Philanthropy and Systems Change

At the Mellon Foundation (from 1994-2003 and again from 2016-2018), at the Mellon-created Artstor, and at the American Council of Learned Societies, James has devoted his career to sector-wide change in higher education. In his policy work with Bill Bowen and his operating role in working to bring change to libraries, academic computing, and classroom teaching using digital images, James has been studying the various levers that can bring about change among the most change-resistant institutions. He has written about lessons learned in these trans-institutional change efforts in The Stanford Social Innovation Review, in a collection of essays, Giving Well: The Ethics of Philanthropy (Oxford University Press), and in Change magazine. 

In the 1990s at the Mellon Foundation, James designed and led a trans-institutional collaboration between colleges/universities to conduct research concerning some of the most complicated – and least understood - policy issues that the institutions faced around selective admissions. Working with William Bowen, James led the design and construction of the College and Beyond database, overseeing efforts of collaborators at 34 participating colleges and universities, internal staff, outside researchers, and Mathematica Policy Research. Compiling the data required close collaboration with registrars, archivists, admissions, alumni, and athletic departments and encouraging them to see why their participation mattered. The resulting research supported William G. Bowen and Derek Bok’s book about race and admissions at selective colleges and universities that won the Grawemeyer Award and was frequently cited by Justice O’Connor in the Grutter v. Bollinger case. At Mellon (and in his subsequent experience incubating and building Artstor), James worked learned from some extraordinary philanthropic and organizational leaders of the last 50 years. In working with philanthropies, he supports efforts to define strategies for sector-wide change efforts.