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The View from the Top

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Edward H. Berman*
Affiliation:
University of Louisville

Abstract

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Type
Essay Reviews
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1. Curti, Merle, “The History of American Philanthropy as a Field of Research,” American Historical Review, 62 (1956).Google Scholar

2. Representative of the viewpoint of the right is Wormser, Rene A., Foundations, Their Power and Influence (New York, 1968); of the left, Horowitz, David and Kolodney, David, “The Foundations: Charity Begins at Home,” Ramparts, 7 (April 1968); and Horowitz, David, “Sinews of Empire,” Ramparts, 7 (May 1968).Google Scholar

3. See, for example, Commission on Foundations and Private Philanthropy, Foundations, Private Giving, and Public Policy: Report and Recommendations (Chicago, 1972); and Cuninggim, Merrimon, Private Money and Public Service: The Role of Foundations in American Society (New York, 1972).Google Scholar

4. See particulary the essays in Arnove, Robert F. (ed.), Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad (Boston, 1980).Google Scholar

5. Cf. the recent conclusions contained in Weischadle, David E., “Carnegie: A Case Study in How Foundations Make Decisions,” Phi Delta Kappan (October, 1977):108, viz., “Until recently, when a black, several women (from the professions), and a union official were added, the Carnegie board of trustees was predominantly male, well over 40 in average age, white, Protestant, and involved in business, law, banking, or the operation of other foundations. The members lived in the northeast, and with few exceptions were graduates of Harvard and Yale—in some cases both.” A similar conclusion is reached in Whitaker, Ben, The Philanthropoids: Foundations and Society (New York, 1974), pp. 88–90.Google Scholar

6. Jones, Thomas Jesse, Negro Education, A Survey of the Private and Higher Schools for Colored People in the United States, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1917).Google Scholar

7. Jones, Thomas Jesse, Education in Africa: A Study of West, South, and Equatorial Africa, by the African Education Commission (New York, 1922); and his Education in East Africa: A Study of East, Central and South Africa by the Second African Education Commission under the auspices of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, in cooperation with the International Education Board (London, 1925).Google Scholar

8. The way in which this is accomplished is a major concern of Berman, Edward H., The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy: The Ideology of Philanthropy (Albany, 1983).Google Scholar

9. See, for example, Karier, Clarence J., “Testing for Order and Control in the Corporate Liberal State,” in Karier, Clarence, Violas, Paul, and Spring, Joel (eds.), Roots of Crisis: American Education in the Twentieth Century (Chicago, 1973); and Marks, Russell, The Idea of I.Q. (Washington, D.C., 1982).Google Scholar

10. See, for example, Bourdieu, Pierre and Passeron, Jean-Claude, Reproduction: In Education, Society, and Culture (Beverly Hills, 1977); their The Inheritors: French Students and their Relations to Culture (Chicago, 1979); Gouldner, Alvin W., The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology: The Origins, Grammar, and Future of Ideology (New York, 1976); his The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class (New York, 1979); and Spitzberg, Irving G. (ed.), Universities and the International Distribution of Knowledge (New York, 1980).Google Scholar

11. Kerr, Clark, The Uses of the University (New York, 1963), p. vii. Cf. Bledstein, Burton, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York, 1976).Google Scholar

12. Birnbaum, Norman, “The Problem of a Knowledge Elite,” in his Toward a Critical Sociology (New York, 1971), p. 416. My emphasis.Google Scholar

13. Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York, 1976), especially pp. 203213. See also Darknell, Frank A., “The Carnegie Philanthropy and Private Corporate Influence on Higher Education,” in Arnove, , Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism .Google Scholar

14. Hall, Peter Dobkin, “Philanthropy as Investment,” History of Education Quarterly, 22 (Summer 1982):193194. To support this point Hall cites the studies of Noble, David F., America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism (New York, 1977); and Ewen, Stuart, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Roots of the Consumer Culture (New York, 1976). See also Ali Mazrui, The African University as a Multinational Corporation: Problems of Penetration and Dependency,” Harvard Educational Review, 45 (May 1975).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. Pifer, Alan, “Responses to Edward H. Berman,” Harvard Educational Review, 49 (May 1979).Google Scholar

16. This problem was just below the surface of the debate that was aired in the pages of The New York Review of Books in 1977 over Harvard University's role vis-à-vis its faculty during the McCarthy era. At issue was one of the volumes commissioned by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, Seymour Martin Lipset and David Riesman's Education and Politics at Harvard. In his review Sigmund Diamond quotes Carnegie Foundation and Carnegie Corporation president Alan Pifer's assessment of the work of the Commission, which according to Pifer, “has been dispassionate, objective, fair-minded, factually based, and imbued with a sense of pragmatic realism.” The thrust of Diamond's article, charging Harvard's collusion with the FBI during the McCarthy era to ferret out ex-communists and “sympathizers” from the university's faculty, is that the book's description of the events of the period was not objective, fair-minded, or factually-based. See hisVeritas at Harvard,” The New York Review of Books (April 28, 1977): 1317. A discussion of the book in question is the subject of Gruber, Carol S., “The View from the Harvard Yard,” History of Education Quarterly, 19 (Summer 1979).Google Scholar

17. British social commentator Laski, Harold J. addressed this issue over fifty years ago, after spending time observing the relationship between American universities and the foundations of the day. SeeFoundations, Universities, and Research,” in Laski, Harold J., The Dangers of Disobedience and Other Essays (New York and London, 1930).Google Scholar

18. A good example of the unacknowledged ideological bias woven into the fabric of a work is Ravitch, Diane, The Revisionists Revised: A Critique of the Radical Attack on the Schools (New York, 1978). In an incisive review of Ravitch's reputedly objective study, Michael Katz uncovers the previously unacknowledged sponsorship of her work by the prestigious and seemingly objective National Academy of Education, which, he implies, was less interested in scholarly detachment than in disseminating and legitimizing its perspective through her book. See Katz's “An Apology for Educational History,” Harvard Educational Review, 49 (May 1979).Google Scholar