Academia is not known for self-correction, so it was something of a surprise when the New York Times reported last week that Tufts University seems to have dismissed a tenured professor, following allegations of research fraud.

Kerri Greenidge, until recently an associate professor of race, colonialism, and diaspora studies at the university, has authored several highly-acclaimed books including The Grimkes, a work of history about abolitionist activists which was named one of the best 10 books of 2022 by Publishers Weekly. Yet, after several historians pointed out what appear to be outright fabrications in The Grimkes, the book is no longer on its publisher’s website, and the American Historical Association has removed Greenidge’s name from its Joan Kelly Memorial Prize webpage. Tufts, meanwhile, has scrubbed its website of articles referencing Greenidge.

Tufts isn’t the only institution that might now be embarrassed by Greenidge’s alleged misconduct. In 2019, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation gave Tufts $1.5 million to hire faculty in a newly-created “Department of Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora”. Greenidge was the university’s first hire through the grant. Her official title, which wasn’t mentioned by the New York Times, was Mellon Associate Professor.

Founded by the children of businessman and philanthropist Andrew Mellon, the Mellon Foundation has long been America’s largest and most influential funder of the humanities, boasting an $8 billion endowment. Yet its mission has drifted dramatically in the last decade, becoming something of a vehicle for advancing social causes.

The change was abrupt. In 2012, Mellon’s then-President Don Randel positioned the Foundation as a champion of the liberal arts, declaring that “the humanities and the arts are central to any life that one should want to live.” By 2018, its current president, the poet Elizabeth Alexander, had announced a new “lens” through which the Foundation would view all its giving: “social justice”.

Greenidge perfectly fits the new Mellon mould, a scholar whose work embraces the themes of contemporary identity politics, and whose extracurricular activities advance an identity-forward progressivism — in 2023, she was put on Boston’s Reparations Task Force. Before being hired through the Mellon money, Greenidge’s academic career path appeared precarious. She worked as a lecturer at Tufts and several other Boston-area universities, roles not eligible for tenure. For many years, her graduate programme at Boston University listed her as a “history consultant” on its alumni placement webpage.

At Tufts, Greenidge scored a major career break, no doubt helped by Mellon’s funding. In addition to her faculty role, she was co-director of the “African American Trail Project”, a role that prompted glowing write-ups in the New York Times and Smithsonian magazine. The project’s website puts Mellon first on its list of key partners.

Kerri is not the only Greenidge to have received career-making Mellon support. Her sister Kaitlyn, a novelist, was a Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellow. Her other sister, Kristen, is a playwright-in-residence at a Boston theatre through Mellon’s National Playwright Residency Program. “Excellence Runs in the Family,” declared a New York Times headline in 2021.

Mellon has boosted the careers of hundreds of scholars like Greenidge, whose work is clearly meant to advance the Foundation’s progressive vision of social justice. In addition to its gift to Tufts, it has poured vast sums of money into faculty development, hiring and advancement. That includes $5 million for the University of Virginia’s “Race, Place, and Equity” programme, $6 million for Wayne State University’s Black Studies Initiative, and $15 million for the University of California’s President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.

Greenidge’s downfall, then, is perhaps not all that surprising. A foundation devoted to advancing the humanities, which is still ostensibly Mellon’s mission, will be committed to unflinching academic excellence. But a foundation devoted to advancing a social or political vision will inevitably make compromises and, ultimately, fund lousy scholarship. Greenidge is unlikely to be the last Mellon scandal. The Foundation would be wise to ask why.