Latest Entries
Resisting the Hierarchy of Evidence: Philanthropic Foundations and the Rise of RCTs
New Works in the Field

Resisting the Hierarchy of Evidence: Philanthropic Foundations and the Rise of RCTs

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Editors’ Note: Nicole P. Marwell and Jennifer E. Mosley discuss their new book, Mismeasuring Impact: How Randomized Controlled Trials Threaten the Nonprofit Sector (Stanford University Press, 2025). Recent scholarship has offered varying interpretations of what the appropriate function of foundations should be within a democracy. One dominant perspective highlights foundations’ contributions as drivers of social … Continue reading →

NGO Attacks Gone Wild and the Stirrings of MAGA Voluntarism
Current Events and Philanthropy

NGO Attacks Gone Wild and the Stirrings of MAGA Voluntarism

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Editors’ Note: HistPhil co-editor Benjamin Soskis reflects on two Congressional hearings held this summer scrutinizing federal funding of nonprofits and on the ways they helped to delineate right-wing antagonism to the nonprofit sector. I knew it wouldn’t exactly be a University of Chicago faculty seminar. The cheeky title of the hearing on the federal funding … Continue reading →

Taking the Long View: Gauging the Impact of Residential Fellowships in Art History over the Decades
Uncategorized

Taking the Long View: Gauging the Impact of Residential Fellowships in Art History over the Decades

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Editors’ Note: Nancy Um and Matthew Westerby introduce findings from the Scholars Data Project, hosted by the Association of Research Institutes in Art History, on residential fellowships sponsored by four leading research institutions in art history over the last six decades. Each summer, humanities scholars in the United States (and beyond) eagerly await the opening … Continue reading →

The Adoption Plan: The Politics of Aid in Modern China
New Works in the Field

The Adoption Plan: The Politics of Aid in Modern China

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Editors’ Note: Jack Neubauer discusses his new book, The Adoption Plan: China and the Remaking of Global Humanitarianism, its reframing of the politics of humanitarian aid from the perspective of aid’s recipients, and what lessons that might hold for contemporary humanitarianism. Since the dismantling of USAID in early 2025, there has been an outpouring of … Continue reading →

Assessing the political purpose doctrine and the perennial problem of charities and politics
New Works in the Field / Nonprofit legal history

Assessing the political purpose doctrine and the perennial problem of charities and politics

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Editors’ Note: Jane Calderwood Norton and Matthew Harding offer an assessment of the “political purpose doctrine,” which excludes organizations whose main purpose is political from charitable status, and examine how jurisdictions across the common law world have responded to it, based on their recent article in Legal Studies, “Charities and Politics: Where Did We Go … Continue reading →

Civil Society Under Threat in India and the U.S. What Can We Learn From Each Other?
Shrinking Space for Global Civil Society

Civil Society Under Threat in India and the U.S. What Can We Learn From Each Other?

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Editors’ Note: Ingrid Srinath asks what can the world’s oldest democracy and the world’s most populous democracy learn from each other about the shrinking civic space each is experiencing. On March 10, 2025, CIVICUS – the global civil society alliance I once led – added the U.S. to its Civic Monitor Watchlist of countries where … Continue reading →

Revisiting Henry Hansmann: Higher Ed Endowments, Financial Buffers, and Three Threats to Institutional Autonomy
Current Events and Philanthropy / Nonprofit legal history / Philanthropy and Education

Revisiting Henry Hansmann: Higher Ed Endowments, Financial Buffers, and Three Threats to Institutional Autonomy

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Editors’ Note: Allison Tait revisits Henry Hansmann’s 1990 law review article, Why Do Universities Have Endowments?, at a moment when university endowments face unprecedented threats, elevating Hansmann’s question about their fundamental purpose. Endowments, currently under attack and facing proposals that increase the tax on them in some higher education institutions from 1.4% to 21%, have … Continue reading →

From Philanthropoid to Foundation Professional: Reflecting on a Century of Staff Role Development in U.S. Private Foundations
New Works in the Field / Philanthropy

From Philanthropoid to Foundation Professional: Reflecting on a Century of Staff Role Development in U.S. Private Foundations

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Editors’ Note: Michele Fugiel Gartner offers an outline of the history of foundation staff role development, adapted from an article, co-written with Tobias Jung and Alina Baluch, published in The Foundation Review (2023). In today’s polarized political landscape, philanthropy is under increasing scrutiny, from calls for greater transparency to more profound challenges about legitimacy and … Continue reading →

The Slow Violence of Financial Counter-terrorism: A Quarter of Century of Muslim-led charities under the “Financial War on Terror”
Current Events and Philanthropy / Philanthropy and the State / Shrinking Space for Global Civil Society

The Slow Violence of Financial Counter-terrorism: A Quarter of Century of Muslim-led charities under the “Financial War on Terror”

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Editors’ Note: Samantha May discusses the “undocumented and unseen violence” that can be brought on by the regulation of Muslim charities as part of the “Financial War on Terror,” based on her 2021 book, Islamic Charity: How Charity Became Seen as a Threat to National Security (Bloombsury 2021). The year 2026 will mark a quarter of … Continue reading →

Carnegie Cultural Philanthropy and the Museum Movement
Archives and Knowledge Management / New Works in the Field

Carnegie Cultural Philanthropy and the Museum Movement

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Editors’ Note: Ian McShane introduces his new book, The Museum Movement: Carnegie Cultural Philanthropy and Museum Development in the Anglosphere, 1920-1940 (Routledge, 2024). The focus of Andrew Carnegie, and the foundation he established, on public libraries as agencies of personal development and civic uplift is well known. The Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY), though, … Continue reading →

A Republican Journey: From de Tocqueville to Coercive Voluntarism
Current Events and Philanthropy / Oral History/Testimonies

A Republican Journey: From de Tocqueville to Coercive Voluntarism

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Editors’ Note: Reflecting on the novel challenge the Trump administration now poses to civil society, David Morse reflects on the distance traveled from a White House gathering in 2003, one which defined the embrace of voluntarism by Trump’s last Republican predecessor, George W. Bush. Donald Trump’s war on the independence of the independent sector, combined … Continue reading →

“A Very Complicated Entity”: Lessons from the DOGE-United States Institute of Peace Showdown
Nonprofit legal history

“A Very Complicated Entity”: Lessons from the DOGE-United States Institute of Peace Showdown

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Editors’ Note: Ellen Aprill explains why the hybrid nature of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), both a government and nonprofit entity, was at the heart of the standoff between Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and USIP officials earlier this week. The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) is the latest target of President … Continue reading →

The New Populist Conservatism and Civil Society
History of Philanthropy and Conservatism / Philanthropy in the News

The New Populist Conservatism and Civil Society

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Editors’ Note: In the first of a two-part series, Michael E. Hartmann and William A. Schambra reflect on the populist New Right’s conception and relation to civil society. Generally, Republican presidents at least since Richard Nixon have positively characterized civil society and its role in American life. Recall, for example, some of the old standbys: … Continue reading →

Soskis on The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government
Current Events and Philanthropy / New Works in the Field / Philanthropy and the State

Soskis on The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government

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Editors’ Note: HistPhil co-editor Benjamin Soskis reviews Tyler O’Neil’s The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government (Bombardier Books, 2025).             I first heard about Tyler O’Neil’s The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government because of a small online controversy over its cover. It shows the tentacles of a giant … Continue reading →

How Informal Rules Are Used to Control Civil Society in Democracies: Lessons, and Warnings, from Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic
Shrinking Space for Global Civil Society

How Informal Rules Are Used to Control Civil Society in Democracies: Lessons, and Warnings, from Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic

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Editors’ Note: Merrill Sovner adapts a 2019 report she co-wrote to address a particular timely question: how informal rules can be used to constrict civil society, focused on the examples of Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic. In the current political moment in the United States, comparisons have been made to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, both … Continue reading →

Rothbard vs. Cornuelle: Understanding the New Right’s Antipathy toward Civil Society
Current Events and Philanthropy / History of Philanthropy and Conservatism

Rothbard vs. Cornuelle: Understanding the New Right’s Antipathy toward Civil Society

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Editors’ Note: John Miles Branch explores the feud between two prominent mid-century libertarian thinkers, Murray Rothbard and Richard Cornuelle, as a way of understanding the contemporary right’s growing antipathy toward nonprofits writ large. On February 6, the White House published a memo entitled “Advancing United States Interests When Funding Nongovernmental Organizations” that directs agency heads … Continue reading →

Consulting to Nonprofits: A Field in Transition
New Works in the Field

Consulting to Nonprofits: A Field in Transition

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Editors’ Note: Leah Reisman introduces some of the major themes from her new book, How Consultants Shape Nonprofits (Stanford University Press/ SSIR Books, 2024). Consultants are everywhere in the nonprofit sector. Ranging from multinational organizations like the Bridgespan Group to tiny single-person shops, nonprofits and philanthropic foundations of all kinds hire consultants to solve organizational … Continue reading →

Progressive Philanthropy and “The Groups” Critique
Current Events and Philanthropy / Philanthropy and Democracy / Philanthropy in the News

Progressive Philanthropy and “The Groups” Critique

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Editors’ Note: HistPhil co-editor Benjamin Soskis examines the place of philanthropy within the recently surging critique of “The Groups,” the term applied collectively to progressive advocacy organizations, which some have blamed for the Democrats’ November defeat. In weeks after November 5th, amidst the maelstrom of election post-mortems, an interview that journalist Ezra Klein conducted with … Continue reading →

A “towering figure” in the world of philanthropy: Remembering Joel Fleishman
In remembrance

A “towering figure” in the world of philanthropy: Remembering Joel Fleishman

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Editors’ Note: Damon Circosta and Kristin A. Goss celebrate the philanthropic legacy of Joel Fleishman, their colleague at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, who passed away on September 30, 2024. Photo credit: Chris Hildreth for Duke University. Joel Lawrence Fleishman, a towering figure in the world of philanthropy, public policy, and higher education, … Continue reading →

Legal Personhood and the Social Responsibility of Business: A Review of Williams’ Taming the Octopus
New Works in the Field / Nonprofit legal history

Legal Personhood and the Social Responsibility of Business: A Review of Williams’ Taming the Octopus

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Editors’ Note: Jared Berkowitz reviews Kyle Edward Williams’ Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation (Norton, 2024). Few issues unify Americans like the problem of corporate power. Those on the right rally against the “ideological agenda” of “woke” capital—corporations led by social justice crusaders masquerading as CEOs. Others, on the … Continue reading →