Ford Foundation Strikes Compromise With Universities on Academic Freedom

Define terrorism.

That’s what nine elite universities asked the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations to do last year, after the organizations added clauses to their grant agreements to ensure their money wasn’t filtering down to terrorist groups. In a joint protest, the universities deemed the language too vague, saying the stipulations would infringe on academic freedom.

Now the Ford Foundation has reached a compromise with the universities, with a “side letter” declaring its endorsement of academic freedom. Negotiations for a similar compromise are in the works with the Rockefeller Foundation.

The Ford Foundation had stipulated that grant recipients may not “promote or engage in violence, terrorism, bigotry, or the destruction of any state” or “make subgrants to any entity that engages in these activities.” The universities said the policy was too broad and could be used to deny political or cultural activities. The Ford Foundation’s “side letter” now defines that policy to apply to “the official speech and conduct of the university and to speech or conduct that the university explicitly endorses.”

The new provision has somewhat satisfied the nine universities, which are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale Universities.

“In the end, we accepted that we weren’t happy with the outcome,” says Richard P. Saller, provost at Chicago. “We decided, as a practical matter, that we could live with the language rather than forgo the grants.”

http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Volume 51, Issue 22, Page A24