Ford and Mellon: Targets for the Philanthropy Roundtable’s CEO
By Alex Daniels
Senior Editor, Foundations
September 8, 2021 | Read Time: 2 minutes
In her criticisms of “woke” philanthropy, Elise Westhoff, chief executive of the Philanthropy Roundtable, has made special mention of two foundation presidents: Darren Walker of the Ford Foundation and Elizabeth Alexander of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Both leaders are Black.
In 2014, Walker announced that the Ford Foundation’s work would focus entirely on social justice. For its domestic work, that has meant that racial justice has been front and center, a point Walker has returned to in regular blog posts since the murder of George Floyd that reiterate the foundation’s support of grassroots racial-justice efforts like Black Lives Matter.
In an Independence Day post, Walker seemed to be referring to some of the criticism coming in from Westhoff and others when he wrote that “some abuse their megaphones on social media and cable news to dismiss all of this as “identity politics. The truth is, one’s identity has always determined, at least in part, their access to opportunity in America.”
Last June, Alexander laid out plans for Mellon, the largest humanities grant maker, to focus squarely on social justice. The new mission included educational grants for incarcerated people, underrepresented students, researchers at universities and a $250 million commitment to rethink how the country memorializes the past, with a special focus on how historical monuments can include people who have not previously been widely recognized.
The suggestion that social-justice funding is too political — a criticism Westhoff has levied at Ford and Mellon — misses the mark, according to Alexander. “Underresourcing large swathes of the population is political,” she told the Chronicle last year. “It’s a choice. Social justice per se isn’t political any more than social injustice is political.”
Says Alexander: “In this country, there are fissures, primal wounds, original sins that are unameliorated and bare. It would be irresponsible not to understand our work as an opportunity to create a more just society.”
Both Walker and Alexander declined to comment through their foundation’s spokesmen.
