0:01 Darren Walker is the president of the
0:04 Ford Foundation in his new book from
0:07 generosity to justice a new gospel of
0:10 wealth he lays out a bold new vision for
0:12 philanthropy in the 21st century our
0:14 Walter Isaacson sat down with him to
0:16 discuss his route from humble beginnings
0:19 to influential philanthropists and this
0:20 conversation is part of our ongoing
0:23 initiative about poverty jobs and
0:25 economic opportunity in America it is called
0:26 called
0:30 chasing the dream so you grow up poor
0:34 black gay fatherless and I think rain
0:39 Louisiana and then Liberty Texas how
0:41 grateful are you for that I am enormous
0:46 ly grateful and very mindful of the fact
0:49 that I grew up in a country that
0:52 believed in me that cheered me on and
0:55 that ensured that I would be a success
0:58 in life and so every day I wake up I
1:02 feel gratitude to this nation and for
1:04 the opportunity to live in a country
1:08 that made possible my dreams you learned
1:11 he said at one point from being a busboy
1:14 that it really helped form your idea of
1:16 social justice tell me about that
1:19 experience I think being a busboy was
1:22 the job that prepared me to be president
1:25 of the Ford Foundation today because as
1:27 a 13 year old black kid in a southern
1:32 town working in a restaurant I was the
1:36 lowest person on the pole I was the
1:38 lowest a person in the organization and
1:40 you and the dishwasher me and the
1:44 dishwasher but I was also invisible as I
1:47 walked around the periphery of that room
1:50 cleaning up after the guests the
1:53 customers my job was to be invisible and
1:56 people didn't look at me didn't
1:58 acknowledge me other than to give me the
2:01 things they no longer wanted and that
2:05 invisibility gave me insight on what it
2:08 feels like to be marginalized and what
2:11 it feels like to be invisible today the
2:13 work that we do at the Ford Foundation
2:16 is about lifting up those people who
2:19 often feel invisible left out and left
2:22 behind by society and ensuring that
2:25 their voices are heard their
2:28 perspectives are felt and that their
2:31 participation in our democracy is
2:33 assured when you took over the Ford
2:36 Foundation you did just that which is
2:39 let's focus like a laser on the problems
2:43 of inequality was that changing the
2:45 nature of the Ford Foundation and what
2:48 did you do that didn't change the nature
2:51 it brought more discipline to what had
2:54 become a quite far-flung set of
2:57 programmatic activities and what we did
2:59 through the process of determining
3:03 inequality as a great threat was to
3:06 really excavate our mission going back
3:10 to Henry Ford's imperative of improving
3:12 and strengthening democracy as one of
3:15 the reasons why he created the Ford
3:19 Foundation so we believe that the
3:22 greatest threat to democracy is
3:26 hopelessness because hopelessness as a
3:30 function of growing inequality plays a
3:36 deep role in how optimistic we are how
3:39 much we believe that the American Dream
3:44 is still possible indeed hope is the
3:47 oxygen for the American Dream and when
3:50 hope is ex-fix eiated
3:53 the American Dream is ex-fix eiated
3:56 so we have work to do in this country to
3:59 build a sense of hope and a sense of
4:02 optimism and to rebuild in people a
4:06 belief that that mobility escalator that
4:09 I got on and rode as far as it could
4:11 take me as far as my ambition and my
4:15 hard work would let it that that's still
4:18 possible your tale is very much one of a
4:21 land of opportunity coming from the
4:23 small towns that you did Wall Street and
4:26 now head of the Ford Foundation do you
4:27 think that
4:30 matter of opportunity has gotten a
4:32 little bit harder these days you know so
4:35 why absolutely the latter has gotten
4:38 harder and I think the rungs are farther
4:41 apart than they were when I was young to
4:43 get on the mobility escalator there are
4:45 things that help you get on and
4:49 determine how fast you will ride it so
4:52 education I was fortunate I went to
4:55 public schools I'm proud to say I have
4:57 never attended a day of private
4:59 schooling in my life all the way through
5:02 law school I had access to very high
5:05 quality public schools I had the Pell
5:09 Grant and private philanthropy that
5:14 financed my education I had access to
5:17 after school and Head Start programs and
5:20 summer jobs programs often funded by the
5:23 government and so it is true that today
5:26 it is much harder to finance that
5:29 on-ramp because education costs are
5:33 higher College of course today there is
5:37 more debt from student loans than from
5:39 mortgages so we have an entire
5:42 generation of young people who rather
5:44 than thinking about buying a home or
5:50 starting a business are burdened with
5:53 $100,000 of student loan debt and so the
5:57 mobility escalator is both harder to get
5:59 on and because of the way the economy
6:03 today is structured it is slowing down
6:07 or for some it stopped until the Ford
6:09 Foundation you've made this a focus what
6:12 can we do if we were to regain that
6:14 optimism we had when you were young and
6:17 I was young what could we do to help
6:20 that mobility escalator first we have to
6:22 make public investments in public
6:26 education particularly higher education
6:29 which is the key
6:34 I think facilitator an on-ramp to that
6:38 mobility escalator so today higher
6:40 education is our
6:43 affordable for far too many people so to
6:45 think about education we have to
6:49 consider the way in which the economy is
6:55 structured and why today are are the
6:58 highest income people reaping the
7:01 greatest benefits at a much higher rate
7:03 than middle-income and lower-income
7:04 people and that's about tax policy
7:07 that's about challenges that we
7:09 capitalists don't like talking about
7:12 like regulation and redistribution
7:14 because we haven't is that an inherent
7:17 problem in capitalism in your mind that
7:20 the rich will get richer it is a
7:22 challenge in capitalism but it's not
7:26 inherent we have designed a system a
7:30 capitalist system today that distorts
7:33 capitalism and does not generate the
7:35 kind of shared prosperity that you and I
7:38 knew growing up well one of the things
7:40 that happened is corporations shifted
7:42 their focus from thinking they had
7:44 multiple stakeholders to thinking that
7:47 they only had to focus on a return to
7:49 the shareholder do you think we have to
7:52 move away or move back to a form of
7:54 corporate and business that looks after
7:57 its workers and its communities I think
8:00 you're absolutely right your diagnosis
8:04 that they moved from a what I would call
8:08 a stakeholder paradigm to a shareholder
8:11 paradigm and of course Milton Friedman's
8:15 article and essays on this made freedom
8:18 Friedman famous but also created I think
8:21 and contributed to the kind of single
8:24 mindedness of the investor community
8:28 that diminished the needs and priorities
8:31 of the other stakeholders employees
8:33 customers and the communities where
8:36 corporations do business were left
8:39 behind in pursuit of return on
8:41 investment for the shareholders and
8:43 that's a problem that contributed to
8:47 corporations doing away with their
8:50 pension programs doing away with the
8:52 profit sharing programs you have this
8:54 fascinating book out that's going to be
8:57 the great manifesto for our era when it
8:59 comes to philanthropy it's called from
9:02 generosity to justice and new gospel of wealth
9:03 wealth
9:05 let me start with the subtitle because
9:08 the original gospel of wealth was Andrew
9:11 Carnegie somebody who was both a
9:14 rapacious corporate businessman but also
9:17 believed in things like higher education
9:19 institutions things that he had to build
9:22 tell me about Carnegie's gospel of
9:27 wealth in 1889 Andrew Carnegie wrote the
9:31 Gospel of wealth as you say he was a
9:34 rapacious capitalist he was a reviled
9:37 capitalist but he also knew that there
9:40 was something that he could do to make a
9:42 difference in the lives of people who
9:44 weren't as advantaged and out of this
9:48 new gospel came a set of ideas that led
9:51 to the creation of the Carnegie free
9:53 libraries across the country because he
9:58 believed that literacy was an important
10:01 intervention in the lives of people and
10:04 that illiteracy was a root cause of the
10:07 poverty that we saw at that time he
10:11 believed that generosity was important
10:14 and that operating out of his religious
10:17 beliefs it was critical that he be
10:19 generous and charitable fast forward to
10:23 2020 it's not enough to be generous and
10:29 charitable we know too much today we are
10:34 a more inclusive democratic society we
10:36 have made social advances that Carnegie
10:40 could never have imagined the progress
10:46 of women people of color LGBT today the
10:51 imperative is not charity and generosity
10:54 the imperative is justice and dignity
10:58 and the question for philanthropist of
11:05 this digital era I believe is what are
11:07 you doing
11:11 to contribute to more justice in society
11:14 you know with Carnegie he breaks the
11:16 Homestead Strike in other words workers
11:18 who what he cuts the wages of his
11:21 workers people are killed by you know
11:24 his guards protecting his steel mills
11:26 and that he makes the money and gives it
11:28 away to great institutions in some ways
11:31 your book is saying that model is not
11:34 something we need in 2020 that model is
11:37 not enough now again Carnegie and
11:45 Rockefeller were just remarkably reviled
11:46 I don't know what there's no other word
11:49 they were malefactors of great wealth
11:52 Teddy Roosevelt longing indeed say that
11:55 in in fact rockefeller filed a charter
11:59 in 1908 to establish the Rockefeller
12:02 Foundation and it took him five years to
12:05 convince Congress to give him a charter
12:08 to give his fortune away because
12:10 Congress felt that there was nothing
12:13 good that could come of Rockefellers
12:16 wealth so these were men who lived in a
12:20 time when the idea that you do bad
12:23 things and then you amass wealth and you
12:26 give back and that's your pittance I
12:29 don't think today that's enough I think
12:33 today the scrutiny that that I think
12:35 goes into asking questions how are you
12:38 making your money are you making your
12:41 money ethically are you making your
12:42 money because you're investing in
12:45 prisons and ammunition
12:49 I think wealthy people entrepreneurs
12:52 captains of industry are under a kind of
12:54 scrutiny that they were not during
12:56 Carnegie and Rockefellers day and I
12:58 think that's a good thing you deal with
12:59 a lot of philanthropists and in some
13:01 ways they get comforted by that charity
13:04 they feel they've been philanthropic and
13:05 so it's made up for some of the things
13:07 they do do you feel sometimes you have
13:11 to discomfort them to say let me play a
13:12 little bit more on your guilt and say
13:15 there are deep social issues you have to
13:17 face not just giving away money in a
13:20 charitable way in the book I talk of
13:23 getting uncomfortable that this new
13:27 gospel if you believe in it you actually
13:31 embrace the discomfort charity and
13:34 generosity actually make the donor feel
13:37 good so when you put the money in the
13:40 bucket it the Salvation Army in front of
13:42 Bloomingdale's during the holidays you
13:44 feel good about yourself giving through
13:47 this new gospel doesn't always make you
13:50 feel good because rather than giving
13:53 money for a homeless shelter we have to
13:56 ask ourselves why is there homelessness
13:59 in the richest nation in the world in a
14:03 city like New York which has a housing
14:08 crisis why do we have 25 million-dollar
14:12 condominiums for sale and the real
14:14 estate developers received a tax
14:18 abatement in order to be able to build
14:20 these so how is it that we live in a
14:24 society where wealthy developers and
14:27 wealthy purchasers are benefiting from
14:31 an abatement in their taxes on their
14:34 real-estate Holdings when homeless
14:36 people are literally on the streets in
14:38 front of those 50 million dollar
14:42 apartments we have to ask ourselves what
14:45 kind of nation do we live in that allows
14:48 that and how have I contributed to this
14:50 outcome and so for the donor
14:54 it does require holding up the mirror
14:57 and that's a very hard thing because
14:59 most Americans who are successful today
15:03 believe in the idea of meritocracy how
15:07 else did they become successful because
15:08 we have so many people who are
15:10 successful who did start from very
15:13 humble beginnings and therefore it's
15:16 hard for those people to believe that
15:19 there's something inherently unjust
15:23 about America they believe that America
15:27 actually works and for them america has
15:30 worked but unfortunately for far too
15:33 many america is not working in
15:36 more and that's what we've got to change
15:39 you also have been working with the Chan
15:41 Zuckerberg Foundation on a variety of
15:44 project tell me about some of those well
15:46 see the eyes doing some remarkable work
15:50 using technology and technologists for
15:54 good so whether it's work on the
15:58 environment or in the bio sciences or
16:01 even in criminal justice reform most
16:04 recently they are developing technology
16:09 and using innovative approaches to
16:12 accelerate discovery and the sciences to
16:15 reduce the number of people who are
16:19 incarcerated these are really remarkable
16:22 initiatives that are happening in
16:24 partnership with organizations like the
16:26 Ford Foundation and others so I'm
16:28 actually really encouraged by this new
16:31 generation of philanthropists that czi
16:34 represent but isn't that another example
16:37 in some ways of you know people making
16:40 money in ways that may not have a
16:42 benefit of society like Facebook and
16:44 what it's done to our politics and then
16:46 trying to use that to give back I mean
16:48 do you have to sort of question where
16:49 the money came from in terms of Facebook
16:51 and whether Facebook has been good for
16:53 our society well I think the question of
16:55 whether Facebook has been good for our
16:58 society and any number of the new
17:01 technology companies is a very fair one
17:05 that we support organizations who are
17:07 pressing those questions around privacy
17:11 around money and politics which which
17:14 manifests of course on technologies like
17:17 Facebook but at the end of the day we've
17:19 got to ensure that every philanthropic
17:21 dollar is put to the best and highest
17:25 use and thank you very much thank you
17:26 very mu but auch to you
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