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Pleased to share my latest academic article - "From Black Power to Broken Windows: Liberal Philanthropy and the Carceral State" - has just been published in the Journal of Urban History.
Here is a brief account of the story it tells [Thread]. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0096144220956617">https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.11...
Here is a brief account of the story it tells [Thread]. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0096144220956617">https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.11...
The article explores the pivotal moment when the Ford Foundation transitioned from supporting various Black Power groups (1966-1969) to establishing the Police Foundation in 1970 - one of the largest private organizations devoted to reforming law enforcement.
When McGeorge Bundy arrived as president of the Ford Foundation in 1966, the former National Security Adviser surprised everyone by shifting the philanthropic organization& #39;s domestic grant-making sharply to the left.
Blessed with supreme self-confidence, Bundy wanted a bold initiative to calm the situation in America& #39;s cities. With this in mind, in 1967 he began channeling Ford grants to a range of "Black Power" organizations, including the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
These grants generated considerable controversy. By 1969, conservative commentators began railing against the Ford Foundation as a "shadow government", an unelected holdover of the liberal establishment fomenting unrest in America& #39;s cities.
This backlash against Ford culminated in a series of Congressional investigations. In 1969 McGeorge Bundy was hauled before the House Ways and Means Committee, tasked with defending the Foundation& #39;s "radical" grant-making activity.
Faced with this mounting political pressure, members of Ford& #39;s notoriously risk-averse Board of Trustees panicked. They began urging the Foundation focus less attention on "minorities", and more on the "neglected" needs of white "blue collar" and "Middle America".
In response, the Ford Foundation& #39;s domestic division - then under the leadership of Mitchell "Mike" Sviridoff - began drawing up plans for a "Police Development Fund", a multi-million dollar entity that would disburse grants to local police departments across the US.
However, not everyone was happy with this change of direction. Program officer Roger Wilkins wrote Sviridoff an extremely critical memo, arguing that funding for police reform offered "no substitute for the struggle against pain and indignity going on in the black ghettoes."
Wilkins dissent was ignored (he resigned shortly afterwards). On July 1970, McGeorge Bundy announced the formation of a $30 million Police Foundation (PF). The PF would distribute grants and offer evaluation to reforming police departments across the U.S.
Local police departments greeted the Police Foundation with a heavy dose of skepticism. Many pointed with alarm to the fact it was funded by the "communists" and "Black Powerites" over at the Ford Foundation. Some accordingly dismissed it as part of a plot to weaken the police.
The PF worked hard during the 1970s to counter the impression that it was "anti-police". Its first head, Charles Rogovin, was described as "basically all cop". By 1981, Ford was reporting that the PF had helped "make research acceptable to the law enforcement community".
