A Modest Proposal: Should the Ford Foundation Be Decentralized?
Observer, An
A Modest Proposal: Should the Ford Foundation Be Decentralized? O O NE OF THE MOST appealing themes of student radicals is that in the modern world the individual finds himself...
...Yet the Ford Foundation found itself opposed— not to the Power Elite, not to the Establishment, not to the wealthy corpo -ations — but to a trade union representing teachers...
...One need not be a Marxist to suggest that a good portion of the Foundation's funds came out of the skins and backs of automobile workers, underpaid and overworked by Henry and Edsel...
...Each might then be given a modest budget—modest, that is, by the standards of the Ford Foundation—in order to carry out its social program, so that the initiative of all the people would be encouraged...
...We offer here a modest proposal...
...The rights or wrongs of this conflict needn't here concern us...
...A Modest Proposal: Should the Ford Foundation Be Decentralized...
...While thus involving itself in social action, the Foundation could allow its component parts—I assume it is not monolithic in opinion—to act with the freedom that is said to come from decentralization...
...If this last suggestion strikes people as too radical, it may be necessary to content ourselves for the time being with the more modest proposal: decentralize the Ford Foundation!— -OBsERvER...
...Until recently this was hardly a problem, since the worst that might be said against foundations was that their cultural/ educational benefactions were illconceived...
...Thereby the Ford Foundation could find itself, through the sheer enormity of its resources, becoming a decisive factor in such a struggle...
...If some executives of the Ford Foundation wished, for instance, to help the Ocean Hill Board, another group in the Foundation might care to help the teachers...
...Let the Ford Foundation, itself an enthusiastic proponent of school decentralization, submit itself to partial or temporary decentralization by a fair-minded committee chosen by public and communal agencies...
...There remains another matter which greatly interests people at the Foundation —community control...
...Would it not therefore be a superb gesture, in line with its recent interests, if the Ford Foundation were to begin a systematic consultation with the employees of the Ford Motor Company, either through their union (called the United Automobile Workers) or through direct inquiries...
...Nor would it be quite correct to say that the UFT was as helpless as the solitary individual confronting a corporation...
...But now that the Ford Foundation has decided to enter the treacherous arena of social policy, its enormous resources—disposed of by organizational bureaucrats and their attendant intellectuals— can be a factor in public affairs...
...That its motives were of the best, we don't doubt for a minute...
...Each segment of the Foundatio-i could do "its own thing...
...O O NE OF THE MOST appealing themes of student radicals is that in the modern world the individual finds himself all but helpless against the power of enormous institutions, be they government agencies, private corporations, or multiversities...
...At the very least, the other side could easily get the impression it was facing an institution of great wealth and power...
...Still, by the gingerly appropriations it made to the Ocean Hill School Board, the Ford Foundation showed that potentially it could align itself with one or another side in those tragic, yet perhaps unavoidable, struggles that seem likely to break out between communities and organizations, each of which is composed of persons of modest means and each of which has at least some claim on the right...
...During the recent New York school strike, the Ford Foundation was tacitly aligned with the Ocean Hill School Board...
...It now is possible that this complaint will also hold true for semipublic institutions, such as the foundations which have at their disposal millions upon millions of dollars...
Vol. 16 • March 1969 • No. 2
