The Earhart Foundation was an American private charitable foundation that funded research and scholarship since its founding in 1929 by oil executive
Harry Boyd Earhart. Richard Ware served as the Foundation's longtime president.
History
The
Philanthropy Roundtable
The Philanthropy Roundtable is a nonprofit organization that advises conservative philanthropists.
History
The Roundtable was founded in 1987 as a project of the now-defunct Institute For Educational Affairs. It was founded as a conservative ...
said of the Earhart Foundation in 2004, "For 75 years, the Earhart Foundation has epitomized achievement in the humanities and social sciences. ... Harry B. Earhart started the foundation in 1929 with the fortune he made with White Star Oil Company." Among his foundation's early beneficiaries was well-known economist and philosopher,
Friedrich von Hayek. Hayek penned the broadly read book, ''The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty'' and taught at the
London School of Economics
, mottoeng = To understand the causes of things
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £240.8 million (2021)
, budget = £391.1 mill ...
.
Nine winners of the Nobel Prize in economics came from the ranks of Earhart Foundation Fellows. Other Nobel-winning economists who benefited from Earhart funding include
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the ...
,
Gary Becker
Gary Stanley Becker (; December 2, 1930 – May 3, 2014) was an American economist who received the 1992 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, and was a leader of ...
,
James M. Buchanan,
Ronald Coase
Ronald Harry Coase (; 29 December 1910 – 2 September 2013) was a British economist and author. Coase received a bachelor of commerce degree (1932) and a PhD from the London School of Economics, where he was a member of the faculty until 1951. ...
,
Robert Lucas,
Daniel McFadden,
Vernon L. Smith, and
George Stigler
George Joseph Stigler (; January 17, 1911 – December 1, 1991) was an American economist. He was the 1982 laureate in Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and is considered a key leader of the Chicago school of economics.
Early life and ...
.
The Foundation sought to identify talent that reflects the mission of the Foundation: to support free-market scholars through a network of "Earhart professors" across the United States:
We find promising young men and women that we think would be ideal, not only from an intellectual but also from a character point of view, to be teachers and academic leaders in the future. And when we so identify them, we recommend them to the Earhart Foundation. They provide grants, and we continue to mentor these students as they go through graduate school.
Since 1995, the Earhart Foundation has been engaged in the pursuit of publishing the collected works of
Eric Voegelin. Between 1995 and 2002, the Earhart Foundation issued at least twelve grants totaling at least $115,000 "for (a) research assistance and (b) general operating support to continue preparation for publication of ''The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin.''"
In 2000, the Earhart Foundation reported total assets of $95 million (2000 IRS Form 990).
Funding from the Earhart Foundation has also helped promoters of
Neo-Confederacy: between 1995 and 2005 the foundation awarded $10,000 to
Clyde Wilson, $8,000 to
Thomas Woods, $14,000 to
Mark Royden Winchell, director of the
League of the South
The League of the South (LS) is an American white nationalist, neo-Confederate, white supremacist organization, headquartered in Killen, Alabama, which states that its ultimate goal is "a free and independent Southern republic".
The group d ...
, and $20,000 and $98,000, respectively, to League of the South–affiliated scholars
Thomas DiLorenzo and James McClellan.
In 2015, the Earhart Foundation published a guide to the H. B. Earhart Fellowship Program listing the Foundation's trustees, officers, and members, as well as fellowship sponsors and grantees during the program's existence from 1952 to 2015.
Also in 2015, The Governing board decided to sunset the Earhart Foundation, and funds were dispersed by 2016.
See also
*
Listing: Foundation Fellows
References
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Political and economic research foundations in the United States
Libertarian organizations based in the United States