The Ford Foundation decided to eliminate one of its best programs. This program has encouraged some of our most outstanding scholars of color. Who made this decision and why?
A millionaire foundation president constantly surrounded by controversy and verbal missteps (Google Darren Walker), a former University president who resigned, and the “cold” wealthy Apple tech heir just killed the most successful philanthropic diversity effort ever. Darren Walker, Francisco G. Cigarroa, and Laurene Powell Jobs are sunsetting the Ford Fellowship. For decades, this program has been addressing educator diversity in higher education and enhancing the contributions of faculty of color. Despite its unrivaled accomplishments— in an instant— one of the most successful diversity programs of all time— 6,102 fellows since the inception of the program in 1967— is now in the dustbin of history.
Educator diversity is one of the biggest challenges facing education today. It is an acute issue as students of color rarely encounter teachers of color in K-12 and then have the same experience in higher education. The last decade of research has shown that higher education hasn’t moved the needle and improved diversity in an appreciable way— but the Ford Fellowships clearly have. Mary Beth Gasman, a Professor at Rutgers University, said in the Washington Post that higher education has not solved this problem because colleges and universities “don’t want” faculty of color and now neither does the Ford Foundation.
In an email message to Ford Fellows, Darren Walker, Francisco G. Cigarroa, and Laurene Powell Jobs and the Ford Foundation board offered a couple of flawed reasons for killing the prestigious and impactful program. They argued that “winding down” the Ford Fellowships is acceptable because the Gates and Lumina foundations participate in higher education philanthropy. Leaving to the side the failures that the Gates Foundation has wrought on K-12 and Higher Education, it’s a straw man argument because unfortunately neither of these— nor any other foundation— are funding educator diversity in higher education in “meaningful and inspiring ways” as the Ford Foundation fellowships have done.
Walker, Cigarroa, and Jobs and the Ford Foundation board also engage a sleight of hand by mentioning that they will refocus on “social and racial justice.” What they neglect to mention is that the Ford Fellowship have supported the intellectual foundation of grassroots social and racial justice activism and movements. For example, while the program has encompassed many intellectual disciplines, this award has identified and supported some of the leading educational scholars and movement influencers such as Travis Bristol (Educator Diversity), Keffrelyn Brown (Culturally Relevant Pedagogy), Julian Vasquez Heilig (Community-Based Education Reform), Delores Delgado Bernal (Latinx students and schools), Daniel Solorzano (Critical Race Theory), Angela Valenzuela (Ethnic Studies), Chezare Walker (Black Youth and schools), Bryan Brayboy (Indigenous students and schools) and many more. I can only imagine how slighted the scholars of color supported by this fellowship may feel by this gross oversight of their widespread impact on social and racial justice. What Walker, Cigarroa, and Jobs and the Ford Foundation board don’t realize is that the fellowships are funding social and racial justice intellectual capital across the nation and globe. If they would have asked the Ford Fellows, they may have realized this. Furthermore, to set up a competitive and false dichotomy between funding Ford Fellowships and racial justice and movement building is insulting and demeaning for Ford Fellows and communities of color.
Killing the Ford Fellowships is not actually a “judgement call” as they say in their closing statement, but rather severe ignorance of the incredibly rich history of the Ford Fellowship. The closing of the Ford Fellowships just compounds Darren Walker’s ongoing errors, controversies, and missteps as a leader. Maybe for Darren Walker this “judgement call” is payback as the Ford Fellows created a movement and publicly protested his extensive support of prisons.
So, what is to be done? How do we hold the board members of the Ford Foundation representing Xerox, Ford, Davidson Kempner, Aluko & Oyebode, Cisco Systems, Sigma Impact, Mastercard and others accountable? Do you know how to reach out to them? Should Ford Fellows boycott the proposed 2023 conference? If Walker, Cigarroa, and Jobs and the Ford Foundation board were truly interested in movement building, the fellowship could have been reworked to encourage scholars to apply who are leaders and were identified as future leaders in social and racial justice. This new approach would add to the heritage of the Ford Fellowships and honor the legacy of leadership whose shoulders Walker, Cigarroa and Jobs and the Ford Foundation board stood on— but have now fallen off. By simply killing the Ford Fellowships, Darren Walker, Francisco G. Cigarroa, and Laurene Powell Jobs and the Ford Foundation board are destroying the intellectual foundation of social and racial justice movements and killing philanthropy’s most successful diversity program of all time. Shame on them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ford (which is rapidly becoming more of a tech than a manufacturing company), Gates and Powell-Jobs are involved. That’s why. They do not want diversity. They want uniformity in fealty to big tech — and more money in the form of data. If the Ford Fellows don’t teach people to visit websites for all their problems, bye bye Ford Fellows. The tech moguls are racist fascists, and that is not by any means hyperbole.
FTR The Ford Foundation has been completely independent from the Ford Motor Co. for about 50 years. It is a private foundation focused largely on social justice. (Its earlier history is a different story.)
Sally,
Considering the wealth concentration that strangles economic growth, have philanthropies like Ford been working for social justice or injustice? If it’s the former, they are bringing their “F” game. If it’s the latter, they are bringing their “A” game.
This is just speculation, but it may be that the Ford Foundation thinks that the United States has changed in the last half century and that money spent well a half decade ago might be better spent in other ways today.
Fifty years ago it may well have been true that young faculty of color were helped by the Ford Foundation because the academy was largely racist. I do not think that the academy is as racist as it was in the past. I know my university is unable to retain outstanding scholars of color because private colleges and universities that largely educate students from wealthy families are able to offer far more attractive positions than my university can afford. We simply can not compete with the those privates.
My advice to the Ford Foundation would be to devote resources to promising high school students, increasing their ability to to go to college and a good graduate school. There is little need to support them after they have received a PhD.
As an aside, I think it was good that Francisco Cigarroa resigned as system president of the University of Texas system. Many people can do a fine job running a higher education system, but there are few who can save children’s live because of their skill as a pediatric transplant surgeon.
I of course mean have a century ago, not half a decade. The error was caused by the difference between how old i feel compared to how old I am.
“winding down” the Ford Fellowships is acceptable because the Gates and Lumina foundations participate in higher education philanthropy. ”
That’s like arguing that “winding down traditional Universities is acceptable because Donald Trump operates one”
The problem with all these “philanthropic” programs is that they are at the mercy of the whims of the wealthy people who sit on their boards, who can decide at any time to ditch the programs — for whatever reason, no matter how ridiculous (and let’s face it, saying that you don’t need to provide any money because Gates does is ridiculous) .
The American public make a very big mistake the second they become dependent on such programs. Much better to just tax foundations like Ford and Gates and use the money to fund government programs that at least require a majority vote of Congress to ditch.
Good point.
Amen to SomeDam’s comments above: We need to work back toward fuller funding of our colleges and universities, as we were doing in the ’60’s–all the while maintaining affirmative action and rules that build in diversity. A lot of people of color are kept out of colleges today mainly because of money. As citizens and voters we need to call on our politicians of all parties to support public education, K-college. And we need to raise more than an eyebrow when any politician calls for tax cuts, tax credits, tax abatements. In Ohio–and I’m sure elsewhere–those have been deadly for higher education. We now have a whole industry of fund raisers and grant writers. Enough!
What Ford means is that Gates/Lumina, Hoover and AEI have usurped
government policy-making to great effect.
The wealthiest 400 families want to continue the schemes that assure social injustice. Current wealth concentration didn’t happen as a result of right wing or pseudo left wing philanthropies sitting idly by.
Another example of Selbstgleichschaltung, an acquiescence to an anticipated future.
This is appalling news from the Ford Foundation, a betrayal of its pledge to support racial and social justice. One wonders what the real motives are. Gates and Lumina are the same foundations that were instrumental in putting an end to developmental education courses in community colleges around the country–colleges that serve many black, brown and poor students–starting with a now-infamous report (full of flawed data and reasoning), “Remediation: Higher Education’s Bridge to Nowhere.” Developmental courses, while not perfect, have been instrumental in helping millions of poorly educated students get up to speed for college while in college. Gates even gave large grants to colleges to dump their developmental programs. Then his miscalulations and failures in education caught up with him and his focus shifted, but not before a movement across the states resulted in letting students bypass needed developmental work and enter freshman classes. In Florida, this was cynically called “right to fail.”