In adopting the new language, Ford was responding to charges that its money had been used by some grantees to advance anti-Israel and anti-Semitic agendas. These charges focused largely on the actions of Ford grantees at the 2001 United Nations Conference Against Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. As a result, Ford had also faced substantial pressure from the American Jewish community to address the issue.

“We made these changes in response to heightened concerns among the public and policymakers about violence, terrorism, and bigotry and the possible misuse of philanthropic money for these purposes,” three Ford vice presidents wrote in a January 2004 memo to grantees.

In October 2003, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., sent Ford President Susan V. Berresford a letter co-signed by 20 other congressmen urging her to ensure that Ford money was not supporting anti-Semitic activities. In a November 2003 meeting, Berresford promised Nadler that Ford would not fund anti-Semitic groups.

Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., also pushed for the Senate Finance Committee to conduct an investigation of Ford, its funding and its tax-exempt status.

In a five-page letter later that month, Berresford pledged to Nadler that she would improve the “oversight and transparency of Ford programming” with new grant language and stricter oversight of grantees.

“We now recognize that we did not have a complete picture of the activities, organizations and people involved,” she wrote. “Ford trustees, officers and staff were disgusted by the vicious anti-Semitic activity seen at Durban.”

Andre Oliver, Rockefeller’s communications director, said that their new language was intended to bring the foundation in line with Executive Order 13224—issued just after Sept. 11, 2001 to block funding to terrorist organizations—and other subsequent federal regulations on financing terrorism.

“We do have a legal obligation, as do all institutions and individuals, [to see] that our funds do not support terrorism,” Oliver says.

THE NEGOTIATIONS

Last April, Hyman, along with provosts from the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, Stanford, Columbia, Yale, Princeton and Cornell, sent the foundations a letter protesting the potential infringement on academic freedom posed by the new language. Several of the universities then moved ahead in talks with officials at Ford on compromise language to eliminate some of the most objectionable wording.

Saller notes, for instance, that the provision concerning the “destruction of any state” is “hypocritical language,” given the recent U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime.

Ultimately, Berresford killed an initial compromise, although the proposal had seemed to command the support of many universities and even some of her staff, Saller says.

“What we discovered in the end was that the president of Ford, Susan Berresford, was not prepared to accept our suggestion…I had the sense that not everyone at Ford was of one view,” Saller says. “We thought that the model of the MacArthur Foundation was a reasonable model, and that’s one that imposes a condition that we obey relevant antiterrorism legislation.”

“Her view as I understand it was that Ford didn’t want to give grants to any institution that didn’t accept their basic Ford values,” he adds. “What we found problematic about that is that her view of what constituted bigotry and our view of what constituted bigotry might differ.”

Hyman says that Harvard “did make several runs at language,” and that Berresford and University President Lawrence H. Summers discussed the issue. Summers says the two “had a good conversation about our views on anything that restricts academic freedom” but declined to comment further.