“The Mellon Foundation is quietly bankrolling a political alliance to protect DEI efforts and fight conservative higher education reforms”
On September 29, 2025, a group of nonprofit leaders and university insiders gathered at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, D.C., to talk through how to defend America’s embattled colleges and universities. Over three days, the group discussed how to make higher education “a right for all,” how to “protect and/or rebuild DEI,” and—more practically—how to collaborate on upcoming elections.
The event was the soft launch of the Alliance for Higher Education (AHE). The group, which debuted publicly in January, represents those who believe that higher ed should fight back against its critics and would-be reformers. This resistance includes political activism: “Our tradition of institutions not speaking out about politics has simply backfired,” Mike Gavin, the alliance’s inaugural president, wrote in a whitepaper I obtained. At the meeting, the group planned student voting campaigns that would, according to other documents I obtained, “focus on opportunities to flip.”
This wink-and-nod partisanship was an odd fit for many at the gathering, which featured a who’s who of higher-education nonprofits, including senior leadership from PEN America, the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), and the American Council on Education (ACE). As nonprofits, these groups are not conventionally partisan.
It likewise represented a new strategy from AHE’s key backer. Also present at the meeting was Carolyn Dinshaw, a senior program officer at the $7.8 billion-endowed Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her attendance was no surprise: the event, as one email I obtained put it, was “Mellon-backed.” Though the relationship has never before been made public, the Alliance for Higher Education is Mellon’s brainchild. Mellon played a critical role in forming the group.
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