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Topic: Diversity, equity, and inclusion

  • A Conversation about History, Race and the Meaning of True Diversity with Ja’Ron Smith

    Editor’s Note: Philanthropy Roundtable’s True Diversity initiative offers an equality-based, holistic framework for embracing diversity. We support efforts that value every person as a unique individual and empower charitable organizations with the freedom and flexibility to advance their missions. Learn more at TrueDiversity.org. 

    Cleveland, Ohio native Ja’Ron Smith and Washington, D.C.-raised Chris Pilkerton are two men of different races and backgrounds united by their faith and purpose to help the underserved. They both rose to become policy advisors to President Trump, where they advanced solutions for economic mobility of Black, white and all Americans. In a new book titled “Underserved: Harnessing the Principles of Lincoln’s Vision for Reconstruction for Today’s Forgotten Communities,” they offer a prescription for rebuilding underserved communities by drawing upon President Abraham Lincoln’s vision for reconstructing the nation after the Civil War. 

    I spoke with Smith, a policy expert on regulatory affairs, economic mobility, social justice, finance, banking and housing and urban development about his personal experience, new book and how he views true diversity.  

    The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.    


    Q. Tell us about your background and how it shaped your approach to work and life. 

    Smith: I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, in a lower middle-class community. My early years were similar to that of many people: parents struggling with drug addiction and alcoholism. My parents were both blue-collar workers and their parents were poor. They did what they needed to do to survive.  

    My dad sent me to a Catholic high school. That education gave me my first experience with religion and created an environment to help me. I wasn’t a good student until age 14 or 15. Despite their addiction, I was anchored with two parents that loved me and a grandparent that loved me, which made me a resilient person and gave me the courage to be curious. As I set out to be my best self, I had to do service projects to graduate and that’s where the passion developed for helping people. 

    My generation was the first generation to start going to college. 

    My background planted the seed of wanting to help change our community and empower people. From that experience you learn that people go into drugs and self-destructive behavior based off trauma or traumatic experiences. It can be hard to try to figure out how to become your best self and put food on the table.  

    I attended Howard University and during college interned in Washington, D.C. on Capitol Hill, which got me interested in politics and policy as a way to positively impact people. 


    Q. Coming out of your background and work at the highest levels of government, why did you decide to write this book? 

    Smith: I wrote this book along with my colleague, Chris Pilkerton, because working together in the White House, we realized there were so many challenges in underserved communities. Because of the pandemic, we weren’t able to finish some of the work we had begun on issues ranging from criminal justice reforms to workforce development. It became apparent that the work we were trying to accomplish was more important than ever. Some communities will be set back even further because of COVID. 

    My north star and mission has been figuring out solutions for underserved communities. When I came back to D.C. in 2008, I gave my life to God and He has positioned me through relationships to accomplish this mission. We talk about our faith journeys in this book, but this book provides a blueprint to complete our unfinished work.   


    Q. “Underserved” focuses on the post-reconstruction era in the United States. There was so much opportunity for Black folks: in politics by becoming legislators, starting businesses and creating economic centers, creating a new middle class and creating greater Black wealth. What didn’t happen following Reconstruction that led to issues we’re still dealing with today?  

    Smith: Abraham Lincoln grew up on a prairie, he grew up poor, was self-educated and he learned the importance of earning a living for yourself and being able to leverage that to empower oneself through economic empowerment.  

    Lincoln’s vision for Reconstruction highlights that economic empowerment … is a core part of America. America is a capitalist country; the whole notion of capitalism is based on the concept of mutuality and mutual benefit. It has lifted so many underserved communities around the world in ways that other systems haven’t. The challenge is that slavery raised the question of whether capitalism was exploitative. Capitalism doesn’t have to be.  

    Unfortunately, Andrew Johnson worked with the privileged class of the South (former plantation owners) and the creation of Black Codes created a dual system that Black Americans lived in for about 60 years until the Civil Rights Movement. Despite all of that, Black Americans in segregated communities were still able to foster economic empowerment and build robust communities. But the government and racist factions tore that apart. That has happened several times. In our book, we mention the Freedman’s Bureau, race riots and Black Wall Street. 

    Ultimately, you still did not have a breakthrough with those communities. Laws from the ‘30s created redlining and concentrated poverty and race. Then the presence of Great Society programs at the same time as the post-Integration movement led to Black flight. Upper class and middle-class Blacks left those communities. When affluent people–doctors and lawyers–left the community, those left behind were left with no real role models or high earners which led to concentrated impoverished communities. It’s similar in some white communities too. The reason we called the book “Underserved” is because we talk about poverty in white communities as well.  

    Lincoln saw the importance of investing in poor white communities as well as Black communities. His assassination cut short this work which could have helped in the Jim Crow South where poor whites were pitted against poor Blacks. A century later, the race and class warfare was something Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about during the Civil Rights era. 


    Q: Can you talk about the role of the church, particularly of the Black church, then and also today in driving outcomes that go toward economic opportunities?  

    Smith: First of all, the movement to free the slaves was undergirded by the Great Awakening, which created the abolitionist movement. The emergence of the Republican Party was anchored in religion. When we went into Reconstruction, many of the HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) that were launched were financed by religious organizations and invested in training preachers. The early leaders who went to Congress, like Hiram Revels, were ministers and the church became a safe place for individuals in the Black community to mobilize, organize and educate themselves.  

    New Black churches emerged out of that. Different denominations undergirded the Civil Rights Movement. The church has historically for the Black community been an anchor for change in our communities. However, over the last 40 years—and not just in the Black community—institutions overall including the church have lost the trust of the community. 

    Throughout America, people are less religious. Some people on the right blame taking prayer out of public schools, but it goes back to the methodology of trust. Some churches–not all of them–haven’t been the anchor that they used to be because trust is not there in the community. You might have a number of different churches in any underserved community. They are not all places that people go to or frequent. After being in seminary, I learned that in many cases churches have become more of a social club rather than an anchoring or change agent for society.  

    We need that anchoring because the church and faith community’s help in figuring out who you are as a person is extremely important in behavioral health. So many communities have dealt with the trauma of the pandemic and historic trauma. Being able to navigate the nuances of life is hard when you come from broken families. That’s a mission I have been on. We need the church and civil society more than ever.   

    Aside from the Black households, in which you see 70% are single-parent households, 50% of white households are single parent or divorced households.  


    Q: How can True Diversity or other equality-based, holistic frameworks for embracing diversity contribute to economic mobility?  

    Smith: Different perspectives help you to be competitive. Many other countries don’t necessarily have the model of diversity that America has and if we’re in a global competition of ideas, we are far ahead of people by celebrating our shared diversity. Celebrating that we are a melting pot is in the American DNA. We became a place where people came from all different walks of life to be able to participate in the American experience, which is based on individuality, ideas, freedom and liberty. That undergirds everything.  

    Companies and organizations that decide not to be intentional about thought diversity are losing the opportunity to benefit from that market share. But it has to be genuine, it has to be intentional. It cannot be virtue signaling. What the workplace is  trying to do is to harness our best asset which is the diversity of opinions and backgrounds. No one has the same experience. We celebrate that uniqueness that you can bring to the table and that uniqueness drives different ideas that an organization would never have thought about.  

    I’m not sure that designating a role for Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is right. If you have a C-suite, a better approach is having more COOs from different perspectives, more CFOs and CEOs. If you lean into being intentional about bringing in the best talent from diverse perspectives, you will get individuals in leadership roles who will commit to bringing other individuals with diverse perspectives along. For me working at the White House (and every organization I’ve been in), I’ve been able to identify individuals with different backgrounds that other leaders may have overlooked and they’ve ended up adding value.  

    It hasn’t been based on race but comparative advantage. Everyone brings different skills to a situation and it’s figuring out what comparative advantages individuals have that can make us more competitive. You want businesses or organizations to be intentional about what their talent needs are and to lean into those, not just check demographic boxes.  

    In the current landscape, DEI has become a talking point instead of looking at the most unique capabilities people bring to the table and what we can learn from them. We put blanket approaches in place that are not effective, when the unique qualities that people have because of their backgrounds is what we should focus on. 

    Click here to learn more about True Diversity.    

  • True Diversity Advocates Respond to Supreme Court Affirmative Action Decisions

    In 6-3 and 6-2 rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the use of race-based preferences in college admissions, writing “The Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.” 

    President of Students for Fair Admissions Edward Blum, the organization that filed the lawsuits, applauded the ruling, saying, “The polarizing, stigmatizing and unfair jurisprudence that allowed colleges and universities to use a student’s race and ethnicity as a factor to admit or reject them has been overruled. These discriminatory admission practices undermined the integrity of our country’s civil rights laws.” 

    The Roundtable compiled reactions from our True Diversity partners, who signed our statement of principles. The True Diversity initiative provides an equality-based, holistic framework for embracing diversity that values each person as a unique individual and empowers charitable organizations with the freedom and flexibility to advance their missions and help those in need. Read the Roundtable’s official statement on the ruling here.   

    Ian Rowe, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and founder and CEO of Vertex Partnership Academies, which is a charter school serving high school students in the Bronx, said: 

    “Years from now, Black students admitted to top schools will say thank you Supreme Court for a decision that removes the perception the only reason I got in is due to my race. You re-established merit as the core criteria to be considered against a standard bar of excellence.” 

    For more from Rowe on how to provide pathways to opportunity for disadvantaged individuals, check out his book “Agency: The Four Point Plan (F.R.E.E.) for ALL Children to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative and Discover Their Pathway to Power.”  

    Devon Westhill, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, whose mission is to “promote colorblind equal opportunity and nondiscrimination in America,” said: 

    “The Harvard and UNC cases provided the Court a great opportunity to clean up the mess it created by its decades-long experiment permitting a racial spoils system in college admissions. It has now seized the opportunity—on the 20th anniversary of its misguided Grutter opinion—to vindicate the American principle of equality under law. As a result, today we are a more perfect union, notwithstanding more work that lies ahead.” 

    The Center for Equal Opportunity filed amicus briefs in support of the plaintiff at every stage of these cases. Check out Westhill’s recent blog on this topic, entitled “Shall We Overcome: What is the Alternative to Affirmative Action?” 

    Stephanie Holmes, an experienced labor and employment lawyer and founder of BrighterSideHR, said: 

    “While the Court’s decision today is not directly applicable to the workplace, employers should take notice. Race-based preferences in the employment context have always been prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which is the provision applicable to employment. In recent years, however, the proliferation of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (“DEI”) programs in corporate America, while well-intentioned, have increased the focus on an employee or applicant’s race or sex. This has provided incentives for employers to make hiring or other employment decisions based on protected categories, such as race, which is unlawful.   

    The Court’s majority opinion underscores the value and importance of treating all people – all employees – as the unique individuals they are in order to fulfill the promises guaranteed to every American in our Constitution. Even though the Supreme Court’s decision does not change existing law in the employment context, employers should be prepared for increased focus on and questions around their DEI approach. Employers are encouraged to use this opportunity to review their diversity programs and be prepared for questions from employees, who may have a wide variety of opinions on this topic.”   

    For more from Holmes, an author of our True Diversity toolkit, please read “True Diversity: Legal Overview & Recommendations for Employers.” 

    Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit that defends Americans’ liberties from government overreach and abuse, responded to the ruling in a Fox News op-ed. Legal fellow Ethan Blevins said: 

    “While this is a key win for individual rights, the court did not go far enough. The court should have held that race can play no role in university admissions whatsoever. Instead, the court has opted to prop up a feeble precedent that leaves the door ajar for ongoing discrimination.” 

    Pacific Legal Foundation filed an amicus brief in favor of SFFA in these cases. Read more about their  litigation efforts here.  

    Patrice Onwuka, Philanthropy Roundtable adjunct senior fellow and director of the Center for Economic Opportunity at the Independent Women’s Forum, said: 

    “As a society, we cannot remedy past discrimination by creating new inequities; otherwise, we lock ourselves into a vicious cycle of injustice. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that educational institutions must not infringe on the civil rights of one group of students based on their race regardless of whether some view the desired outcome as virtuous.   

     “Every child in America deserves access to a quality education regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin or class. Education is not only an equalizer, but it anchors the ladder of economic opportunity. If we want to ensure that disadvantaged children, including those from minority backgrounds, can compete for spaces in higher education, we should accelerate school choice efforts and be committed to holding all kids to the same high standards.”  

    For more from Onwuka on this topic, read her Philanthropy Roundtable research on the effectiveness of diversity quotas on corporate boards in “Improving Board Diversity: Lessons from Sweden and Norway.” She has also written about the pitfalls of charitable organizations collecting demographic data and using it to make philanthropic decisions. Read more here. 

  • Saving the Arts from Politics and Presentism

    How philanthropy can support the arts in an age of activism

    Philanthropy Roundtable’s Values-Based Giving Program connects our donor community to high-impact organizations that advance our shared values of liberty, opportunity and personal responsibility. This story is part of our campaign highlighting how donors and nonprofits work together to improve lives. Interested in learning more about Values-Based Giving and the services our team provides? Click here.

    Lincoln Jones doesn’t like to talk about ballet. That’s because as the founder of American Contemporary Ballet, his Los Angeles-based company of 21 dancers that mounts some 70 performances a year, he thinks about ballet in a different way than most. “Imagine a theoretical art form that is populated by almost impossibly beautiful creatures,” he says. “Angels, practically, angels inhabited by pure rhythm, and moving in a way that is unmistakable proof of human nobility.”

    Jones’s reverence for ballet has meant going against the grain of traditional staging, bringing the art form to warehouses and open spaces where his audiences can be immersed in the performances. But his quest for independence also goes beyond the stage. In summer 2020, Jones found himself dancing on a newly unstable platform. Like arts organizations across the country, Jones was pressured to post a black square to his company’s social media accounts. The reason: to show solidarity with Black Lives Matter. It wasn’t just a request. It was more like a demand. Yet, Jones refused. One of the few arts leaders to do so, he faced a backlash that almost overturned his company.

    “In 2020, they tried to kill us,” he recounts. “The ‘black square’ swept the arts world. Everyone was supposed to post the black square in support of Black Lives Matter. I didn’t do it. For one, because I read what Black Lives Matter was and I didn’t support it. And, two, it was not my prerogative to represent the artists in my company politically.”

    For his sin of omission, Jones’s dancers were threatened. They feared for the future of their careers. They worried they would be ostracized from the world of dance. But Jones stood his ground, writing an open letter to his company explaining his actions. There were resignations and loss of funding, but his audience returned. Now, two years later, as other LA-based arts organizations still find their numbers down, American Contemporary Ballet is up and dancing to a sold-out run.

    “There is no thought of the moralizing and the guilt trips that now come with what should be joyful, personal and celebratory experiences,” Jones says of the impact of today’s politics on the arts.

    In contrast, for his company, “Not a single audience member has complained that we have not apologized for the land we are dancing on, or the music that we’re dancing to or the color of our skin,” said Jones. “They all just seem to want a good show.”

    Jones is now one of the signatories of Philanthropy Roundtable’s “True Diversity” Initiative, which published a statement of principles pledging to “return love, compassion and empathy to the diversity conversation by embracing an equality-based perspective.” His journey reveals the challenges of finding a middle ground in a culture that has become anything but neutral. The same is true for today’s arts funders who seek to stay above the fray of contemporary politics.


    The problem is that, in the past few years, mainstream arts organizations have become besotted with politics. Transcendence is out. Presentism is in. Arts for art’s sake? Today, it can seem more like art for the sake of climate change, social justice or racial redress. In the news, we now see activists storming museums to throw soup at paintings or glue themselves to the walls. Yet these outward convulsions often only mirror the vandalism from within. Mainstream arts leaders are attacking the legacies of their own institutions. The director of the American Museum of Natural History has overseen the destruction of her institution’s memorial to Theodore Roosevelt. The director of the Whitney Museum of American Art gave the green light to an exhibition that attacked one of his own trustees, who was forced to resign. The director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has called his institution “connected with a logic of what is defined as white supremacy.”

    In a recent City Journal article, “Guardians in Retreat,” Heather Mac Donald decries the firing of the 82 volunteer docents at the Art Institute of Chicago and their replacement with six paid educators. The reason? The color of their skin. In the mantra of “diversity, equity and inclusion,” the museum claimed its docent program had “centered certain stories while marginalizing and suppressing others.”

    Mac Donald continues:

    “The racialist wave that swept the United States following the arrest-related death of George Floyd in May 2020 has taken down scientists, artists and journalists. Entire traditions, whether in the humanities, music or scientific discovery, have been reduced to one fatal characteristic: whiteness. And now the anti-white crusade is targeting a key feature of American exceptionalism: the spirit of philanthropy and volunteerism.”

    Beyond these racialized attacks, cultural philanthropy continues to find itself up against the notion that charity should be spent on only utilitarian concerns. The Princeton philosopher Peter Singer reflects this Benthamite attitude, named for English writer Jeremy Bentham, in his book “The Life You Can Save”: “Philanthropy for the arts or for cultural activities is, in a world like this one, morally dubious.”

    Singer pointed to the $45 million the Metropolitan Museum of Art spent on a Duccio painting in 2004 as an amount that would pay for cataract operations for nearly one million blind people in the developing world. “If the museum were on fire,” he wrote, “would anyone think it right to save the Duccio from the flames, rather than a child?”

    Of course, the choice is a false equivalence. Philanthropy is not a zero-sum equation. A dollar directed to a museum does not remove a dollar from a hospital, food bank or shelter. And the soul is a vital organ of its own. American philanthropists have long understood this call as they established a vital legacy of arts support. Without a monarchy, largely with support from the state, private philanthropy created and underwrote American cultural organizations in ways that have become the envy of the world and a reflection of the virtues of our democratic ideals. Unfortunately, for many of today’s progressive cultural leaders, these ideals are just the problem as they seek to overturn this democratic legacy and undermine American legitimacy. They check all of the boxes except the one that matters: as Jones puts it, the box for “human nobility.”

    For philanthropists who still believe in America’s founding principles, funding for the arts can be a dance of its own. Sometimes the answer is to go it alone—funding one’s own cultural projects. With support from the Morris and Alma Schapiro Fund, the painter Jacob Collins founded a school called the Grand Central Atelier in 2014—after taking on students informally for more than two decades—that is dedicated to reviving the classical traditions of art. His first students from the 1990s have become his faculty, and his school now attracts students and attention from across the globe. Likewise in 2009, Rick DeVos founded ArtPrize, a contemporary art competition and festival that has invigorated Grand Rapids, Michigan, by offering nearly $500,000 in prizes and attracting half a million visitors a year, with art displayed throughout the city.

    Fortunately, outside of the world of land acknowledgments, preferred pronouns and black squares, there are still partners to be found who value art for art’s sake and the freedom that spirit represents. Take Riverside Symphony, composer and cofounder Anthony Korf’s 41-year-old Lincoln Center orchestra that rejects identity politics through its concerts and music literacy program for inner-city school children.

    “We program music on the basis of its value, or the potential of a contemporary composer to achieve that stature over time,” he says, going against the DEI mandates of many of today’s foundation functionaries.

    Or consider the National Civic Art Society, the advocacy organization led by Justin Shubow promoting America’s classical vernacular as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

    “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us,” Shubow says, quoting Winston Churchill. “Our Founding Fathers were architects in their own right. They chose classical architecture to harken back to Rome and Athens.”

    What these arts organizations all share is a commitment to beauty and excellence that rises above contemporary trends and political convenience.

    The answer for today’s arts funders, one museum trustee tells me, is to look beyond the biggest organizations and the supposed prestige conferred by their board seats. Instead, he says, “Look to the second and third tier museum,” noting the abundance of local arts institutions that can still mount serious shows by flying under the radar of the Fords, Mellons and Carnegies and their progressive mandates. Join up with other connoisseurs, he advises, who don’t want to be led around by the nose.

    Likewise at Bader Philanthropies, one strategy of funding the arts is through its “Building Resilient Communities” initiative. “Through this strategy,” says the program officer Bridgett Gonzalez, “we are able to embrace the rich cultural diversity that embodies our local artistic community, exemplified through creative and traditional art forms.”

    When it comes to the arts, the solution, ultimately, goes beyond the politics of left and right. “There is a very specific political ideology that has taken over,” concludes Lincoln Jones. “It has for a very long time. This did not start in 2020. You have art that is politically based. And then there is art that is based on the human desire for connection and spirituality.”

    Nevertheless, to avoid the politics of art, it now takes some understanding of the art of politics and a willingness to dig deeper into the cultural organizations that expect your support. The question is not what is right or left, but what is right or wrong when it comes to the arts and the bravery to embrace, in English poet Matthew Arnold’s famous phrase, what is still “the best that has been thought and said in the world.”

    James Panero is the executive editor of The New Criterion.

    (Photo Credit: American Contemporary Ballet)

  • Philanthropic Responses to the Closing of the American Mind

    How Charitable Giving Is Helping Expand Freedom of Expression on College Campuses

    Philanthropy Roundtable’s Values-Based Giving Program connects our donor community to high-impact organizations that advance our shared values of liberty, opportunity and personal responsibility. This story is part of our campaign highlighting how donors and nonprofits work together to improve lives. Interested in learning more about Values-Based Giving and the services our team provides? Click here.

    The fundamental purpose of higher education is to provide Americans of all backgrounds the opportunity for advanced learning, foster the pursuit of knowledge and provide training in specific fields of study or practice. But in recent years, ideologically charged threats to freedom of thought and academic inquiry have expanded on college and university campuses across the country under the guise of “diversity” initiatives or policies. Many campuses have become hot beds for a “cancel culture” driven by political ideology that has intimidated students and professors, leaving them afraid to express their views, popular or otherwise.

    This truly is the closing of the American mind, then throwing away the key, a mortal threat to the very soul of scholarly inquiry as well as educational and professional advancement, which are building blocks of individual and economic flourishing. 

    Fortunately, private philanthropy is well-positioned to help the leaders and organizations who have stepped up to assess and remedy this grave crisis. Nonprofits are mobilizing students, faculty and alumni by providing resources on multiple fronts—from litigation to advocacy to media efforts—to raise awareness about this attack on free speech and association and promote the value of intellectual diversity at educational institutions.

    By challenging what has become a dangerous status quo, organizations like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the Academic Freedom Alliance, and Alumni Free Speech Alliance are working hard to maintain an open exchange of ideas and critical thinking in our colleges and universities. While others, like the Institute for Humane Studies, are creating alternative models that help demonstrate innovative approaches to higher education. The work of these organizations varies, but each is dedicated to combating an epidemic that is chilling speech and hindering students and faculty from engaging with diverse ideas through respectful debate and discussion.     

    A Crisis of Free Speech and Expression on College Campuses

    To underscore the seriousness of this problem, one can cite numerous examples from university and college campuses around the country.

    FIRE is dedicated to defending and sustaining all Americans’ individual rights to free speech and free thought, with a special emphasis on our nation’s campuses. According to FIRE senior fellow Robert Shibley, college administrators have become “so amenable to unlawful or unconscionable demands that they set themselves up for the many calls to punish or silence students we’ve seen.”

    Last year, FIRE partnered with College Pulse to conduct the largest survey ever of college students’ experiences with free speech. Nearly 45,000 students participated from more than 200 colleges, and only one-in-four students (22%) reported they felt “very comfortable” discussing “a controversial political topic” with other students on campus. The survey also found that about three-in-five students (59%) said they would be uncomfortable disagreeing with a professor publicly on a controversial topic, while one-in-five (22%) said they often engage in self-censorship.

    Another recent survey conducted from 2019-2021 by the nonpartisan nonprofit Heterodox Academy, which is dedicated to improving “the quality of research and education in universities by increasing open inquiry, viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement,” found that nearly nine out of 10 students believe “colleges should encourage students and professors to be open to learning from people whose beliefs differ from their own,” while almost the same high percentage of students believe that “colleges should welcome students and professors with a lot of different points of view.”

    In comparing these two reports, it appears college students agree that open inquiry and free expression are valuable. However, many remain somewhat fearful of expressing their own views to their peers and faculty.

    Fortunately, organizations like FIRE and Heterodox Academy have resources available for them. FIRE’s Student Network offers a community of peers who care about civil liberties as well as opportunities to learn about students’ rights on campus. This year, Heterodox Academy is launching a new Campus Community Network with 23 chapters across the U.S. and Canada, including MIT, UC Berkeley and McGill University. Each community is action-oriented, led by Heterodox Academy member co-chairs from among faculty, staff or graduate students, and charged with hosting monthly gatherings, organizing events and collaborating with fellow campus leaders.

    It’s important to realize that students are not the only ones suffering on campus. FIRE publishes a database that tracks when a professor, researcher, lecturer or other individual with an academic position at a college or university is investigated, penalized or otherwise professionally sanctioned for “engaging in constitutionally protected forms of speech.” They have documented nearly 900 examples—more than 120 in 2022 alone—of people being targeted by either the political left or right since 2000.

    Philanthropic leaders and charitable organizations are stepping up to support organizations pushing back against efforts to suppress free speech and expression on college campuses, as well as developing new ways of fostering open and intellectually diverse learning environments in higher education. They include the Barry Foundation, the Stanton Foundation and the Institute for Humane Studies.

    Donors and nonprofits are bringing together resources in different yet complementary and effective ways to motivate alumni to engage with their alma maters and their student populations, provide high-tech alternatives to traditional academic forums for formulating scholarship and support litigation that defends professors and students whose rights have been violated and who are facing reputational and career repercussions.

    Academic Freedom Alliance: Promoting “Freedom of Thought, of Inquiry, of Discussion”

    In early 2021, academics from across the ideological spectrum came together and formed the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) to protect college and university faculty members’ right to speak, teach and publish the results of their research without fear of sanction or punishment. According to the nonprofit’s website, AFA’s purpose is to help scholars “fulfill their vocation as truth-seekers.” Its diverse membership includes socialist philosophy professor Cornel West, conservative Princeton law professor Robert P. George, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union Nadine Strossen and prominent liberal free speech attorney Floyd Abrams.

    It is one thing to state an ambitious purpose, but AFA members have formulated effective strategies. AFA Director of Operations Howard Muncy points out, its members embrace “the NATO-like principle of an attack on one being treated as an attack on all” – transcending any philosophical differences or disagreements between an academic who is subjected to attack and the colleagues coming to his or her aid. To the AFA, an assault on academic freedom anywhere is an assault on academic freedom everywhere.

    When professors or scholars find themselves under siege for exercising their First Amendment rights, the AFA will raise funds to support any necessary litigation on their behalf. And it carries out this defense without endorsing any content. In just two years, the AFA has supported 13 cases. During that same time period, it expanded its membership from 217 founding members to more than 700 practicing academics today, a credit to their strategy of refusing to choose ideological sides.

    This is also why the John and Daria Barry Foundation chose to help protect academic freedom by becoming AFA’s first donor.

    “To carry out their mission, scholars must be free to pursue the truth,” Daria Barry emphasized. “Our foundation helped to create the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) to ensure that professors who are unfairly censored can find a common source of strength by banding together with their peers from across the political spectrum.”

    And it’s not only the scholars who benefit, notes Barry. “In today’s climate, the AFA serves to recall universities—and their broader communities—to their first duty to their students: to pursue the truth,” she said.

    Alumni Organize to Support Free Speech at Institutions of Higher Education

    It takes courage for a faculty member to risk the comfort of his or her position in opposing politically charged attacks on academic freedom – courage which not every professor or scholar who cherishes free inquiry will be willing to exhibit. But alumni are significantly less vulnerable.

    With this in mind, graduates of Cornell University, Davidson College, Princeton University, the University of Virginia and Washington and Lee University formed the Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA) in 2021, allying with the Cornell Free Speech Alliance, Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse, Princetonians for Free Speech, UVA’s Jefferson Council and Washington and Lee’s Generals Redoubt.

    According to AFSA Chairman Emeritus Edward Yingling, the group is working to establish individual speech alumni groups at colleges and universities, then helping them grow and thrive. Like the AFA, AFSA does not discriminate based on ideology in defending the rights of faculty and students.

    “In the current environment of intolerance of thought, our colleges and universities are becoming monocultures. They’re losing their reason for being,” said Yingling. “So our job is multi-faceted. We shine a spotlight on any objectionable actions against faculty or students. … But that’s just one element of what we do.”

    AFSA is building a list of alumni across the country who support its mission, extending support to faculty and students so they do not feel isolated and taking part in events with third party groups, including partnerships between the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), Braver Angels and BridgeUSA to encourage depolarization and respectful engagement among students on divisive issues. At present, AFSA boasts 15 member alumni groups actively engaged with their alma maters with an ambitious goal of increasing that number to 40 by the end of the year.

    The Stanton Foundation, which primarily educates at-risk children and promotes adoption, provided AFSA with its initial grant. Stanton Foundation Program Director Laurie Slap applauded AFSA’s “thoughtful, coherent approach” to growing its membership and influence as an “umbrella group that is bringing together different organizations,” citing support for AFSA from MIT’s Free Speech Alliance. That organization was founded in 2021 when University of Chicago geophysicist Dorian Abbot was disinvited from delivering MIT’s prestigious John Carlson Lecture. The invitation was rescinded following a student outcry over a Newsweek article Abbot co-wrote arguing that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives on campus, among other things, violate the “ethical and legal principle of equal treatment.”

    Digital Platform Provides “Intellectual Community Building”

    Another nonprofit pursuing freedom of thought – albeit in a different manner – is the Institute for Humane Studies, which supports scholars applying classical liberal principles to today’s most pressing challenges. Ryan Stowers, executive director of the Charles Koch Foundation, which has long been one of IHS’s financial supporters, is excited about its plans to make full use of technology in the fight to promote robust scholarly discourse.

    “In the last five years the attacks on scholarly freedom have escalated to a level you wouldn’t have expected,” Stowers said. “That’s a reflection of increased intolerance in the exchange of ideas elsewhere in society. But universities are meant to be above this, to be a safe place where the entire array of ideas can be discussed. Instead they’re now under constant threat.”

    “Philanthropy has to think through the strategy of how to fight that threat,” said Stowers, “and IHS has one of the most innovative approaches.”

    For more than 60 years, IHS has been connecting scholars across the “humane disciplines” of economics, history, law, philosophy and political science through interdisciplinary programs around the ideas and institutions that underlie free, open and prosperous societies. Economist Emily Chamlee-Wright, the organization’s president and CEO, described the new IHS initiative as a digital gathering place that, once fully developed, will break down intellectual silos and help scholars do their best work.

    According to Chamlee-Wright, like IHS’s traditional programs, which will continue, the digital gathering place will attract scholars seeking bottom-up solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges in a context of intellectual humility and openness.

    Education has long been central to America’s success in numerous fields from medicine and the advanced sciences to the globally competitive field of computer technology plus law and economics. Defending and promoting the freedom to learn, teach or research without ideologically motivated interference, bullying or other threats is critical to any effort focused on restoring or reforming older higher education institutions or providing new pathways to opportunity.

    Through philanthropy and its partnership with these dedicated nonprofits, we are witnessing support for independent, critical thinking on campuses and beyond, including innovative technology that empowers scholars and faculty researchers to share ideas openly, and ultimately, to strengthen our free society.

    For those concerned about what’s being taught to our next generation of leaders headed into the business world, government agencies, medical community, and yes, the classroom as educators, we must remember that stifling debate, diverse viewpoints and the ability of students, faculty and staff to engage with them does not create a skilled practitioner, a bold innovator or even a savvy voter. Instead, it results in students being woefully unprepared for the “real world” and without the skills needed to succeed when they bid their campuses farewell.

    Thomas McArdle was a White House speechwriter for President George W. Bush and is a longtime political journalist. He was speechwriter for Export-Import Bank of the United States Chairman Kimberly Reed during the Trump Administration and was senior writer for Investor’s Business Daily. He writes a column for the Epoch Times and contributes to IssuesInsights.com.