Welcome to the Local Issue of the Carnegie Reporter

In her introduction to the issue, Dame Louise Richardson writes about how remarkable individuals at the state, city, and community levels are coming together to tackle problems in innovative and creative ways. Carnegie Corporation of New York is working to recognize and support these local leaders and initiatives

By Dame Louise RichardsonJuly 11, 2024

Carnegie Reporter Summer 2024

Carnegie Reporter, Summer 2024

Growing up in an Irish seaside town with a population of 3,000, I took a sense of community for granted. At the time I was more aware of the downsides. You knew everyone and they knew you, or knew who you belonged to. You could never do anything without your parents finding out about it faster than you could concoct an explanation. On my first day in secondary school, I remember being introduced to a nun who had taught both my mother and my grandmother. At the time I found it somewhat suffocating. Looking back, I see the layers of unspoken mutual support, the extra bread and cakes made for a neighbor, the extra children staying for meals, the extra people in the car for any long journey. Then there were the funerals. Whenever there was a funeral in our family, and there were too many, the house filled with tens and tens of people, all of them ate and drank their fill, but we never provided the food or drink. Instead, neighbors quietly came into the kitchen with soups, stews, breads, cakes, and of course the inevitable whiskey, and set about serving the visitors. In the days and weeks that followed, people would stop by to collect their pots and pans. They would dismiss my attempts to thank them by saying, “Sure, didn’t your mother do the same for me many times over?” We had two local newspapers, based in the nearest city, that provided coverage of local sports and social events — I don’t remember there being any crimes to cover — as well as coverage of the activities of the city and county councils. In short, there was an abundance of what the acclaimed social scientist and my former teacher, Bob Putnam, has called “social capital.”

In this issue of the Reporter, we are focusing on the role of local leaders and the importance of local communities in strengthening our democracy at a time of growing polarization. Having lived outside the U.S. for 14 years, I have been shaken by the acceleration of political polarization here and the way that politics is replacing policy with performance. We’ve seen polarization elsewhere too, of course, but given the role of the United States in the world, the polarization here can have both national and global ramifications. The federal government becomes daily more dysfunctional but at the state, city, and local levels Americans are working together in innovative and creative ways. We at Carnegie Corporation of New York are working to identify and support these local leaders as they endeavor to rebuild the forces of social cohesion in our society. In the pages that follow, you will read about some of these remarkable women and men and the work that they are doing.

Libraries are in the Corporation’s DNA. Andrew Carnegie built over 2,500 libraries all over the world and almost 1,700 in the U.S. alone to provide what he referred to as a “ladder” for people like himself with no access to education. Today we seek to strengthen our links to libraries as they provide invaluable support for those seeking access to books, a quiet and safe place to work, and information about their rights and public services. In The Secret Life of Librarians you will read about 10 remarkable librarians selected from over 1,400 community-based nominations for the annual I Love My Librarian Award. In July, we are again highlighting Great Immigrants, including in a new comic series that you will find in this magazine that focuses on the contributions that immigrants have made to their local communities.

Educators are also key contributors to their local communities. Carnegie’s Profiles in Collective Leadership initiative sought to identify innovative and effective local partnerships between educators, local governments, and businesses to enhance the educational and career prospects of their students. Ten finalists across eight states were selected for awards and will receive support in spreading the lessons learned from their experiences to other communities. Educators too are helping to address the crisis of polarization by reemphasizing the teaching of civics in their schools as evidence mounts of popular ignorance of the structures and mechanisms of American government. We are also supporting teachers as they seek to teach media literacy to students who are exposed to a barrage of unfiltered and inaccurate information. We have recast our Education portfolio to focus on education for economic and social mobility and education for civic engagement in our efforts to address the deep inequities that persist in our educational system and the deep polarization that has emerged in our society.

The coarsening of political discourse in our Congress and on our campuses is deeply disconcerting. Governors Spencer Cox and Wes Moore, in conversation with Judy Woodruff, show us another way. Rather than articulate their differences, they seek to identify those areas on which they agree and build on them. Both Governors Cox and Moore also share a belief in the power of community service to provide opportunities for meaningful interactions across race, region, and class as well as to inculcate in participants a sense of commitment to their community. Carnegie is delighted to support these and other community service initiatives across the country.

We are also delighted to join with other funders in the Press Forward initiative designed to revitalize local journalism through the infusion of over $500 million. The number of newspapers in the U.S. has decline by one-third, and the number of newspaper reporters declined by two-thirds since 2005. Our board member Martin Baron, former editor of the Washington Post, eloquently makes the case that without an independent press there can be no democracy. He also spells out the responsibilities of the press if they are to continue to hold power to account.

In adopting the lens of polarization to look at our grantmaking, we have sought to mine academia for ideas about how to understand the phenomenon and ultimately how we might mitigate it. We relaunched the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program this year with a focus on political polarization in the U.S. We intend to continue this focus for a minimum of three years. We received over 360 nominations from institutions across the country and have funded 28 academics for two years. They represent junior and senior scholars from public and private institutions across the country and we hope to learn a great deal from their work.

It goes without saying that adopting a local perspective on the problem of polarization is not the only way to address the issue. Nevertheless, I hope that in reading these pages you will feel, as I do, some sense of optimism that there are so many smart, creative, compassionate Americans working hard to heal the rifts in our society and to build a stronger democracy. We at Carnegie are honored to be able to support their work.

Dame Louise Richardson is president of Carnegie Corporation of New York. A widely recognized expert on terrorism and international relations, she previously served as vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford and of the University of St. Andrews, and as executive dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.