The Ford Foundation, the nearly 90-year-old international philanthropy, is now in the cross hairs of the Trump administration, which has called for scrutiny of the organization as part of a broad crackdown on the left.
In her first interview in her new role, the incoming Ford Foundation president, Heather K. Gerken, said Friday that the foundation, which has a long history of supporting social justice and civil rights initiatives, was undeterred.
Her central priority, she said, was “defending the rule of law and protecting our election system.”
Though she would not formally start until the next day, her spacious office, high above the soaring atrium garden in the foundation’s headquarters near the United Nations, was filled with markers of her priorities and mementos of her past.
On one wall was a series of black-and-white photographs documenting the civil rights and suffragist movements. Another wall featured an unlikely image of Justice David H. Souter atop a human pyramid of his law clerks, including a young Ms. Gerken. Nearby, there was a photo of Ms. Gerken, who was until recently dean of Yale Law School, flanked by two of its more prominent graduates, Hillary Clinton and Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Before her eight years as dean, Ms. Gerken specialized in election law, both as a litigator and a scholar. She is the author of an influential 2009 book, “The Democracy Index.”
Vice President JD Vance, himself a Yale Law alumnus, has long been a harsh critic of philanthropies that he said support liberal causes, and of the Ford Foundation in particular.
“Why don’t we seize the assets of the Ford Foundation, tax their assets and give it to the people who’ve had their lives destroyed by their radical open-borders agenda?” he mused in 2021 as a Senate candidate.
He has not let up. In September, Mr. Vance denounced the foundation by name in the aftermath of the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, suggesting the administration could go after its nonprofit tax status.
Asked about Mr. Vance’s comments, Ms. Gerken responded with a history lesson.
“When the Ford Foundation funded the civil rights movement, it was a source of controversy,” she said. “It was incredibly important that we were protected in doing that work. When the Ford Foundation stood up to protect free speech and dissent during the McCarthy era, it was incredibly important that we had the right to do that.”
The targets of the administration’s attacks on its perceived enemies have included universities, law firms and the news media. Officials have indicated that they now plan to go after the tax-exempt status of liberal philanthropies. The Ford Foundation, with its $16 billion endowment, is expected to be a prime target.
John Palfrey, the president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, said Ms. Gerken was “an astonishingly good fit” at a fraught moment. “The challenges that face philanthropy and the rule of law that are unprecedented,” he said.
Ms. Gerken, for her part, insisted that protecting democracy is a nonpartisan goal.
“No one believes that an election system should not be free and fair,” she said. “No one believes that people should not have the right to speak. These are the bedrock commitments of any democracy, and it’s really important to hold fast to them.”
Asked for practical examples of what the foundation’s emphasis on protecting democracy would entail, Ms. Gerken pointed to securing the infrastructure of elections.
“We’re going to do everything we can,” she said, “to protect the ability of election administrators to carry out a free and fair elections, to make sure that every citizen has an opportunity to vote without fear or intimidation and that those votes are properly counted.”
Past financial support for election administration from donors has drawn criticism from conservatives. After Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated more than $400 million for such efforts in 2020, they were accused by Mr. Vance and others of scheming to elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president.
In 2022, a spokesman for the couple said their efforts had been “a one-time donation.”
Nathaniel Persily, a law professor at Stanford, said Ms. Gerken was the ideal choice for the job. But he was less sanguine about how her efforts would be received by a divided nation.
“Defining a public interest seems almost impossible in these polarized times,” he said. “This is all the more true for a foundation committed to supporting democracy and the rule of law — two values that now seem to mean very different things depending on the side of the political aisle in which one is sitting.”
Ms. Gerken’s admirers praised her fair-mindedness, resolve and talent for reaching across the aisle.
“I don’t really discuss partisan politics these days, but my guess is we have pretty different orientations,” Thomas B. Griffith, a retired federal appeals court judge appointed by President George W. Bush. But he added that he was “a huge fan” of hers for increasing intellectual diversity at Yale Law School.
“I found Heather to be very supportive of the Federalist Society,” Judge Griffith said, referring to the conservative legal group.
“Whether she succeeded in making conservatives feel comfortable at Yale, I don’t know,” he added. “But she certainly made an effort to do so.”
Ms. Gerken’s fellow election-law specialists said she faces a daunting task.
“The institutions of American democracy are being torched right now,” Professor Persily said. “The question for all of us working in the democracy space is to consider new institutions that might be built from the ashes.”
Pamela Karlan, another voting rights specialist at Stanford, said Ms. Gerken might set an example.
“The Ford Foundation could be a real leader in getting other parts of civil society to start speaking up and pushing back,” she said. “That’s already starting, but there isn’t a clear focal point and she might provide that.”
Ms. Gerken said she also took a long view.
“There isn’t just the work of now, of this moment, which is incredibly important,” she said. “We are also going to need to dream a new democracy into existence.”
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002.
The post Ford Foundation’s New Leader Vows to Protect Elections and the Rule of Law appeared first on New York Times.
