A Conversation with the Manhattan Institute’s John D. Sailer (Part 2 of 2)

The think-tank fellow and higher-education researcher talks to Michael E. Hartmann about the necessary scrutiny of and unfortunate lack of transparency in much philanthropically supported programs and projects in higher education, along with what he thinks conservative grantmakers can and should consider doing in the area.

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John D. Sailer is a senior fellow and directs higher-education policy at the Manhattan Institute. His research has led to significant policy changes at colleges and universities across the country. He is a former senior fellow at the National Association of Scholars.

Earlier this month, in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, Sailer wrote about “The Foundation That’s Bankrolling Radical Activists in Higher Ed”—the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. “The organization’s namesake made his mark on American politics a century ago as Treasury secretary,” according to Sailer. “Today, his foundation injects identity politics into our universities and bankrolls the career development of activist scholars.

“Mellon money, and the network of scholar-activists that it funds, has contributed to higher education’s radical left-wing bent,” he concludes. “University students, faculty, and administrators act like tenured activists in part because they’re recruited and funded to do just that. Arising from a decades-long personnel building project, the problem defies simple solutions” and “calls for a decades-long program of institutional renewal.”

Sailer was kind enough to join me for a recorded conversation last week. In the first part of our discussion, which is here, we talk about the Mellon Foundation’s and other grantmakers’ substantial support of the “scholar-activist pipeline” and how it tilts colleges and universities to the left.

The just less than 15-and-a-half-minute video below is the second part, during which we discuss the necessary scrutiny of and unfortunate lack of transparency in much philanthropically supported programs and projects in higher education, along with what he thinks conservative grantmakers can and should consider doing in the area.

“I think it’s worth taking a deep look at whether foundations have actually encouraged, through these pipeline programs, encouraged universities to actually break the law or knowingly funded programs that are that are, in fact, in some ways in violation of the law,” Sailer tells me.

In terms of transparency, “It’s very difficult to get any information about what the Mellon Foundation or any other group is doing,” he says. In the context of philanthropic support of higher ed, “The reason that I’ve been able to kind of crack the code just a little bit is because I have at my disposal state-level public-records laws that allow me to go to state universities and request grant proposals and grant progress reports.

“Some universities say that the grant was actually given to the university’s foundation,” however, Sailer adds, “which is not a public institution. It’s this other private entity, so they say it’s not a public record.” Private universities, moreover, are not themselves subject to public-records laws and regulations at all.

“There are a lot of questions that are left unanswered,” he says. “In some ways, it’s a black box and we just have to do our best to see what’s going on behind the scenes.”

What can and should conservative philanthropy do in higher ed, if anything? “Actually, to some extent, the people who developed” the liberal foundations’ model “have given conservatives a model that can be emulated,” Sailer answers.

“The goal that a lot of conservatives have is to restore academic freedom,” he continues,

and so you can’t just run roughshod over academic freedom in the way that a lot of these programs I think have, but at the same time, I think a lot of universities are especially open right now to the argument that there’s not really ideological diversity and doing things to increase ideological diversity would actually be really good.

Sailer cites civics institutes at the Universities of North Carolina, Florida, and Texas as good examples of the kind of programs worth consideration of support.

“Supporting something like that goes a long way, but that’s not the limit of what you can do,” he says. “I think places like the Mellon Foundation show us that they don’t just support one form of faculty hiring.” They also support “cluster hiring”—hiring multiple professors at once—as well as postdoctoral fellowships and administrator-development programs.

“There aren’t a lot of administrator-development programs in the United States,” according to Sailer,

that prioritize people who say, “Hey, I think the university is about the pursuit of truth” and “I think that the university should prioritize the classical liberal arts,” [and] “It should have a really strong robust, understanding of what excellence means.”

There are so many rungs of the ladder and those other rungs, I think, we are nowhere near the kind of endpoint where we’ve developed out as many interesting and successful strategies as we could. There are a lot more to try out. … I would say that this is the top priority. For higher-ed reform, I don’t think there’s anything more important than this.

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This article first appeared in the Giving Review on April 16, 2025.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/a-conversation-with-the-manhattan-institutes-john-d-sailer-part-2-of-2/