Colleges Battle New Grant Wording

Harvard has drawn plenty of fire from all sides in recent debates concerning anti-Semitism, but last year, the shots came from an unlikely source: two prominent philanthropic foundations that give the University millions of dollars in grants each year.

The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, both based in New York City, adopted anti-terrorism language in their grants agreements last year that critics claimed infringed on academic freedoms. Ford was prompted to do so by criticism that its money paid the bills for anti-Semitic organizations; Rockefeller soon followed suit.

But for universities subject to the new language in grants, the devil was in the details. The change sparked an outcry from leaders of many leading research universities, including Harvard, who charged that the restrictions threatened to stifle campus debate on controversial issues like the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The groups are both generous donors to higher education: Ford gave approximately $41 million to American colleges in 2004, while Rockefeller gave about $15 million. Harvard received $3.65 million from Ford and $3 million from Rockefeller that year, and $3.47 million and $3.21, respectively, in 2003.

But last January, Ford, which aims to “strengthen democratic values” and “reduce poverty and injustice” and has sponsored research at Harvard on topics such as American Islam, told universities that future grantees would have to agree not to “promote or engage in violence, terrorism, bigotry, or the destruction of any state.”

Rockefeller soon followed suit. Last March, it told Harvard that grantees—who have received money from Rockefeller to study issues like the global AIDS epidemic—could not “directly or indirectly engage in, promote, or support other organizations or individuals who engage in or promote terrorist activity.”

Harvard, and other universities, cried foul.

“The original language was completely unacceptable,” University Provost Steven E. Hyman says. “The initial language basically said that [they] got to reach in and regulate speech on campus.”

In April, Hyman joined provosts at eight other elite schools in firing off a response to the foundations, telling Ford that the new wording might “create an unfortunate barrier” to its work with universities.

Now, nine months after the beginning of protracted negotiations, most of those schools have accepted compromises with Ford, which agreed to write side letters to the universities clarifying that the restrictions are only intended to apply to “official speech.”

After discussions with Rockefeller, most of the schools accepted its new language as well. Rockefeller added clarifying language a few weeks ago explaining the meaning of “terrorist activity,” but it was Ford’s language that served as the main lightning rod for criticism all along.

Some are still holding out: Stanford University is still considering the restrictions and the American Civil Liberties Union has rejected the grants outright.

While Ford’s compromise language so far appears to have had little effect on researchers, university administrators say the provision sets a worrisome precedent.

“I’m not so concerned about Ford trying to dictate to us rules about bigotry—what I’m worried about is the different interest groups around the country using this as leverage with Ford,” University of Chicago Provost Richard P. Saller says. “I worry that even if Ford’s position is tolerable, they will become a focal point for some of this angry lobbying.”

THE CONTROVERSY

In adopting the new language, Ford was responding to charges that its money had been used by some grantees to advance anti-Israel and anti-Semitic agendas. These charges focused largely on the actions of Ford grantees at the 2001 United Nations Conference Against Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. As a result, Ford had also faced substantial pressure from the American Jewish community to address the issue.

“We made these changes in response to heightened concerns among the public and policymakers about violence, terrorism, and bigotry and the possible misuse of philanthropic money for these purposes,” three Ford vice presidents wrote in a January 2004 memo to grantees.

In October 2003, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., sent Ford President Susan V. Berresford a letter co-signed by 20 other congressmen urging her to ensure that Ford money was not supporting anti-Semitic activities. In a November 2003 meeting, Berresford promised Nadler that Ford would not fund anti-Semitic groups.

Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., also pushed for the Senate Finance Committee to conduct an investigation of Ford, its funding and its tax-exempt status.

In a five-page letter later that month, Berresford pledged to Nadler that she would improve the “oversight and transparency of Ford programming” with new grant language and stricter oversight of grantees.

“We now recognize that we did not have a complete picture of the activities, organizations and people involved,” she wrote. “Ford trustees, officers and staff were disgusted by the vicious anti-Semitic activity seen at Durban.”

Andre Oliver, Rockefeller’s communications director, said that their new language was intended to bring the foundation in line with Executive Order 13224—issued just after Sept. 11, 2001 to block funding to terrorist organizations—and other subsequent federal regulations on financing terrorism.

“We do have a legal obligation, as do all institutions and individuals, [to see] that our funds do not support terrorism,” Oliver says.

THE NEGOTIATIONS

Last April, Hyman, along with provosts from the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, Stanford, Columbia, Yale, Princeton and Cornell, sent the foundations a letter protesting the potential infringement on academic freedom posed by the new language. Several of the universities then moved ahead in talks with officials at Ford on compromise language to eliminate some of the most objectionable wording.

Saller notes, for instance, that the provision concerning the “destruction of any state” is “hypocritical language,” given the recent U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime.

Ultimately, Berresford killed an initial compromise, although the proposal had seemed to command the support of many universities and even some of her staff, Saller says.

“What we discovered in the end was that the president of Ford, Susan Berresford, was not prepared to accept our suggestion…I had the sense that not everyone at Ford was of one view,” Saller says. “We thought that the model of the MacArthur Foundation was a reasonable model, and that’s one that imposes a condition that we obey relevant antiterrorism legislation.”

“Her view as I understand it was that Ford didn’t want to give grants to any institution that didn’t accept their basic Ford values,” he adds. “What we found problematic about that is that her view of what constituted bigotry and our view of what constituted bigotry might differ.”

Hyman says that Harvard “did make several runs at language,” and that Berresford and University President Lawrence H. Summers discussed the issue. Summers says the two “had a good conversation about our views on anything that restricts academic freedom” but declined to comment further.

After a new round of negotiations, Harvard came to an agreement over the summer under which Ford issued a side letter reaffirming its commitment to academic freedom. Dartmouth, Brown, Johns Hopkins and Chicago eventually accepted similar resolutions with Ford, according to Harvard spokesman Joe Wrinn.

“We do not want or intend to interfere with discussions in classrooms, faculty publications, student remarks in chat rooms, or other communications that express the views of the individual(s) and not the institution,” the letter says. “Our grant letter relates only to the official speech and conduct of the university and to speech or conduct that the university explicitly endorses.”

Saller says although some were concerned by Harvard’s decision to proceed, many universities were satisfied with the compromise. The provosts of many of the schools shared their views on the compromise during a summer conference call, he says.

“To say that it’s unilateral would lose sight of the fact that the provost of Harvard was continually circulating this language,” Saller says. “It is true that there are a couple of institutions that had very strong concerns…[but] those who were especially concerned at that point seemed to me to be a minority.”

He adds that he was “astonished” that the universities cooperated so much in the first place, so it was unsurprising when they started to negotiate separate agreements, noting that faculty pressure to resolve the issue was an important factor at some schools.

“Stanford obviously has a different position, and if you’re Stanford you’d hope none of us had settled,” Hyman says. But “when you read that language, it’s hard to know what we should still be complaining about.”

Columbia kept negotiating, successfully pushing Ford for a narrower definition of what constitutes the school’s official speech, according to Columbia Provost Alan Brinkley.

“The language that Harvard negotiated restricted the language of the grant only to what it called official speech and conduct of the university,” Brinkley says. “We felt that was still too broad…we wanted to make sure that they did not claim that official actions of the university included things like decisions of hiring faculty, curriculum and program development, [and] academic decision-making.”

And while most schools have settled, Stanford is still holding out. Stanford “continues to study” the new language, according to Kate Chesley, Stanford’s associate director of university communications.

Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology Theda Skocpol, who is working on a Ford-funded project through the Center for American Political Studies on the moral aspects of American women’s civil rights a nd social reform movements, says that she opposed the new language, even though it would never have affected her. The negotiations did interrupt her funding, but Hyman’s office provided money for her and other grantees in the interim.

“In my opinion, the University was always right in this matter,” Skocpol says. “I get money from the Ford Foundation, and I’m very grateful for it, but they were wrong.”

Skocpol says that she is satisfied with the compromise. But, she adds, “the side language leaves me wondering why we had to go through all of this in the first place.”

—Staff writer Stephen M. Marks can be reached at marks@fas.harvard.edu.