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