Monuments Of Its Own Magnificence
Contra Yglesias, I try to be pretty conscientious about charitable giving. Perennial favorites include: Baith Israel Anshei Emes (my synagogue), The International Rescue Committee (the world’s premier organization devoted to assisting refugees from man-made and natural disasters), Technoserve (the worst-named charity in the world, devoted to helping third-world entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground and connect to the global market), The Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada (North America’s premier classical repertory company), The Nature Conservancy (the world’s largest private parks network and a global leader in traditional conservation efforts), and Democracy Prep Charter School (a charter school in Harlem focused on civic education whose board of trustees I chair).
My alma mater, Yale University, is not on the list – partly because they have more money than they know what to do with, partly because I’m still annoyed about the whole Lee Bass-Western Civ fracas from the 1990s, but also because, quite simply, Yale is neither an important part of my identity (which is, I think, an even more important reason why alumni give than the desire to improve the odds of their offspring attaining admission), nor pursuing a mission that I find especially compelling.
What saddens me the most about enormous bequests to organizations like Harvard or Yale is the poverty of the imagination of the givers. The elite university strikes me as precisely the kind of institution that is ripe for radical reinvention. People like Meg Whitman made their fortunes founding or leading companies that radically transformed sectors of the economy, and reaped enormous rewards for doing so. Why on earth wouldn’t they want to tackle philanthropic missions with the same seriousness? Why would they want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on fancy residences for students, when they could put not only their name but the stamp of their personalities on an institution in a way that really shapes the future?
In part, I’m harping on some of the same themes I sounded in my two posts about zoos. Where’s the passion in this gift? If Whitman gave Princeton all this dough just as a very expensive valentine to her beloved alma mater, well, there’s not much more to say: that’s a heck of a rock Princeton can wear on its finger, and most girls wouldn’t turn one down if offered. I just wish our plutocrats had better taste and judgement.
And, as well, more of a sense of mission. What, if it comes to that, is Princeton’s (or Yale’s) mission? I said above that I don’t give to Yale in part because I don’t find it pursuing a compelling mission – but does it have a mission at all? Whitman’s gift is an attempt to help Princeton win (or at least stay competitive) in an arms race for the allegiance of the next generation of the cognitive elite, an arms race being fought (in this instance) with bennies. How does such a race further the mission of Princeton, or any top-tier institution of higher education. What are these places for?
I’m not saying that there are only two choices here, Meg Whitman or Lucien Lucius Nunn. But couldn’t we have a bit more Nunn and a bit less Whitman?
What I love about Mr. Yglesias’ post is that, having identified a problem (which this certainly is), he turns immediately to government action as a solution:
“To me, to figure this out we’d need to have some serious estimates about the impact of restricting charitable deductions. How much new tax revenue are we talking about? If we kept the deduction in place for institutions aimed at helping the poor, how much charity would be redirected in their direction?”
Can anything, ANYTHING, be less than ideal without triggering some sort of government response? Is it really reasonable to assume that if rich people don’t donate to rich universities, then they will donate to soup kitchens? If donations to Harvard are just another expression of vanity, it seems to me that giving to a soup kitchen is a pretty poor substitute.
There is a reason that the left always reaches for government solutions- religious rhetoric of simple right and wrong is no longer available to them, so government approbation of socially beneficial behavior is where they express their moral impulse. Mr. Yglesias would do more good by sticking to his final assertion, “that if you’re considering making a large charitable donation in the near future, a big gift to an Ivy League university is one of the least socially useful applications of your cash imaginable” and leave it at that.
— Matthias · Jan 24, 11:00 PM · #
Some – a very few – donations to rich universities have social value. Recently someone gave big bucks to the Yale Music School so that it no longer charges tuition. Musicians mostly starve, no matter how fancy their education is, so any music lover has to think that allowing them to gain an education without going too deeply into debt is a valuable piece of philanthropy.
— JimB · Jan 24, 11:15 PM · #
Good thoughts Noah… and cool nexus of charitable contributions!
Matthias-
I would push back on your assumption about the left that- “ religious rhetoric of simple right and wrong is no longer available to them, so government approbation of socially beneficial behavior is where they express their moral impulse.” With regards to religious rhetoric, I think in recent years, the American left in politics has moved to reassert some sense of religious identity and rhetoric of right and wrong. See books by Jim Wallis, or even some of the guiding rhetoric behind the campaign of Barack Obama.
In fact, I would suggest that problem identification is inherently normatively driven, though not necessarily along religious norms (e.g. For Yglesias, suggesting that allocation of philanthropy ought to operate in a different fashion inherently implies a believed way that it ‘ought’ to be operating). The question on whether government action yields a more effective lining up to a ‘right’ view of the world versus another route is an empirical question. I wouldn’t be surprised if Yglesias would agree with Noah that one ought to donate with more passion, or with an enhanced imagination (as seen by his call to the super-wealthy to donate in different ways than to the university). I just think he takes an alternative path in his post to investigate the role of the government in shaping incentives for those not brimming over with the desire to take this imaginative and passionate route.
peter b
— Peter Boumgarden · Jan 25, 12:46 AM · #
Noah—I don’t mean this in the spirit of saying your causes are bad, but I think it’s important to distinguish between charity and other donations. The International Rescue Committee is obviously a charity, but I don’t think the Stratford Shakespeare Festival is. Both are probably good targets, but I think the distinction is important (if nothing else, think of how differently one would describe someone who was indifferent to contributing to the respective organizations).
Matthias—it’s a government solution because there’s already a freakin tax break involved. Yglesias is actually talking about getting the government halfway out of the business of supporting charity. It’s not reducing government involvement, but it’s not increasing it either.
— Justin · Jan 25, 03:10 AM · #
Justin – just to be clear: is the Stratford Festival more or less of a charity than Harvard? “Charity” may be a specifically loaded word – it’s a Christian term, for one thing. Are you saying that supporting not-for-profit cultural efforts is not philanthropic as such? Founding a museum – not philanthropy? What about endowing a school for the arts – not philanthropic? When does something cross the line from your perspective between being philanthropic and not?
In my view, the key is a question of mission. When an organization becomes bottom-line driven rather than mission-driven, it’s really no longer philanthropic, but rather a business. I think a very good case can be made that the nation’s major institutions of higher education have crossed the line. The Shakespeare festival? Maybe, but I don’t think so.
— Noah Millman · Jan 25, 03:46 AM · #
I have a good rule of thumb when it comes to giving: if they have an endowment of $1 billion or more, I politely decline the opportunity.
The problem is that the qualities that help make someone fabulously wealthy (and it’s probably worth noting that the majority of charitable donations are not made by the fabulously wealthy and do represent something other than just “vanity”) are not the same ones that make for “creative” and well-considered giving. Entrepreneurs may be very good at figuring out how to sell the next widget, but perhaps not so good at discerning that their alma mater isn’t exactly the most needy case at hand. What’s more, the more that big universities look like corporations, I’d guess that their very wealthy donors might become all that much more comfortable with donating to them. (How’s that for an awkward sentence?)
— Michael Simpson · Jan 25, 02:59 PM · #
Justin: I think I was a little quick on the draw there. A useful distinction might be drawn between philanthropy and charity. Both really mean something like “deeds of love to mankind in general” but their roots are different: the roots of “philanthropy” are classical, while the roots of “charity” are Christian. That is to say, “philanthropy” has to do with public-spiritedness, which is relatively impersonal, while “charity” has to do with loving your neighbor as yourself, a much more personal matter.
What you may be saying is that, while donating a painting to a museum is philanthropic (that painting can now give pleasure and enlightenment to the public at large, so you have benefitted humanity generally by your generosity), it’s not charity. By contrast, funding a soup kitchen is charity (because it involves a personal act of love – on the part of those who work in the soup kitchen, at least – that makes a difference in the lives of individuals who are truly needy). And I can get on board with that distinction.
But I’m not on board with a distinction that says, in effect, giving to serve people’s basic needs is charity, and giving to serve people’s higher needs is not. Feeding the soul counts. Shakespeare absolutely can change peoples’ lives, and I don’t think anyone who supports the arts should feel self-conscious about that support, nor should they wonder seriously whether the market alone will provide, because it never has – Shakespeare cared about ticket sales, but he also depended on patronage.
So: if the argument is that supporting the arts isn’t “public spirited” then I strongly disagree. If the argument is that supporting the arts isn’t “charity” in the sense of personal help for the needy, then I can agree with that, but I don’t think anyone should apologize for believing that man does not live by bread alone, and that support for the arts has a legitimate place in your “charitable portfolio” as it were. If the argument is that the government shouldn’t indirectly support the arts through the charitable deduction, then I disagree – and I would further argue that indirect support through the charitable deduction is far preferable to direct support by the government (Stratford, to its credit, gets very little direct government support; most of its revenue comes from ticket sales, and secondary sources of revenue are concessions and private donations).
— Noah Millman · Jan 25, 03:16 PM · #
Justin,
Of course you are right about the fact that government is already involved in subsidizing “charitable” donations. The problem with what Ygesias’ argument is that he sees some people using that tax exemption in ways that he doesn’t like, so he thinks we should step in to impose his normative preferences. I can’t help the fact that Meg Whitman wants to help out an Ivy League school that probably doesn’t need her help, but do we really want the government to step in and say which charitable donations are worthy and which aren’t? It’s the impulse toward micromanagement of private activity that I find troubling. Better to roll our eyes at such frivolous giving and move on rather than endow the government with the power to issue a moral seal of approval.
— Matthias · Jan 25, 05:13 PM · #
Peter B.- I think we are saying some of the same things; that the left and right both have normative preferences, but the left thinks the government ought to get more involved in enacting their preferences. I do not think that the left’s preference for government involvement is all that “empirical”; it seems to arise from a communitarian impulse which which is bound up in their sense of morality.
And while I think Obama is sincere and brilliant when he invokes religious sentiment, that makes him a bit of an exception on the left. I think Jim Wallis is a bit of a snake oil salesman (and I REALLY don’t think he is very representative of most people on the left.)
— Matthias · Jan 25, 05:22 PM · #
I wrote a fairly long response and I really thought I’d posted it. Oh well. Here goes another shot at it.
I should have been clear that the issue for me wasn’t legitimacy. The distinction between charity and other philanthropic projects is a distinction between different activities with different ways in which they are legitimated. I see charity as an obligation that attaches to us merely in virtue of our having the means to give aid. Beyond charity, I think we need a level of public spiritedness, as you call it, engagement with the arts, etc. But I think the latter category must in part motivate itself by reference to an individual’s personal projects and their evaluations of the cultural products in question. It’s always a more personal intervention to try and preserve or change some element of your own culture. (By my invocation of personal, I don’t mean to imply some sort of subjectivism. But explaining how that works would be too hard).
Lastly, I’m enough of a Kantian to not draw the distinction that charity comes from love for one’s neighbor, while philanthropy is public spiritedness. I think that even the cold-hearted man who acts from duty ought to be able to recognize a charitable obligation in my sense.
— Justin · Jan 28, 02:12 PM · #