The Ford Foundation, a moneyed leftist “philanthropy” group, is pulling from the ranks of Big Academia. Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken has been chosen as the organization’s new president. When people say the progressive ruling establishment is a network, this is precisely why.
“In Heather, we have found a thoughtful and innovative leader with a knowledge and passion for justice that is centered on the values of democracy and helping advance human achievement for all citizens. Her life’s work resonates with the mission of the Ford Foundation,” the organization gushed in a statement announcing the move.
Different Title, Same Duties
If you thought Gerken was committed to legal scholarship at Yale Law, think again. “Ms. Gerken, who was seen last year as a contender for the Yale presidency, will take over one of the country’s wealthiest and most influential philanthropies at a time of especially fraught debate about social justice and inequality, two of the foundation’s touchstones,” The New York Times approvingly noted.
Indeed, Gerken confirmed that this is how she sees “democracy” and “law” – as vehicles for enacting progressive social change. “I am deeply grateful for this opportunity and look forward to working with Ford staff and the board of trustees to protect democracy and the rule of law and further our mission to create a more just and fair world for everyone,” she is quoted as saying in the Ford release.
Make no mistake, this is a very influential position Gerken is assuming. “In its most recent publicly available tax return, [Ford] reported spending more than $600 million on contributions, gifts and grants, with hundreds of millions more scheduled to be paid in the future,” The Times reports.
At Yale Law, Gerken’s idea of saving democracy meant one thing: organizing opposition to President Donald Trump and his agenda. Gerken rather cutely seeks to define herself as a progressive champion of federalism. Conveniently enough, her interpretation opened the way for out-of-power Democrats to work against Trump throughout his first term in office.
“We’re about to see states’ rights used defensively against Trump,” read the headline to her January 20, 2017, op-ed at leftist news site Vox. Note the date. Yes, it was published the very day Trump entered the White House. “Progressives at the state and local level can influence policy simply by refusing to partner with the federal government. By doing so, they force issues onto the national agenda, foregrounding debates that the Republicans would rather avoid,” Gerken wrote. “More importantly, defeating state or local opposition costs fiscal resources and political capital the federal government would rather employ elsewhere.”
“The GOP-controlled federal government can’t put cops on every beat or bureaucrats at every desk; it needs state and local officials to get its agenda through,” she continued. “If blue states and cities refuse to implement Trump’s agenda, Republicans will sometimes be forced to compromise rather than pay a political and fiscal price.”
Now that Trump is back in office and his massive deportation operation is in full swing, Gerken’s gameplan from eight years ago is being trotted out again with renewed vigor.
Defying Trump on immigration enforcement was a centerpiece of Gerken’s time at Yale Law. In 2017, she led a Yale Law School “clinic” that defended San Francisco’s sanctuary state policies in court against the Trump administration. It was actually titled the San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project at Yale Law School.
“A federal judge in California temporarily blocked the Trump administration from denying funding to sanctuary cities on April 25, 2017, a victory for Yale Law clinic students who aided the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office in filing the case,” the law school boasted on its university web page.
“Our students worked around the clock. The entire clinic took part at some point during the litigation,” Gerken exclaimed. “We are so proud of what they’ve accomplished.”
As Liberty Nation News has documented, Yale Law under Gerken’s reign could prove far more outrageous. Let’s connect some dots.
And Then the Ford Position Suddenly Opened Up
Notorious progressive globalist billionaire George Soros has been a major financial partner of the Ford Foundation for decades. Soros has also worked for years to purchase elections around the US for radical district attorneys. A key reason for his special interest here is his rabid and longstanding devotion to legalizing “sex work.” Soros DAs across the country have helped him enormously in this task.
So has Gerken’s Yale Law School.
“Soros funded the creation of a stunning guidebook for DAs to follow in pursuit of this goal. ‘Handbook Helps Navigate Non-Prosecution Policies for Sex Work,’ reads the headline to an April post on the Yale Law School website touting the project,” LNN reported in June 2023. “The initiative was produced by Yale Law School’s Global Health Justice Partnership and the leftist Urban Justice Center’s Sex Workers Project. [In]a section explaining ‘The Decriminalization Model,’ an approach the authors of the guidebook explicitly state they ‘favor,’ [the report states] ‘full decriminalization is the complete removal of criminal laws prohibiting sex work.’”
Let’s review. One: Yale Law School carries water for highly controversial crucial Soros legal initiative, receiving money from Soros’ Open Society Foundations to do so. Two: Yale Law School head at the time, Gerken, graduates to presidency of the tightly Soros-aligned Ford Foundation monolith.
This is how it works.
“In your opinion, what are some of the most effective examples of progressive federalism in action?” Gerken was asked in a December 2016 Q&A posted on the Yale Law School website one month after Trump first became president-elect. “The same-sex marriage movement, the legalization of marijuana, environmental reform (particularly out of California), immigration (particularly providing government-issued ID to undocumented residents), and gun control,” she replied.
This is why Ford tapped Heather Gerken to run its billion-dollar leftist enterprise at this specific moment in time. She has been hired to help construct a state-by-state legal obstructionist movement against the Trump administration.
As has already been made plainly evident in just the first months of Trump’s second White House term, Gerken will have no shortage of sympathetic federal judges embedded within cherry-picked US judicial circuits to help her and the foundation in its work.
