by Chris Karlstack at Karlstack Substack
After writing an article this summer exposing corruption at the Berkeley Economics Department, I was approached by a group of whistleblowers at the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program to tell their story. To corroborate it, they sent me a trove of archived emails on their private listserv going as far back as 2008. A listserv is a basic tool that gives an organization the ability to send an email to a group of people. Here is a link to a representative sample of their listserv emails that you can download right now as a .zip file.
Maybe I have more emails in my back pocket, that I will release later. Maybe I have worse emails. Maybe I will write a second article. Maybe I still have a smoking gun.
After reading these emails, listening to these whistleblowers speak, and reading about the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program, I was surprised this this is a classified as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Here is a link to the IRS Exemption Requirements. To receive its favorable tax treatment, the 501(c)(3) non-profit organization “must not deviate from its purpose or mission”. The Ford Foundation lists “Creativity and Free Expression” as a central part of its core mission, front and center. In practice, the Ford Foundation is one of the greatest enemies of “Free Expression” in the world! I also believe that — if properly investigated — they would run afoul of the regulations regarding “The organization must not be organized or operated for the benefit of private interests” and “Section 501(c)(3) organizations are restricted in how much political and legislative (lobbying) activities they may conduct”.
Many in the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program feel betrayed and disgruntled, because in accepting funding from the Ford Foundation many years ago, they believed this society of scholars was open-minded and diverse in their thinking and scholarship. Once again, perhaps they mistakenly believed this because “Creativity and Free Expression” is a core mission of the Fellowship program. These whistleblowers can’t speak up publicly because any Fordie (they call themselves “Fordies”) who dares do anything other than pledge full-throated fealty to the woke party line is systematically harassed, doxxed, and blackballed from academia. If you cross them, their motus operandi is to send your LinkedIn profile to their entire listserv so that everyone may harass your current and former employer. Case in point, when I reached out to them for comment on this article, they responded with an email calling me a “fascist” and a “white supremacist”, before reflexively sharing my LinkedIn with their thousands of members:…
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