The Fund for the Republic and Academic Freedom

• In Event: Philanthropy as Innovation, 1880-1950

Abstract

This essay considers a little studied story in the larger history of the interplay between philanthropic activity and free intellectual inquiry. It focuses on the contributions and the controversies surrounding the public positions and grant making of the Ford Foundation-sponsored Fund for the Republic (FFR) during the administration of its third president Robert M. Hutchins. The years considered here cover the founding and active period of the Fund in the early 1950s through the Congressional investigation of FFR and other tax-exempt organizations in 1953. This congressional scrutiny and its aftermath gave the FFR a national platform for discussing its work and for asserting its freedom to fund and the freedom of its recipients to study without external pressure.

Author

• Andrea Walton, Indiana University