Conversations with Crosby: Jane Chu on How Arts and Humanities Unite Us
Conversations with Crosby is an ongoing series of discussions with special guests on the importance of our cultural institutions in preserving heritage and sharing ideas.
“There are two distinct languages. There is the verbal, which separates people… and there is the visual that is understood by everybody.” Yaacov Agam
What is the role of the arts and humanities in helping to understand and mediate the nation’s challenges? Over the past year, our nation has faced a myriad of struggles: health and safety risks and loss with the COVID-19 pandemic, struggles for racial justice and equality, and economic suffering gaps in our society that existed before 2020, but were exacerbated by it.
Sonal Shah Tapped to Lead the Asian American Foundation
TAAF
Sonal Shah was President Obama’s first director of the White House’s Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.
The Asian American Foundation
Sonal Shah, a professor and founding executive director of the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown University, has been named president of this new foundation. Shah was President Obama’s first director of the White House’s Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.
The foundation was created with an initial $125 million in donations from its board of directors, and it intends to raise additional money to make grants to Asian American and Pacific Islander organizations and causes over the next five years.
Biden Aides Quietly Say His Tax Increases Would Help Charities
The administration has been making the case to allies that to avoid paying the additional taxes the president has proposed, wealthy Americans would give more to nonprofits.
President Biden taking questions about the American Rescue Plan at the White House on Wednesday. Credit.Doug Mills/The New York Times
May 6, 2021
WASHINGTON President Biden’s plan to raise taxes on high earners and the wealthy is likely to entice more rich Americans to give property or other assets to charity before they die in order to avoid large tax bills, a top administration official told nonprofit leaders last week in a private conference call.
Do donors have too much influence over universities?
“I scarcely know anybody who works in the academy these days who isn’t concerned about donors’ influence,” Professor Denise Réaume told me resignedly. “It’s almost unheard of for someone to make a big money gift that is not targeted in some way. Nobody calls up a university and says, “Here’s $20 million, now go do good stuff with it”.
For this University of Toronto (UT) law professor as well as for Vincent Wong, a Toronto lawyer and former lecturer at the university’s law school, Exhibit A for undue donor influence is not the expected perk of naming of a building – as it is in so many American colleges and universities which have accepted gifts with strings attached from foundations such as Charles Koch Foundation.
A philanthropic drive to aid Black women is gaining momentum
HALELUYA HADERO, AP Business Writer
April 22, 2021
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Tarana Burke, founder and leader of the #MeToo movement, stands in her home in Baltimore on Oct. 13, 2020. Black women and girls are now the focus of several high-profile philanthropic initiatives as major donors look to address the racial wealth gap and the long-chronicled funding disparity for organizations serving minority women. Teresa Younger, who helped launch The Black Girl Freedom Fund and its 1Billion4BlackGirls campaign in September with other Black women in philanthropy and activism including Me Too Founder Tarana Burke said that donors should be cautious about making assumptions in their giving.Steve Ruark/AP