The Problem of Pluralism

Yesterday I participated in a webinar hosted by the Urban Institute as part of its Giving Innovation Summit 2024 entitled, “The Place of Pluralism in Charitable Giving.” The webinar was inspired by a provocative report from Urban Institute Senior Research Associate Benjamin Soskis that looks at the history of what Soskis calls the “cause pluralism and prescription” debate in U.S. philanthropy: the ongoing dialogue in organized philanthropy about whether the goal is for the charitable sector to support lots of different causes and points of view or whether our society can insist on particular causes or points of view.

This is a timely topic. Commentators from the left and the right—and from inside the sector and outside the sector—have been vocal about what they think foundations are here to do (and not to do).

Joining the webinar was a great roster of thinkers and practitioners, including Aisha Alexander-Young , Brian Hooks , Stacy Palmer , Hilary Pennington , Tene Traylor , and Lori Villarosa . I learned and benefited from each of them.

I’m (somewhat notoriously) on record as a strong advocate for the idea that the philanthropic sector exists for the express purpose of injecting greater pluralism into our democratic discourse. (See here and here).

But I do think discussions about pluralism—in philanthropy or in any social institution—tend to be confused in a few key ways.

1. Justifications for pluralism as a political doctrine and pluralism as a sectoral doctrine in philanthropy are not the same.

A core idea in a democracy—perhaps the core idea—is freedom of conscience: that each of us is the author of our own beliefs and desired ends. This necessitates some degree of pluralism in a democratic society of even minimal complexity because different groups of people within the society will have different beliefs, both about the nature of the world and about the good life.

Call this a “negative” understanding of pluralism: that pluralism prevents us from compelling someone to believe something they don’t.

On its face, the justification for allowing individual foundations to adhere to the partial interests of their founders seems like an expression of the negative case for pluralism. In this conception of pluralism, philanthropy is a powerful act of expressing one’s beliefs.

Putting aside whether a perpetual allocation of funds for an individual belief is an essential protection of individual conscience (spoiler alert: it’s not), the negative case for pluralism can’t explain the tax privilege we accord to private charity. This concession implies that organized philanthropy is something we want to exist, a supposition that foundations fulfill an important, if not essential, democratic function.

What does explain this structural privilege is an inversion of the negative case: that expressing partial, individual preferences through philanthropy adds to the total span of pluralism of the society. Call this a “positive” understanding of pluralism: that pluralism has instrumental value to play in the process of social innovation.

This idea rests on a different and affirmative argument for pluralism, namely, that we are more likely to improve over time as a society if there is a robust and dynamic interplay—including through political and social friction—between different and competing ideas about how political, economic and social life should be ordered. This argument tends to be more focused on the total difference between competing views, rather than the mere abundance of views.

Importantly, this is a prudential argument. Its merits depend upon its actual performance in improving our democratic society. This performance can be—and is—discussed, debated and contested. (And, interestingly, such discussions are more often about how philanthropy functions in the fulfillment of its intended democratic purpose than about whether private philanthropy ought to exist in the first instance.)

2. Pluralism does not morally entail assent, listening, compromise or even civility.?

There are many who would argue that making a pluralistic society work requires various forms of concession: a willingness to concede the validity of another’s point of view; the act of listening to a view being aired, no matter how repugnant; the pursuit of compromise to enable governance; the embrace of at least a modicum of civility to facilitate democratic association.

These also are prudential rather than moral arguments. They are about whether such behaviors and dispositions are conducive to a particular end, rather than about fundamentally obligatory conduct as a condition of living in a pluralistic society.

As a political matter, pluralism simply dictates that holding any belief, no matter how outrageous, must be allowable.

An op-ed to which I contributed last year (linked above and here) has been critiqued by some as prioritizing civility as an essential and prima facie value in liberal discourse.

Personally, I understand and even embrace many of the critiques of civility, two of the most compelling being: (a) civility lends legitimacy to potentially odious beliefs and (b) civility depends on fundamental political and social equality—a condition that is demonstrably not uniformly present in the U.S., most notably with respect to race, gender and class.

For those who rightly feel they have been—and still are—dominated, oppressed and persecuted, observing the value of pluralism can be regarded as legitimizing and acquiescing to the terms of one’s own marginalization.

But I think this is a misreading of the piece, not least because the op-ed does not mention the word “civility” once. The piece does place an emphasis on productive debate, respect for common dignity, and substantive argument. Importantly, these exhortations apply to the field of organized philanthropy (not to the public culture overall) and they are not framed as moral obligations—simply principles for effective intra-sectoral discourse.

The piece explicitly affirms the right to critique, which certainly may take the form of castigation and excoriation. The piece also affirms the fundamental prerogative of individual foundations to take stances they believe in.

If we assume conditions of justice in our society have not been fully realized—and it seems clear to me they haven’t—then advocates for justice stand to benefit most from a shared commitment to allow deviation from the dominant view.

Individuals, organizations and movements can make decisions about whether to accede to a given view, whether to compromise with putative opponents, whether to listen to others and how to conduct themselves in the high-stakes debates that shape our public culture.

These are strategic choices—not moral ones.

3. Pluralism within causes has its own complexities.

Some of our biggest challenges at Doris Duke Foundation do not involve navigating the conflicts between the people and organizations we support and some “out-group” who opposes them (although opponents of progress in many of the areas in which we work are real and concerning).

They involve navigating pluralism within the social and political movements in which we work.

For example, we support performing artists. Anyone familiar with the performing arts recognizes that the relationship between artists and the presenting organizations (theaters, concert halls and other venues) that control to a significant degree access to the audience and that account for the lion’s share of remuneration is a hotly contested one. Artists and presenting organizations frequently spar over both creative and economic decisions. And there are many in the performing arts community who fundamentally question what they perceive to be the structural primacy of presenting organizations.

We also support the adoption of nature-based approaches to climate adaptation and mitigation, such as reforestation and afforestation. This work features sharp divides between many environmental advocates who fight for comprehensive forest protection and forest products industries who seek to preserve forests through forms of management that nonetheless enable some forms of logging and extraction--and who in fact argue that such practices are essential to long-term forest preservation.

We recently embarked upon an effort to address the misuse of race as a biological proxy in many clinical equations. Even those who believe we need better, more rigorous and more comprehensive research on how race figures in common diagnostic equations for everything from heart health to kidney function disagree about the right answer. Some say certain race and ethnic designations can map onto medically significant variables; some say race should be removed from every equation; some are in the middle, advocating for a “race conscious” approach that seeks to specify or excise race depending on the perceived benefits, especially to patients from marginalized communities.

There are those on every side in these debates who are scrambling to claim an exclusive mantle of authentic representation of the underlying value, whether that value is regarding the importance of thriving performing arts, sustainable natural conservation, or equity in health outcomes.

To set your view as the sine qua non of an architectonic value is a legitimate analytical maneuver and often an essential aspect of political organizing. It can be a risky rhetorical maneuver, however, making issues of significant dissension vulnerable to performative gestures.

As a foundation, we don't support just every or any view in the fields in which we fund and work. And we do have some opinions about what it means for the work to reflect our values. But we invariably provide funding to some organizations and to some individuals who see each other as opponents, often in areas where we do not feel ready to have a clear opinion--or where we think the debate itself is what fuels social innovation and progress. In these cases, we feel our only obligation is to assiduously avoid telling any partner or grantee what they ought to think.

Pluralism is a given in a society in which people who aspire to be political equals also carry many meaningful identities. Suspicions of pluralism are a given in a society in which particular social categories play a fundamental, pervasive, significant, and historically cumulative role in the distribution of advantage and disadvantage. How we confront this paradox will undoubtedly influence our society’s ability to realize our highest ideals.