Through public-records requests, I’ve acquired dozens of proposals and progress reports for Mellon-funded projects. The records show how the foundation has lavishly promoted progressive scholar-activism. At the University of Utah, the Transformative Intersectional Collective created workshops on “transgender and queer of color critique” and “environmental anti-racism,” supported by a half-million-dollar Mellon grant. At the University of California, Santa Cruz, the “Visualizing Abolition” project promotes research and art that calls for the elimination of prisons with the support of $8 million from Mellon.
For much of its existence, the Mellon Foundation narrowly supported the arts and humanities. One signature project was the creation of JSTOR, the widely used online database of academic research. The foundation avoided controversy