Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Power philanthropy

'Unaccountable power...'

Gates Keepers, a blog that keeps a critical eye on the world’s most powerful philanthropist, gets into a tiff with Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, authors of , Philanthrocapitalism. Bishop and Green go out of their way to defend the Gates Foundation’s top-down approach to social change, and call critics, “Gates attackers.” Ouch!

The tiff begins with a report from Global Health Watch 2:

The report reveals widespread unease about the immense but unaccountable power and influence of the Gates Foundation. It says that although the Gates Foundation has injected vast sums of money into global health, it operates in an undemocratic way and reinforces a medical-technical approach.

To those of us who have had to deal with Gates’ unfettered power in the area of public school reform, this charge comes as no surprise.

But B & G write: That may be the point - it gives Gates the freedom to do risky things that global consensus policy-making would not permit…

Gates Keepers obviously doesn't think that "freedom" for Gates is necessarily the top priority. They go on to accuse B&G of trying to silence legitimate critical voices.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Agree? Disagree? Let me hear from you.