“Can Radical Philanthropy Remake American Democracy?” with John Fabian Witt, Yale

YALE CENTER FOR CIVIC THOUGHT

Join Professor John Witt for a discussion of whether radical philanthropy can remake American democracy.  In 1922, a young idealist named Charles Garland rejected a million-dollar inheritance. In a world of shocking wealth disparities, shameless racism, and political repression, Garland opted instead to invest in a future where radical ideas—like working-class power, free speech, and equality—might flourish. Over the next two decades, the Garland Fund would nurture a new generation of wildly ambitious progressive projects.

The men and women of the Fund were rich and poor, white and Black. They cooperated and bickered; they formed rivalries, fell in and out of love, and made mistakes. Yet shared beliefs linked them throughout. They believed that American capitalism was broken. They believed that American democracy (if it had ever existed) stole from those who had the least. And they believed that American institutions needed to be radically remade for the modern age. By the time they spent the last of the Fund’s resources, their outsider ideas had become mass movements battling to transform a nation.

John Fabian Witt is the Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a Professor of History at Yale University, where he teaches and writes on the history of American law and the law of torts. He is the author of books, including The Radical Fund and Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History, which won the Bancroft Prize, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, was awarded the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, and was a New York Times Notable Book.

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