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HISTORY The Ford Foundation was founded in 1936 with grants from Henry Ford and his son Edsel Ford of the Ford Motor Company . Initially, the foundation was used to support Ford family causes, such as Henry Ford Hospital and Greenfield Village And Henry Ford Museum . After the deaths of Henry Ford in 1947 and Edsel Ford in 1943 , the Ford Foundation commissioned a report to determine how the foundation should continue. The committee, headed by H. Rowan Gaither , recommended that the foundation should commit to promoting peace, freedom, and education throughout the world. To provide funding for various projects, the board of directors decided to diversify the foundation's portfolio and gradually divested itself of its substantial Ford Motor Company stock between 1955 and 1974 . Through this divestiture, the Ford Motor Company became a Public Company in 1956 . Other than its name, the Ford Foundation has not had any connections to the Ford Motor Company nor the Ford family for over thirty years. Henry Ford II , the last remaining Ford on the board of directors, resigned from the foundation board in 1976 due to his frustration with what he believed was the foundation's arrogance and anti-capitalist attitudes. As of the end of the 2004 fiscal year, the foundation reported a total investment portfolio of $10.5 billion, giving out around $520 million in grants for the year. A list of grant recipients can be found on the Ford Foundation's grant database . CRITICS The Ford Foundation has been heavily criticized for many of the programs it funds for a variety of reasons. Certain radical critics such as former Binghamton University professor James Petras have criticized the Foundation for alleged links with the CIA . Petras has accused the Foundation of being a CIA front, citing former Foundation president Richard Bissell 's relationship with DCI Allen Dulles and involvement with the Marshall Plan during the 1950s . Petras further denounces the Ford Foundation for funding what he terms "anti- Leftist " Human Rights groups that "...do not participate in Anti-globalization and anti- Neoliberal mass actions" {Link without Title} Another American academic, Joan Roelofs, in ''Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism'' (State University of New York Press, 2003,) argues that Ford and similar foundations play a key role in co-opting opposition movements: "While dissent from ruling class ideas is labeled 'extremism' and is isolated, individual dissenters may be welcomed and transformed. Indeed, ruling class hegemony is more durable if it is not rigid and narrow, but is able dynamically to incorporate emergent trends." She reports that John J. McCloy , while chairman of the Foundation's board of trustees, "...thought of the Foundation as a quasi-extension of the U.S. government. It was his habit, for instance, to drop by the National Security Council (NSC) in Washington every couple of months and casually ask whether there were any overseas projects the NSC would like to see funded." Roelofs also charges that the Ford Foundation financed Counter-insurgency programs in Indonesia and other countries. The Ford Foundation is a major donor to Fairness And Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) , a self-described Progressive media watchdog group. The Ford Foundation has been criticized for its support of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Planned Parenthood and other Abortion-Rights groups. {Link without Title} |
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