Opinion: Michigan’s Case Against the Ford Foundation

The Ford Foundation should not be required to focus its grant making on supporting institutions in and around Detroit, as the Michigan attorney general says it should, writes John J. Miller in The New York Times.

Mr. Miller writes that while Attorney General Mike Cox is right to monitor the activities of Michigan foundations and look out for illegal spending, he should not attempt to change the focus of the foundation’s grant making. He says that the foundation’s donors should have done more to ensure that the money went to causes in their home state if that is what mattered to them.

“Today’s Ford Foundation is the result of what happens when wealthy capitalists establish charitable foundations with poorly defined missions and then appoint trustees who do not share their principles,” Mr. Miller writes. “The Fords simply did nothing to ensure that their fortune wouldn’t fall into the hands of the left, or into the hands of people who have no special interest in Detroit.”

Read The Chronicle’s coverage of Mr. Cox and the Ford Foundation.