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Living Up to Andrew Carnegie's Challenge: Close to a Century of Introspection, Dialogue and Innovation
By Carnegie President
From the beginning, the trustees of
the Carnegie Corporation of New York
took very seriously the challenge and
opportunity with which Andrew Carnegie
had presented them. Their response to
Carnegie's "Deed
of Gift," which was included in
the notes of the first Board meeting
was:
"The Trustees realize that the execution of the trust will involve many difficulties of judgment and labors of administration, and they assume their obligation in the hope, and with the intent, to perform their duties faithfully, in a manner adequate to the great purpose of the trust, and in the disinterested public spirit which has moved the founder of the trust, to this great benefaction."
That, over the past ninety three years, the Corporation's presidents, trustees and have performed their duties effectively, accountably and in a manner more than "adequate to the great purpose of the trust" is evident in the results of its grants and grantees, perhaps most famously:
"An American Dilemna: The Negro Problem and American Democracy" - the Corporation-funded Gunnar Mydal study of race relations cited in the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown Vs. Board of Education decision.
The Corporation-funded studies which led to the formation of both the Brookings Institution and Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop).
The Corporation's financing of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, whose work led to the formation of the Federal Pell Grants program.
TIAA (now TIAA-CREF) and the Educational Testing Service, both of which were established (or partially established) with Corporation funding.
The Corporation's establishment of the Foundation Center "helping grantseekers succeed, helping grantmakers make a difference."1
In recent years, continuing in the Corporation's tradition of choosing to address complex, difficult and timely issues affecting our national life, we have undertaken several major initiatives, including Schools for a New Society (SNS), a long-term, $60 million initiative aimed at redesigning American high schools, initially in seven cities across the U.S., by involving educators, parents, community leaders and business in creating schools that will prepare all students to participate in a knowledge-based economy. This is a five-year commitment on the part of the Corporation, with the participation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, that focuses on reforming whole school systems in these cities-not just individual schools-so that a high-quality education and equitable resources are available to all students.
Another initiative, Teachers for a New Era (TNE), is encouraging bold reforms in current teacher education models; it will provide matching grants up to $5 million for a period of five years to selected institutions and focuses on three design principles: Research evidence must ultimately demonstrate whether children have experienced learning gains as a result of the work of teachers who are graduates of the teacher-preparation program; full engagement of arts and sciences faculty is required in the education of prospective teachers as well as ongoing collaboration between university arts and sciences faculty with school of education faculty; and a view of education as an academically taught clinical practice is required, one which includes close cooperation between colleges of education and participating schools; master teachers as clinical faculty in colleges of education; and two-year residencies for beginning teachers.
The Corporation has also been in the forefront of support for campaign finance reform, encouraging voter and civic education and in strengthening democratic institutions, including the electoral process; for example, noting the malfunctioning voting mechanisms that nearly crippled the 2000 Bush-Gore election, the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Caltech approached the Corporation to fund a collaborative project of their institutions aimed at developing an easy-to-use, reliable, affordable and secure voting machine.
Anticipating the 2000 election helped spur the Corporation in another direction, as well: the foundation's Russia Initiative was an 18-month-long endeavor with the goal of informing the candidates and the public about the short- and long-term impact that rapid, often massive changes taking place in Russia might have on both the U.S. and the wider global community. The initiative brought together more than 100 Russian and American scholars in task forces to discuss and analyze issues relating to Russia's security, economy, democratization, social cohesion and state building. The result was a number of reports and a documentary video called Russia: Facing the Future, which, along with a companion volume of the same name, called for a mature reengagement between the U.S. and Russia in the post-Cold-War world.
Higher Education in the Former
Soviet Union is another international
undertaking, this one aimed at strengthening
higher education in Russia and other
former Soviet states, with a specific
emphasis on the social sciences and
the humanities. At the heart of this
grantmaking activity are Centers for
Advanced Study and Education (CASEs),
which serve as umbrellas for stimulating
research and publications through
fellowships, conferences, travel grants,
library support, access to the Internet
and connections to Western academic
communities. To date, nine CASEs have
been established by the Corporation,
which is working in cooperation with
the MacArthur Foundation, the Open
Society Institute (OSI) and the Russian
Ministry of Education. CASEs are an
important and innovative example of
utilizing what Joseph Nye, dean of
the John F. Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard University has called "soft
power"-the ability to effect change
through attraction rather than coercion.
By supporting the intellectual life
of Russian scholars and academics,
and by forging close ties between
them and counterparts at universities
in the United States, we are building
strong, multi-dimensional interrelationships
that can only contribute to the continuing
development of both nations, as well
as to international stability.
Internationally, the Corporation has
been working in Africa almost since
the foundation's inception. Currently,
our focus is on selected countries
in sub-Saharan Africa and our grantmaking
emphasizes strengthening a number
of African universities, and on enhancing
women's educational opportunities
at institutions of higher education
in Africa, as well as on developing
the capacity of selected African public
library systems, all efforts aimed
at contributing toward national development.
A recent direction for the Corporation has been the establishment, in 1999, of the Carnegie Scholars program, which resumed the Corporation's historic support for individual scholarship for the first time in thirty years. (Under the previous program, one notable scholar funded by the Corporation was Robert Caro, who used Corporation support to help write his Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, published by Vintage Books in 1975). We resumed the program in harmony with the spirit and concerns of Andrew Carnegie, who believed so deeply in the power of the individual to change the world, and in knowledge and scholarship as the tools that humankind uses to bring about that change. To date, we have awarded 67 fellowships.
The operating records of Carnegie Corporation of New York - which are available to the public in the Carnegie Archives at Columbia University - bear witness to the active introspection, ongoing dialogue and continual innovations in thinking about philanthropic purpose, effectiveness and accountability that led to the Corporation's decision to invest its "social capital" both in the studies and organizations listed above and numerous other worthies, and generally shaped the performance of the Corporation's presidents, trustees and staff over close to a century.
Some transcriptions from these records: public speeches, private conversations in Board meetings, and writings of past and present Corporation presidents on these topics follow.
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Andrew Carnegie
1st President of Carnegie Corporation of New York: 1911-1919
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Elihu Root
2nd President of Carnegie Corporation of New York: 1919-1920
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James R. Angell
3rd President of Carnegie Corporation of New York: 1920-1921
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Charles Dollard
8th President of Carnegie Corporation of New York: 1948-1955
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John Gardner
9th President of Carnegie Corporation of New York: 1955-1967
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Alan Pifer
10th President of Carnegie Corporation of New York: 1965-1982 (Acting, 1965-1967)
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Vartan Gregorian
12th President of Carnegie Corporation of New York: 1997-Present
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Living up to Andrew Carnegie's challenge: by topic
Philanthropy At Carnegie under Vartan Gregorian
1 Tagline on the Foundation Center site as of December 21, 2004.
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