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Henry Louis Gates Jr. And His Dirty Inkwell

Inside Higher Ed summarizes and links to a devastating report on the Inkwell Foundation, created by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in ProPublica (?journalism in the public interest?). Inkwell, ProPublica reports,

[a]charity headed by star Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. [,] is filing an amended 2007 report to the Internal Revenue Service because $11,000 it paid to foundation officers as compensation was mischaracterized as being for research grants.

Actually, in my opinion the reality seems a bit worse than this summary. First, there?s the matter of ?a $10,000 grant made to Joanne Kendall, the foundation's treasurer, [who] is also Gates? assistant at Harvard.? In addition, ?Gates also said $1,000 paid to foundation secretary Abby Wolf was for secretarial work, not research.?

That?s the $11,000, but wait; there?s more.

Gates volunteered that the foundation?s second-largest grant, for $6,000, went to his fiancée, Angela DeLeon, who was also on Inkwell?s board from 2005 to 2006. Gates said he recused himself from the vote on DeLeon?s grant, which was for a project translating documents from Spanish and Dutch about the slave trade to Mexico.

A grant of $500 also went to Evelyn Higginbotham, chairwoman of Inkwell?s board. Higginbotham is the chairwoman of Harvard?s Department of African and African-American studies and, with Gates, edited the 2004 book ?African American Lives.? Gates said that, as per the foundation?s bylaws, she did not vote on the grant.

Nice ?work? if you can get it.

Full post as published by Discriminations on July 28, 2009 (boomark / email).