Ford Foundation Underwrites Diversicrats

Campus Report ^ | January 30, 2008 | Malcolm Kline

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Ford Foundation Underwrites Diversicrats

by: Malcolm A. Kline, January 30, 2008

Believe it or not, a left-leaning foundation has taken notice of the risk to free speech on American college campuses. “Too often, academic freedom principles have been twisted to defend the freedom of students not to hear views that might cause offense, and the focus has become freedom from hearing rather than a freedom to express controversial perspectives,” the Ford Foundation’s Alison Bernstein said at Harvard last year.

Unfortunately, the Foundation’s solution was to offer grants to the very people who make that twist—college administrators. “Of the 2,400 university presidents who were sent invitations, an astonishing 700 replied with proposals—more than one in four institutions had responded,” Bernstein reported in the Fall 2007 Ford Reports...

“After the final proposals were reviewed, 27 institutions received $100,000 grants and another 16 received $10,000 grants.” If your guess is that the Ford Foundation bankrolled more of the type of programs that are already suppressing the sort of speech that Bernstein acknowledged the absence of, you may be onto something.

Some of the Foundation’s beneficiaries included:

• A half dozen plays at The Interactive Theatre at Portland Community College “highlighting discrimination based on religion, sexual orientation and other forms of bigotry. More than 1,600 students attended the performances.” Bernstein did not say whether attendance was mandatory.

• “As part of the Transforming Community Project, a five-year examination of the role of Emory University in slavery, segregation, integration and the civil rights movement in Atlanta, two summer seminars were held for faculty to learn about this research and design new syllabi....

• A “project at Mars Hill College in North Carolina” that “focuses on religion, sexual orientation and race.” ...

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Freedom from not hearing what you don't want to hear? I think they intend to saturate us with everykind of perversion until there is no one left to complain...

When Christianity becomes hate speech in the US just like in Canada - we will have been silent too long...

[NaughtiusMaximus]

To paraphrase PJO’Rourke; “I’m not saying the Ford Foundation is trying to destroy free enterprise, but they are chasing it around the barnyard with an axe.”