Engineering social reform: The rise of the Ford Foundation and Cold War liberalism, 1908--1959

This thesis examines the transformation of the Ford Foundation from a modest entity that Henry Ford reluctantly created in 1936 into a philanthropic behemoth that spearheaded liberal social reforms for the civil rights and Cold War era. Henry Ford was an outspoken critic of institutionalized philanthropy, but the Foundation he created as a tax shelter eventually became the most influential and controversial institution of its kind. After Ford's death, an advisory panel of foundation experts (mainly culled from the Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Corporation) reconceived the organization as a private advisory bureau for America's Cold War state. On the domestic front, Ford's reconstruction coincided with and shaped emerging national debates on race relations and social reform. The Cold War liberals who reconceived the Foundation were key architects of American foreign policy and federal intervention in urban race relations.; Yet, the Foundation was no organizational or ideological monolith; this study shows how its personalities and internal structure shaped its programs. Most important, tensions between the executive staff and the more conservative board of trustees came to a head over the activities of the Fund for the Advancement of Education (FAE), a semi-independent subsidiary created in 1951 by President Paul Hoffman and his associate director, Robert Maynard Hutchins. The FAE, hoping to solidify the United States' position as world leader, advocated school desegregation and equality of educational opportunity in America. The pioneering nature of this racial liberalism is underscored by the vehement political backlash it sparked. In 1952 and 1954, McCarthyite congressional investigations sparked a trustee-led retrenchment that saw the Foundation reabsorb and reassert control over the FAE. The attacks on Ford demonstrate the importance of congressional regulation to the history of philanthropic foundations.; Still, the Ford Foundation and the FAE elevated the debate over educational desegregation to the top of the national agenda more than a decade before the political establishment realigned in favor of substantive civil rights and antipoverty legislation. Leaders of the Ford philanthropic consortium were among the architects of a “second Reconstruction” in American race relations.