Good evening, everyone:

It was wonderful to welcome Heather Gerken, the new president of the Ford Foundation, to Detroit last month. Heather spent several of her very first days in our city – both meeting Ford grantees, visiting parts of the city – and region – of particular importance to the Ford family’s legacy (the Henry Ford Hospital System and the Henry Ford Museum of Innovation), and participating in the farewell celebration for Darren Walker at Michigan Central.

I had the chance to speak with Heather over breakfast and found her deeply thoughtful, humble, and curious. She spoke powerfully about her commitment to fortifying democracy, safeguarding the rule of law, and protecting the integrity of elections. Her reputation in each of those spheres precedes her: her scholarship, litigation prowess, and advocacy bearing on these issues – including during her tenure at Stanford and Yale Law Schools (where she most recently served as Dean) – have been widely praised.

A Ford Foundation press release noted that in her first formal statement as president, Heather strongly suggested that the protection of democracy would be among her most immediate priorities at the foundation:

Today, the fight to advance the 'ideals and principles of democracy' is not merely the celebrated work of our past. It is the urgent work of our moment. And the Ford Foundation is on the field. Equality has long been Ford's touchstone. It is democracy's touchstone as well. We are and will remain both a United States institution and a global one, doing important work here, in America's cities and heartland, and across the globe.

In an interview with the New York Times, she took the statement a step further, observing that Ford would redouble its long-standing commitment to safeguarding election integrity;

No one believes that an election system should not be free and fair. 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.

What came across at our breakfast was a calm certitude about the imperative of calling on the full tools at Ford to meet the challenges that threaten our most fundamental tenets of democratic participation. That theme was echoed in her interview with the Times:

When the Ford Foundation funded the civil rights movement, it was a source of controversy. 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. . . .

There isn’t just the work of now, of this moment, which is incredibly important. We are also going to need to dream a new democracy into existence.

As Cecilia noted in her comments on Monday, our nation needs both firefighters and builders. In Heather Gerken, we appear to have both. We are so delighted to welcome Heather.

Rip

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