Mackenzie Scott’s gift to Whittier College represents less than a third of one percent of all the money she gave last year. But it has transformed the school. And not for the better.
What I see is a lot of intersection between Scott's giving, and the "leaderless resistance" kinds of movements that have also been popping up in the age of social media. I think it's another facet of the same problem that has led people to think that a lone act of Tweeting about something is somehow an act of courage or an agent of change.
Think about Scott vis-a-vis Occupy Wall Street. That was a "movement" that wanted to protest injustice, acknowledge broken systems, and maybe to fix them. It was a righteous cause at just the right moment. But I add the "maybe" because of their complete, utter, and embarrassing failure when it came time to say what it was they actually were protesting FOR. That simple question fractured the whole movement almost immediately.
So when I read about Mackenzie Scott's "no-strings-attached" giving, it reads more as giving to make her feel better about spending so much of her life benefiting from such a morally questionable system and morally compromised husband. By today's standards, though, that is accepted by the community as having done something. It's Twitter Philanthropy.
Real giving would actually require the effort of investigating ways it could help, establishing those kinds of programs that actually do things, and then funding them. I don't want to diminish the value of her recognizing publicly that these are problems. It really is the first step towards positive change, and it is morally superior to just sitting on that money. But she has company in the Billionaire Club that actually is working to build and fund institutions that add even more systemic distortions to their benefit. If she wants to change that, then she's going to have to think of something more substantive than these spray-and-pray donations.
We really need to reacquaint America with the concept of true leadership - leadership that has plans, demands, and action - in this age of Twitter Virtue.
Only had to read some of this to know what it was all about. College administrators are crooks, exploiting politics for personal gain. Nothing new here. And there is no American aristocracy; they are oligarchs, or, in this case, the former wife of an oligarch, throwing around money irresponsibly to be safe from mob attack. She’s becoming an easier target by the day.
Your country is over unless you get over this current hysteria about race that's sweeping literally everything. No way this current trend can continue without a major social crackup that will end with a political one.
As we see the intersection of race and academics, we're often told what we should see and believe. As opposed to our own views. So when the student body president at Kansas tweets “happy friday everybody. Death to america”, then complains about people criticizing her, we should ... what??
From the article: She said among the reasons she wasn’t surprised by the backlash was because of this country’s history of condemning Black people and other people of color for speaking out.
Seriously, this is what it has come to. A black woman can retweet "Death to america" and then condemn people who objected to this by implying their criticism is motivated by skin color.
We've clearly f-ed up when people think they are immune to criticism because of their skin color.
What struck me is that there is ONE of her (Oubre) and many others (hundreds?) involved in the college who are living in fear of telling the truth about her incompetence. How does this happen? It’s painful to witness from the outside. No one wants to lose their job, I guess, is the simple answer, though she clearly should.
I'm not sure why Mackenzie Scott is coming in for such criticism. Did she hire the divisive President, or make the hiring of her a condition of the donation? From the sound of it, its rather like me handing over a hundred dollar donation to what on paper looked pretty good at the time. I can see that the donation exacerbated a bad situation, but isn't that an unintended consequence?
I worked under a principal much like the description of the President in the article, though not the same issues. It was awful. Everyone was uncomfortable.
The staff, students and trustees need to band together and get rid of her. They have the power to do so and must exercise that power.
According to another news report, "MacKenzie Scott’s representative told Oubré “we selected Whittier and we selected you,” as a testament to Oubre's leadership. “They did real, real research on me as a leader, our leadership team and who our students and faculty are,” said Oubré, “so I think we all should be proud.”
The bottomline is Scott's gift gave Oubre deep cover at a time when she should have been shown the door. And instead she took it as a sign that she could double down on her personal agenda to focus solely on black students, staff, and faculty under the guise of diversity. Interestingly, according to faculty at the College, enrollment of black students has decreased dramatically throughout Oubre's presidency (only 3% of incoming students).
IMHO, dropping $12 million with no strings attached is irresponsible philanthropy when you have no prior or ongoing relationship with the organization.
Yes, I imagine having a black woman President of the college ticked off another box, on the criteria list. Handing out money will always be fraught with unintended consequences. I think the story is more about a poor leader of a liberal arts college, who appears to be playing to concerns about race to justify her role there, which appears to include nepotism. That is more important than vilifying the good intentions of a highly visible liberal.
Yes, the important narrative is the leadership failure at the College. In this case, a high profile philanthropist provided cover to the ineptitude of the president and the cowardice of the Trustees. While good intentions may be fueling Scott's giving, her "hit and run” philanthropy seems likely to do more harm than good.
“Me, Dan, a constellation of researchers and administrators and advisors — we are all attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change.” Ms. Scott needs to take a remedial course in her native tongue and learn--or re-learn--the proper use of personal pronouns.
My first thought when I hear these types of things is that no one in America is more dangerous than a white liberal woman with a mountain of cash. They say that with great privilege comes great responsibility; Scott's and other tech billionaire wives handing out money willy-nilly without regard for how it is spent is irresponsible. It's like all the wanton corporate donations to BLM last year, likely now being regretted by some of the donors.
Second, it made me wonder if I would want to even apply to this college and others if I were white. I am clearly not valued and not wanted. Little wonder, as reported in WSJ, that young white men are abandoning higher education in droves. Why would you want to study for four years, and incur crushing debt, at a place that has contempt for you? These institutions are undergoing a deliberate effort to alienate white students, as well as faculty. They seemingly believe two wrongs make a right.
The biggest red flag for me was that she did not chat up the two donors at the concert. The first priority of a college president is fund raising (“development”). Manna from heaven doesn’t count. That told me she put herself above the institution’s needs and it was all about power for her.
100%. And Steve Weston is too humble to say that he is a major donor to Whittier College himself. His family gave $1 million to renovate a Science & Learning Center in 2014. So in addition to his loyal service as a Trustee, he gave generously to provide academic resources for all students. Oubre stated in a recent WIHE interview, "Higher education is a business model." Ok, and a key revenue stream is charitable gifts. Seems Oubre may have missed a few classes in her studies of higher ed leadership.
I’ve had something stuck in my craw for a while and this is the perfect opportunity to put it out there.
Power is at the centre of all human dynamics.
Liberals misapprehend this, they think it’s something unique to being in white. They think with a fresh start we can rebuild and make an equitable human power dynamic.
Such arrogance, such self deluded overreach. The nature of power is immutable and when you give away power the new group, the group in ascendancy, the group newly possessed of power will abuse it exactly as white people have abused it. The only difference is you will now be losing, you will be getting the short end.
This article speaks of the old white boys network and how this woman president Oubre is constructing her own similar clique and what a travesty it is. Holy cow man, what do you think? Of course that’s what’s gonna happen, it is not a travesty, it is a certainty.
When you make the marginalized powerful they will do as we have done and abuse that power: that’s what we humans are!
Liberals think we can deconstruct the police and then reconstruct state power and come up with something different! Fools: it will be a violent circular journey and we will return from whence we came.
Power corrupts; liberalism is delusional; we are lost.
I would respectfully disagree, because, though I agree with your conclusion, I’d argue that power is not always at the center of human dynamics. It only becomes the center when people relinquish ethics and integrity in their professions and daily lives. A teacher who gives up this integrity, no longer teaching the content of their subject but promotes ideological adherence instead is only looking for power. A teacher who is passionately engaged by their subject and disseminates it to educate their students as individuals is just doing their job with dignity. Power as central human struggle is their thesis, not the thesis of the men and women who build a healthy civilization.
Further to your comment, in collectivist societies these enclaves of power still exist but instead of being centered around money, they are centered around political power. In the Soviet Union, the people riding around with flags on the fenders of their limousines were the upper class and they ruled by doling out the power of the state to who they deemed as deserving. This is similar to China today, which has a similar system but with more palatable (to the west anyway) capitalist slant wherein the CCP decides which company lives or dies.
IL-liberals OWN the media, the corporations and, increasingly, the courts and the government. And, yeah,, they abuse power, all-a them.
It HAS corrupted them, but some are seeing that and REJECTING their circular arguments. A lotta them Dems. Only thing to be done is be polite to them, AFAIK, and things won't be lost. Or, at the very LEAST, they'll be slowed down a fair bit.
We now live in the Intersectional State of America.
Goodbye, Federalism. Goodbye, Bill of Rights. Goodbye, American Culture.
Mackenzie Scott had shown herself to be a megalomaniac in the best white cisgender male heteronormative way. Good equality lens.
When people liked Linda Oubre, a vicious and hateful black woman with a cup the size of a skyscraper on her shoulder come to power, they wield it like a scythe. I never used to feel this way about people with whom I disagreed. But I've been poisoned, too. I seek the antidote daily through sites like this, and the amazing books in my library.
Look at it this way, we would have never known who these people really, really are without this gauntlet, as well as who we are. This is a chance for everyone to grow beyond. It's what we are here to do.
This is a great point, and certainly true as far as it goes. But at a certain point, the spread and coverage of people like Linda Oubre are too vast to counter. It's not "one and done" anymore with these people; it's a full court press to limit options for those who don't share their toxic worldview.
But I surely do take your point to heart and appreciate the reply!
You'd think someone like Oubre, who has achieved positions in business and academia than anyone of any race would envy and admire, would have little reason to have a racial chip on her shoulder. But then she probably got her cues from the most accomplished African American with a meteor-sized chip on his: Barack Obama.
This financial/spending issue isn't limited to NFPs/Charitable donors either. It's infecting corporate procurement and sourcing decisions at an alarming rate.
My corporation was recently forced to update our procurement and temp labor sourcing systems to support DEI initiatives. It started with flagging all Suppliers that were minority owned so that anyone across the company could factor that into their decision on how to spend the company's money for their departments needs.
Now, a group of SJW employees are developing a proposal that we should ONLY be spending the companies money on Suppliers that are minority owned. I think we all know how this will ultimately end.... The powers that be at the company will cave in fear, employees will struggle to find qualified candidates from temp agencies, departments will end up paying more for less products and the work product will suffer.
I have personally pushed back against this in a limited way just by asking questions. "Is our primary goal to solve all of the worlds problems? Or is it to ensure the company is getting the best value for its purchases on products/ services/ external labor?" Needless to say, I've been hung out to dry on many occasions. With a second baby on the way, I can't risk rocking the boat too much. To be fair to my coworkers, nobody knows who to trust in pushing back against these kinds of things since no "listening sessions" have been established and nobody is sure who to trust.
If people viewing all aspects of their existence through the tainted lens of race and victimhood breeds intolerance, then companies basing spending decisions on race and victimhood breeds poor financial and operating performance.
Terrific essay on a topic I hadn't even considered. The sad thing is that even what looks like genuine philanthropy is now yet another example of how our society is poisoning itself.
What I see is a lot of intersection between Scott's giving, and the "leaderless resistance" kinds of movements that have also been popping up in the age of social media. I think it's another facet of the same problem that has led people to think that a lone act of Tweeting about something is somehow an act of courage or an agent of change.
Think about Scott vis-a-vis Occupy Wall Street. That was a "movement" that wanted to protest injustice, acknowledge broken systems, and maybe to fix them. It was a righteous cause at just the right moment. But I add the "maybe" because of their complete, utter, and embarrassing failure when it came time to say what it was they actually were protesting FOR. That simple question fractured the whole movement almost immediately.
So when I read about Mackenzie Scott's "no-strings-attached" giving, it reads more as giving to make her feel better about spending so much of her life benefiting from such a morally questionable system and morally compromised husband. By today's standards, though, that is accepted by the community as having done something. It's Twitter Philanthropy.
Real giving would actually require the effort of investigating ways it could help, establishing those kinds of programs that actually do things, and then funding them. I don't want to diminish the value of her recognizing publicly that these are problems. It really is the first step towards positive change, and it is morally superior to just sitting on that money. But she has company in the Billionaire Club that actually is working to build and fund institutions that add even more systemic distortions to their benefit. If she wants to change that, then she's going to have to think of something more substantive than these spray-and-pray donations.
We really need to reacquaint America with the concept of true leadership - leadership that has plans, demands, and action - in this age of Twitter Virtue.
Only had to read some of this to know what it was all about. College administrators are crooks, exploiting politics for personal gain. Nothing new here. And there is no American aristocracy; they are oligarchs, or, in this case, the former wife of an oligarch, throwing around money irresponsibly to be safe from mob attack. She’s becoming an easier target by the day.
Money corrupts, money without accountability corrupts absolutely.
Your country is over unless you get over this current hysteria about race that's sweeping literally everything. No way this current trend can continue without a major social crackup that will end with a political one.
As we see the intersection of race and academics, we're often told what we should see and believe. As opposed to our own views. So when the student body president at Kansas tweets “happy friday everybody. Death to america”, then complains about people criticizing her, we should ... what??
From the article: She said among the reasons she wasn’t surprised by the backlash was because of this country’s history of condemning Black people and other people of color for speaking out.
Seriously, this is what it has come to. A black woman can retweet "Death to america" and then condemn people who objected to this by implying their criticism is motivated by skin color.
We've clearly f-ed up when people think they are immune to criticism because of their skin color.
What struck me is that there is ONE of her (Oubre) and many others (hundreds?) involved in the college who are living in fear of telling the truth about her incompetence. How does this happen? It’s painful to witness from the outside. No one wants to lose their job, I guess, is the simple answer, though she clearly should.
I'm not sure why Mackenzie Scott is coming in for such criticism. Did she hire the divisive President, or make the hiring of her a condition of the donation? From the sound of it, its rather like me handing over a hundred dollar donation to what on paper looked pretty good at the time. I can see that the donation exacerbated a bad situation, but isn't that an unintended consequence?
I worked under a principal much like the description of the President in the article, though not the same issues. It was awful. Everyone was uncomfortable.
The staff, students and trustees need to band together and get rid of her. They have the power to do so and must exercise that power.
According to another news report, "MacKenzie Scott’s representative told Oubré “we selected Whittier and we selected you,” as a testament to Oubre's leadership. “They did real, real research on me as a leader, our leadership team and who our students and faculty are,” said Oubré, “so I think we all should be proud.”
The bottomline is Scott's gift gave Oubre deep cover at a time when she should have been shown the door. And instead she took it as a sign that she could double down on her personal agenda to focus solely on black students, staff, and faculty under the guise of diversity. Interestingly, according to faculty at the College, enrollment of black students has decreased dramatically throughout Oubre's presidency (only 3% of incoming students).
IMHO, dropping $12 million with no strings attached is irresponsible philanthropy when you have no prior or ongoing relationship with the organization.
Yes, I imagine having a black woman President of the college ticked off another box, on the criteria list. Handing out money will always be fraught with unintended consequences. I think the story is more about a poor leader of a liberal arts college, who appears to be playing to concerns about race to justify her role there, which appears to include nepotism. That is more important than vilifying the good intentions of a highly visible liberal.
Yes, the important narrative is the leadership failure at the College. In this case, a high profile philanthropist provided cover to the ineptitude of the president and the cowardice of the Trustees. While good intentions may be fueling Scott's giving, her "hit and run” philanthropy seems likely to do more harm than good.
“Me, Dan, a constellation of researchers and administrators and advisors — we are all attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change.” Ms. Scott needs to take a remedial course in her native tongue and learn--or re-learn--the proper use of personal pronouns.
“There’s no question in my mind that anyone’s personal wealth is the product of a collective effort...”
Sure. That's why when people work for you, you pay them.
The Marxists ignore the fact that they've already been paid when arguing that they've been exploited.
My first thought when I hear these types of things is that no one in America is more dangerous than a white liberal woman with a mountain of cash. They say that with great privilege comes great responsibility; Scott's and other tech billionaire wives handing out money willy-nilly without regard for how it is spent is irresponsible. It's like all the wanton corporate donations to BLM last year, likely now being regretted by some of the donors.
Second, it made me wonder if I would want to even apply to this college and others if I were white. I am clearly not valued and not wanted. Little wonder, as reported in WSJ, that young white men are abandoning higher education in droves. Why would you want to study for four years, and incur crushing debt, at a place that has contempt for you? These institutions are undergoing a deliberate effort to alienate white students, as well as faculty. They seemingly believe two wrongs make a right.
The biggest red flag for me was that she did not chat up the two donors at the concert. The first priority of a college president is fund raising (“development”). Manna from heaven doesn’t count. That told me she put herself above the institution’s needs and it was all about power for her.
100%. And Steve Weston is too humble to say that he is a major donor to Whittier College himself. His family gave $1 million to renovate a Science & Learning Center in 2014. So in addition to his loyal service as a Trustee, he gave generously to provide academic resources for all students. Oubre stated in a recent WIHE interview, "Higher education is a business model." Ok, and a key revenue stream is charitable gifts. Seems Oubre may have missed a few classes in her studies of higher ed leadership.
I’ve had something stuck in my craw for a while and this is the perfect opportunity to put it out there.
Power is at the centre of all human dynamics.
Liberals misapprehend this, they think it’s something unique to being in white. They think with a fresh start we can rebuild and make an equitable human power dynamic.
Such arrogance, such self deluded overreach. The nature of power is immutable and when you give away power the new group, the group in ascendancy, the group newly possessed of power will abuse it exactly as white people have abused it. The only difference is you will now be losing, you will be getting the short end.
This article speaks of the old white boys network and how this woman president Oubre is constructing her own similar clique and what a travesty it is. Holy cow man, what do you think? Of course that’s what’s gonna happen, it is not a travesty, it is a certainty.
When you make the marginalized powerful they will do as we have done and abuse that power: that’s what we humans are!
Liberals think we can deconstruct the police and then reconstruct state power and come up with something different! Fools: it will be a violent circular journey and we will return from whence we came.
Power corrupts; liberalism is delusional; we are lost.
I would respectfully disagree, because, though I agree with your conclusion, I’d argue that power is not always at the center of human dynamics. It only becomes the center when people relinquish ethics and integrity in their professions and daily lives. A teacher who gives up this integrity, no longer teaching the content of their subject but promotes ideological adherence instead is only looking for power. A teacher who is passionately engaged by their subject and disseminates it to educate their students as individuals is just doing their job with dignity. Power as central human struggle is their thesis, not the thesis of the men and women who build a healthy civilization.
Further to your comment, in collectivist societies these enclaves of power still exist but instead of being centered around money, they are centered around political power. In the Soviet Union, the people riding around with flags on the fenders of their limousines were the upper class and they ruled by doling out the power of the state to who they deemed as deserving. This is similar to China today, which has a similar system but with more palatable (to the west anyway) capitalist slant wherein the CCP decides which company lives or dies.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others LOL.
IL-liberals OWN the media, the corporations and, increasingly, the courts and the government. And, yeah,, they abuse power, all-a them.
It HAS corrupted them, but some are seeing that and REJECTING their circular arguments. A lotta them Dems. Only thing to be done is be polite to them, AFAIK, and things won't be lost. Or, at the very LEAST, they'll be slowed down a fair bit.
We now live in the Intersectional State of America.
Goodbye, Federalism. Goodbye, Bill of Rights. Goodbye, American Culture.
Mackenzie Scott had shown herself to be a megalomaniac in the best white cisgender male heteronormative way. Good equality lens.
When people liked Linda Oubre, a vicious and hateful black woman with a cup the size of a skyscraper on her shoulder come to power, they wield it like a scythe. I never used to feel this way about people with whom I disagreed. But I've been poisoned, too. I seek the antidote daily through sites like this, and the amazing books in my library.
Look at it this way, we would have never known who these people really, really are without this gauntlet, as well as who we are. This is a chance for everyone to grow beyond. It's what we are here to do.
This is a great point, and certainly true as far as it goes. But at a certain point, the spread and coverage of people like Linda Oubre are too vast to counter. It's not "one and done" anymore with these people; it's a full court press to limit options for those who don't share their toxic worldview.
But I surely do take your point to heart and appreciate the reply!
You'd think someone like Oubre, who has achieved positions in business and academia than anyone of any race would envy and admire, would have little reason to have a racial chip on her shoulder. But then she probably got her cues from the most accomplished African American with a meteor-sized chip on his: Barack Obama.
That's what I thought. It was M. Savodnik who wrote "After the Fall." https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/after-the-fall
A short, but interesting to me, article along same lines. https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/free-fall?r=kvple&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy
This financial/spending issue isn't limited to NFPs/Charitable donors either. It's infecting corporate procurement and sourcing decisions at an alarming rate.
My corporation was recently forced to update our procurement and temp labor sourcing systems to support DEI initiatives. It started with flagging all Suppliers that were minority owned so that anyone across the company could factor that into their decision on how to spend the company's money for their departments needs.
Now, a group of SJW employees are developing a proposal that we should ONLY be spending the companies money on Suppliers that are minority owned. I think we all know how this will ultimately end.... The powers that be at the company will cave in fear, employees will struggle to find qualified candidates from temp agencies, departments will end up paying more for less products and the work product will suffer.
I have personally pushed back against this in a limited way just by asking questions. "Is our primary goal to solve all of the worlds problems? Or is it to ensure the company is getting the best value for its purchases on products/ services/ external labor?" Needless to say, I've been hung out to dry on many occasions. With a second baby on the way, I can't risk rocking the boat too much. To be fair to my coworkers, nobody knows who to trust in pushing back against these kinds of things since no "listening sessions" have been established and nobody is sure who to trust.
If people viewing all aspects of their existence through the tainted lens of race and victimhood breeds intolerance, then companies basing spending decisions on race and victimhood breeds poor financial and operating performance.
Terrific essay on a topic I hadn't even considered. The sad thing is that even what looks like genuine philanthropy is now yet another example of how our society is poisoning itself.