of foundations and their relationships with government and the public. I cannot hope to emulate their record of achievement, but I fervently subscribe to their common article of faith — that foundations must remain free to support scholarly inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge and truth wherever they may lead, however controversial the result.

I also believe, like former trustee Russell Leffingwell, that "foundations should have glass pockets." Freedom from political pressure is as necessary for the viability of private foundations as it is for institutions of higher education, but so is transparency. Only then does the significance of the term "a public trust" come clear. Foundations should stand for the best ideas and impulses of the American people, their idealism, altruism, and generosity. Because of this, their values, and how they conduct themselves, must be "higher than the prevailing standards." We are accountable not only before the law and the court of public opinion, but before history as well.

Being a "supplicant" for so many years has perhaps made me all the more appreciative of the hopes and expectations of the grantseeking community. Now that I have become a "benefactor," I assume the obligations of general purpose philanthropy with special gravity, knowing full well the dramatic difference that a grant — even informed advice, a reference, or other personal attention — can make in the effectiveness of a project, the life of an institution, or the destiny of an individual.

Program Review

Other than these unshakable convictions about the special role of foundations, I have come to the Corporation with no preconceived ideas — certainly not about the specific purposes toward which our funds should be spent; my mind has been open to the wise, expert guidance of others, including most importantly the Corporation's experienced program staff and trustees. What I have done is to ask provocative questions, with the intent to challenge and evoke a thoughtful response, and to set in train a process that will help me understand this institution, before forwarding any recommendations to the board about future directions.

Some of the questions I have posed to my colleagues and the trustees are: What are we doing? Why are we doing it? How well are we doing it, especially in relation to the work of other foundations? How does it serve Carnegie Corporation's overall mission to advance and diffuse knowledge and understanding? Does the Corporation perceive itself as an incubator of ideas or as a sustainer of institutions that play that role? How do we combat the age-old problem of scatteration in our grantmaking, while retaining the flexibility to respond to a tantalizing idea or a target of opportunity? How do we evaluate our programs? Is there merit in recognizing the "illuminating failure" as well as the obvious success, in order to learn lessons from experience? Would we achieve our objectives more efficiently if we made fewer grants and larger commitments or many more little ones? If we know what our entry strategy is, what will be our exit strategy? How can we intelligently and imaginatively harness technological progress in order to achieve our goals? How effectively, in the electronic age, is the Corporation reaching its various audiences and constituencies?

Finally, what are some important new issues facing our nation and the world that we should deal with? Where is our comparative leadership advantage? Should we "go it alone" as we often have in the past or increasingly seek partners? How do we achieve the right balance between continuity and change? This last question is crucial, because I do not believe we should engage in change for change's sake: as we consider new initiatives, we may well reaffirm the importance of some of the paths already taken, only adjusting the emphasis somewhat.

With the assent of the board, we have begun to grapple with these issues. A fundamental concern is to forge a cohesive grant program that will do justice to the foundation's historic purposes. This will require, among other measures, finding the right relationship between programmatic and administrative expenditures in a time of increased demand for the services of nonprofit organizations; achieving more integration, information sharing, and synergy among our somewhat disparate program areas; and clarifying our policies and the foundation's expectations of both program staff and grantees.

The Corporation spends about $60 million each year for grants and appropriations in the following main areas: the education and healthy development of children and youth; the strengthening of human resources in developing countries, mainly in the English-speaking countries of sub-Saharan Africa³; and international peace and security, centered on relations between the United States and the former Soviet Union. Grants falling outside these areas, such as campaign finance reform and the health of the nonprofit field, are made under a fourth category called special projects. Themes cutting across our domestic and international programs are the strengthening of democratic institutions and the improvement of intergroup relations. These program priorities, developed over the fourteen years of David Hamburg's leadership, are currently being reexamined in the light of profound changes in the nation and world: a technological and communications revolution as dramatic in its effects as the industrial revolution of the last century; mounting environmental, resource, and demographic pressures, such as the challenges posed by aging societies in the advanced industrialized nations and a preponderance of young people in emerging nations; widening disparities of income and opportunity between and within countries; economic globalization and interdependence; and threats to peaceful intergroup relations in the denial of people's basic needs, hopes, and yearnings for justice under the rule of law.

Seventeen years ago, following a study of the structure and functions of the board by a committee of Corporation trustees, the board adopted a resolution that has guided its decision making ever since. A primary responsibility of the board, the resolution states, is to focus its attention on the effectiveness of the Corporation's program as a whole, from a policy standpoint. While retaining final grantmaking authority, the board should play a greater role in setting, reviewing, and revising the broad objectives of the Corporation, rather than scrutinize individual proposals for grants. Moreover, the board should consider from time to time whether new areas should be entered and work in old areas discontinued; should stimulate responsiveness to significant new trends and foster a critical spirit in relation to activities that should be modified or dropped; and should be concerned with the evaluation of results achieved by grants compared with their general objectives. The board, furthermore, should advise and support the president and staff in those areas in which the more detached point of view and more diverse experience of trustees can add to the in-depth analysis and specialized expertise of the staff.

It is exactly in this spirit that the Corporation has undertaken its program review. Beginning at the staff level in October 1997, we held a series of informal meetings to assess the nature, scope, and impact of the Corporation's programs. During this phase, discussions were held on current operations and possible new directions with each of our board members, various foundation heads, and some of the nation's leaders of higher education and nonprofit organizations. The views of several foreign policy analysts, political scientists and historians, heads of business and multinational organizations, and foreign leaders were also consulted.

To explore these matters further and to stimulate ideas for new opportunities, we organized five seminars with outside experts in their fields, including those who have never had contact with Carnegie Corporation as well as some of our most outstanding grantees. Four of the meetings addressed future challenges in a number of subject areas where the foundation has been particularly active: sub-Saharan Africa, the former Soviet Union, U.S. education reform, and campaign finance reform. The fifth brought together a group of new grantees conducting research on intergroup relations among American schoolchildren, with invitees from abroad and from President Clinton's race relations initiative. Reports of all these meetings were presented to the board in January 1998. Before and since then, we have convened several smaller meetings with scholars and other specialists on a range of issues of possible future interest — such as higher education, telecommunications policy, the state of Islamic studies, and foundation strategies and impact. During this time McKinsey & Company, Inc., has accepted my invitation, on a pro bono basis, to take a look at our internal policies and practices and consider how best they can serve our program purposes.

In late winter and spring of 1998, the Corporation's staff is considering whether and how to implement some of the suggestions and recommendations flowing from the meetings, determining which parts of our existing programs should have lower priority or be ended, seeking external evaluation of those aspects that may be continued, exploring themes and issues that cut across all programs, and assessing areas of potential collaboration with other funders. By late spring, we should have a fully developed set of options ready for presentation to the board. Following trustee and staff discussion and agreement, the new guidelines will be published in June.

Commentary

Although the transition from one era to another has only just begun, I would like to share some of my impressions about Carnegie Corporation's history and about our program and administrative review process. What is most striking to me is the extraordinary ways that the Corporation's influence has been felt throughout this century. As the historian Ellen Condliffe Lagemann observed in her seminal book on the Corporation's role in knowledge creation and the development of the social sciences, Carnegie Corporation "has had a large and incalculable effect on the lives of many people in the United States and throughout the world."⁴ There are richer and bigger foundations in our nation, but the Corporation has always distinguished itself by its ability to break new ground — often by following a course of action that has had strong catalytic effects.

There is a favorite expression of a previous vice president, Lloyd N. Morrisett, about the potential impact of foundations — that in pursuance of the public good they may not create the wave, but they can influence the direction of the wave. And Carnegie Corporation has influenced many developments in the nation and abroad. It helped found the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA), which its sister organization The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) organized in 1918 to protect academic mobility and encourage savings by the nation's college professors. Today TIAA is the largest private insurance company in the United States. In the ensuing decades of institution building, the Corporation fostered the growth of scientific and economic expertise, providing initial funding for the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Brookings Institution. Just as critical, it supported the concept of universal education, including adult education, in the belief that efforts to nurture specialists without correlated efforts to promote an informed citizenry will erode the basis for democracy.

In 1938 the Corporation commissioned the Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal to make a comprehensive study of the American Negro, which still stands as a benchmark for assessing progress toward racial equality and the fulfillment of the American Creed and which helped discredit the false promise of a separate but equal education for black and white children. The foundation established the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television in 1965, leading directly to passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 and a new system of publicly supported radio and television. It founded in 1969 the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which has never been more useful than today, with the new national push for higher standard setting in precollege education and valid ways of assessing student progress toward meeting those standards. The Corporation also brought into being the Children's Television Workshop and a succession of high-quality educational television programs for children beginning with Sesame Street in the late 1960s.

During the 1970s, the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education (sponsored by CFAT but largely supported by the Corporation) influenced the creation of such federal programs as the Basic Education Opportunity Grants and the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education. Second to the Ford Foundation — and often in partnership with it — the Corporation supported use of the legal system to promote equality of educational opportunity for disadvantaged children, a still-proud if controversial undertaking. In the 1980s and early 1990s, various Carnegie task forces and commissions synthesizing the best available research on the education and development of children and youth helped to spearhead reforms in early education and child care and accelerated efforts to revamp middle school education for young adolescents.

In the early decades, it was possible for the Corporation's programs to have enormous impact, since there were few other major actors in the foundation's fields of interest, and the federal government was a much smaller enterprise than it has come to be. It is worth nothing that in 1915 the size of the Corporation's endowment exceeded all of higher education spending. Beginning in the 1950s, the Corporation's portfolio diminished in light of the enormous expansion of the federal budget and relative to the size of larger foundations coming on stream. This comparative leveling of the foundation's resources was a factor in the board's decision to approach grantmaking more strategically to achieve greater leverage and multiplier effects with the funds at hand.

The Corporation was fortunate in finding, between 1955 and 1981, three committed strategists of public influence: John Gardner, Alan Pifer, and David Hamburg. Each in turn recognized the need to enhance program impact by concentrating in a few areas where the foundation stood to make a difference, of staying with these over time to build a body of accomplishment, and of seeking partners and grantee organizations willing to try new ideas and innovations.

Under Gardner, the Corporation anticipated the postwar flood of students into American schools, colleges, and universities and charted a course to help the cause of general excellence in American education. At the precollege level, he advocated removal of the barriers to educational opportunity and investigated ways to nurture the special talents of all children. Through the studies of such eminent scholars as James B. Conant, Gardner mobilized efforts to reinforce the public school's obligation to provide a good general education for all future citizens in a democracy. Gardner also foresaw the necessity of fostering a keener scholarly understanding of international problems by supporting area studies programs, and sought to bring the knowledge from research directly to decision makers in Washington and other capitals, to business and civic leaders, and to members of the public at large.

By 1965, when Alan Pifer, Gardner's successor as vice president and president, took the helm, the foundation was confronted with an array of painfully divisive events at home that threatened to break the social compact on which our democracy was founded. Pifer promoted the cause of social justice and equality of opportunity through the foundation's support of educational research, training, and advocacy on behalf of African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and women; university reform and the design of off-campus and external college degree programs for adult learners; a program to strengthen the states by means of state constitutional and legislative reforms; and in South Africa efforts to develop public interest law and the formation of a study group on black poverty and other legacies of the apartheid system.

All told, in this era of "strategic philanthropy," the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding took on new instrumental significance. There was more readiness to experiment with practical approaches to change, to acknowledge that research results could not be left to compete unsupported in the marketplace of ideas, and to link research to policy analysis and action.

Under the leadership of Gardner and to some extent Pifer, there was, as Lagemann pointed out, a "justified tendency to assume that ideas and innovations generated with Carnegie funds could and would be passed on to governmental authority." The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 followed the recommendations of the Killian report on educational television; the National Assessment of Educational Progress was absorbed by the U.S. Department of Education; Sesame Street, following its establishment by the Corporation, was generously financed by the federal government. But the rising conservatism of the late 1970s and 1980s, together with mounting public concern about budget deficits and social expenditures, forced the Corporation to rethink the nature of the private-public partnership that had pertained over two decades.

After David Hamburg, a physician, research scientist, and public policy thinker, became president in 1982, the Corporation emphasized the role of the scientific and technical community in advancing knowledge and understanding of human conflict and in bridging theory and practice. From his background in public health, he brought a preventive orientation to serious problems, providing the framework for the Corporation's revived international programs and undertaking new initiatives on precollege reform and child and adolescent development. In the international arena, Hamburg dedicated the foundation to the avoidance of nuclear war and long-run improvement in U.S.-Russian relations, chiefly by bringing together the scientific and policy communities and offering mid-career training opportunities for a new generation of arms control and foreign policy experts. Domestically, the foundation refocused on the states as the laboratories of democracy; at the same time it encouraged the "science-rich" sectors of the society — businesses, the laboratories, universities, and professional societies — to collaborate with schools in providing an environment more conducive to children's learning, centering on the "gateway" courses of science and mathematics. The Carnegie task force reports, chiefly led by Hamburg, all urged a deeper commitment among key institutions in children's lives, beginning with the family but including schools, community-based organizations, health care institutions, and the media, in making sure that all children and youth grow into healthy, constructive, problem-solving adults.

Today, the context for philanthropy may be shifting again. Constraints on federal governmental initiatives in social policy and in scientific and technological research and innovation have perforce placed heavier emphasis on the role of the nonprofit sector and conventional charity. With the rapid expansion of the foundation field, philanthropy is under mounting pressure to assure continued educational, cultural, social, and scientific progress in the nation. According to the Council on Foundations, families now manage an estimated two-thirds of the country's more than 40,000 private foundations. More than 1,000 new family foundations are being formed each year. As much as $10 trillion in intergenerational transfers of wealth is expected to materialize as members of the baby boom generation come into their inheritances.

No other country in the world or world history has had such an aggregation of private wealth devoted to public purposes as the United States. No other nation has been as encouraging to donors in the creation of philanthropic institutions. And in no other nation have foundations played such a significant role in the nation's life, affecting education, science, medicine, the arts, and charitable agencies everywhere. They are instruments of innovation and sustenance to countless nonprofit institutions shouldering responsibilities that in most other nations have been ceded to government.

The release of new philanthropic resources and energies at a time of extraordinary demand is welcome indeed. In the aggregate, foundations could significantly advance research, ideas, knowledge, and innovation in the next century. But the combined assets from this field can never remotely compensate for the accrued losses in public and corporate spending for these purposes. Foundation funds must therefore be used wisely and with the utmost integrity toward public enlightenment and the common good — now more than ever to strengthen our social fabric and our democracy. Without a doubt, our future will rely on the optimum use of all the nation's intellectual and creative capabilities, not just of the traditional elites but of the ambitious young men and women who have hitherto been denied an equal chance to demonstrate their talents. But it will also depend on achieving for our nation that creative coexistence between the individual and the community embodied so well in Tocqueville's words.

Highlights of Staff Seminars

In all of our meetings with the staff and with outside experts to explore our programs in children and youth, sub-Saharan Africa, U.S. relations with the former Soviet Union, and the state of democracy in the United States, certain issues were brought to light that deeply concern me. Without prejudging the foundation's program directions, I would like to give voice to a few of these concerns.

• I am concerned about Americans' declining enthusiasm and support for our public institutions, be they public libraries, systems of public transportation, public parks, or public education, and about the pernicious notion that excellence can be achieved only in the private sector. I am a firm believer that in a democracy equality and excellence are compatible. In a nation of immigrants, the public schools and the public libraries have always served as the "ladders of aspiration" — of acculturation, of citizenship, and of equality of opportunity. Public education is unquestionably the most potent equalizing force in the nation and in many communities is a beacon of excellence. To strengthen and transform our common bonds, we must strengthen our public schools, not abandon them. Nevertheless, we must ask, why has the school reform movement not achieved greater gains for students? Don't we have the knowledge and successful models as well as the sophisticated analyses to show what works? Is the problem lack of political will? Why is there not more effective linkage between good-quality educational research and teaching practices? We seem to have many great schools but few great school systems. What will allow us to "go to scale"? Few minority-group members are going into the teaching profession at a time when children of historically underrepresented groups and new minority members are becoming a collective majority in many urban school districts. What can be done to recruit more talented men and women of these backgrounds into the schools of education?

• Of deep concern to me is the condition of racial and ethnic relations in this country, especially as they affect our children. We talk about tolerance, but tolerance is not enough: we must go beyond tolerance toward understanding and acceptance — acceptance of each person's humanity and individuality and ability to contribute toward the larger whole. Understanding and acceptance, in turn, require knowledge, and knowledge requires knowing not only other people's history and culture but our own heritage and what makes us a nation. We have become a parochial society in many ways, suffering from self-inflicted amnesia. We know little about world geography and even less about world history. There are only a handful of universities in the nation that teach anything about Canada. I am not sure that multiculturalism, as it is actually taught in many schools and colleges, is the answer. If we study the contributions of African Americans in isolation, we are still ghettoizing them unless we show how their experience has contributed to American civilization and to world civilization. When taught badly, there is a risk that multicultural education will lead to chauvinism and reinforce ethnocentrism.

• I am concerned about the state of educational and scientific institutes in countries of the former Soviet Union — in particular the condition of higher education and the drain of high-level scientific expertise to other regions. How can American and European universities together help to stabilize institutions of higher learning there? What opportunities can we pursue through cooperation with our sister foundations, nongovernmental organizations, the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other instruments in order to prevent the collapse of institutions of learning in countries that are so crucial for the maintenance of world peace and for the success of democracy?

• I am concerned that sub-Saharan Africa remains low in the American consciousness and last on its political agenda. I am especially concerned about the fate of African universities and research libraries, given the exodus of great talent from that continent to other parts of the world and given the environment of political instability and the severe economic hardship that prevail in many countries. How can we as a nation support African leadership in the university realm? Which are the institutions that should be strengthened? How can we, collectively and in a sustainable way, build model universities in Africa and support leadership training that will enhance the development process? How can universities and research institutes in Europe and the former Soviet Union be encouraged to work collaboratively with their African counterparts on cutting-edge issues in the behavioral, physical, and mathematical sciences? The challenge to American institutions is to pursue these efforts without contributing to the brain drain. Much of donor attention has been directed to achieving a market economy or privatization in Africa, but support for scholars within institutions of higher learning there would contribute substantially toward African development.⁵

• Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the United States — a phenomenon that few recognize but that will have a profound impact on American society in the future. As America develops a viable Muslim community, our understanding of Islam will be important for the harmony of our democracy. Of fundamental importance is that this country maintain its strong tradition of religious tolerance and religious freedom in the years to come. One helpful undertaking would be to explore the common humanistic traditions and common values of the three great faiths of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam — all of which have God and Abraham at the core of their beliefs.

On the eve of my departure from Brown University to Carnegie Corporation, an alumnus of Brown gave me a precious gift. It was a pamphlet entitled American Philanthropy and the Advancement of Learning, based on an address given at Brown on June 16, 1934, by one of the Corporation's great presidents, Frederick Keppel. In this address Keppel articulated some fundamental assumptions about the relationship of philanthropy to the advancement of learning that are valid today. He noted, first, "that such advancement is desirable as a national objective; second, that research and scholarly inquiry, though just about the least mercenary of occupations, do rest upon an economic basis; third, that donors are sincere, reasonably intelligent, and are doing their best to do good and not harm with their money, and that foundation trustees and executives possess these same qualities and moreover face their responsibilities in no spirit of arrogance or cock-sureness, recognizing that money confers no rights of direction or control, that it is always secondary in importance of the idea and the worker." But learning, wrote Keppel, does not advance itself. Some man or some woman does the advancing.

Andrew Carnegie's practice from the time he was in business was to find the talented individual and give him or her what was needed. But how does a foundation go about identifying the talent and know what that person needs? And then, how is a foundation to be protected from the danger of making arbitrary decisions? How do the staff and trustees go about exercising intelligent judgment as to which of many competing fields of activity should be continued, which ones have reached the area of diminishing returns, and which new fields should be entered? And how do we ensure the highest quality of the work that we fund? These are among the many questions that Keppel raised that are as nettlesome in our time as they were in his. There are, moreover, many other causes falling within our charter that are not devoted directly to the advancement of learning but to social purposes, the testing of ideas in demonstrations and experiments, the synthesis and consolidation of existing knowledge, popular education to raise the level of public understanding, and advocacy of specific causes.

As Keppel noted, there are always many more projects to be fostered, many more individuals to be helped, than there are resources at hand to provide for them. The keys to our future success, therefore, will be selection and selectivity, priority setting with a keen sense of the entering wedge into problems, knowledge of where and how to capture the best talent, and the formation of alliances — not just coinvestment but real partnerships undertaken in the spirit of true collegiality. Carnegie Corporation can play its part in such alliances, not only with our sister organizations in the field, but with other institutions as well.

In closing I would like to pay tribute to my immediate predecessors David Hamburg, Alan Pifer, and John Gardner. All three were visionaries, all three were thoughtful intellectuals and pragmatic activists in the cause of education, peace, and social justice. Their example of using foundation funds as a form of risk capital, supporting the work of gifted minds that may come up with new solutions to old or current problems, is an inspiration to me and will be a constant guide in my own work on behalf of the Corporation.

Vartan Gregorian
President

Notes

¹ Technically, Andrew Carnegie never attained full citizenship. While still a minor, Carnegie convinced his father to file his intention to become a citizen, but Will Carnegie died before taking the oath of allegiance and receiving certification of naturalization. Andrew apparently assumed that his father's declaration of intent was tantamount to the act of naturalization, making him an American citizen also. In any event, he claimed the rights of citizenship, which he exercised all his life.

² First published as "Wealth," in North American Review, No. CCCXCI, June 1889, and reprinted as The Gospel of Wealth.

³ Under Andrew Carnegie's deeds of gift, up to 7.4 percent of Carnegie Corporation's funds may be used to benefit the people of some countries that are or have been members of the British overseas Commonwealth.

⁴ Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public Policy (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989).

⁵ Carnegie Corporation made a recent grant of $1 million to the American Council of Learned Societies for fellowships in the humanities and social sciences, to be awarded to budding scholars from anglophone Africa as well as from the former Soviet Union. This grant harks back to the Corporation's program in the 1950s and 1960s to build African academic institutions, explored in E. Jefferson Murphy's book, Creative Philanthropy: Carnegie Corporation in Africa, 1953–1973 (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 1976).