Message From The President
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation, headquartered in Chicago, that provides approximately $200 million in grants annually to universities, charitable and non-governmental organizations and talented individuals in the United States and 65 other countries around the world. Our mission is to help improve the human condition. The MacArthur Foundation has no connection to the United States government and does not engage in political activity. A board of private citizens oversees the Foundation's work.
As a private foundation, MacArthur has considerable latitude in selecting where to work and on what issues. We chose to work in Russia because of the country's enormous intellectual strengths, its distinctive cultural heritage and its crucial role for the future of global peace and international cooperation.
The MacArthur Foundation began its work in Russia in 1992. We work together with educational institutions, nongovernmental organizations, and the government of the Russian Federation to:
• strengthen the Russian scholarly community;
• advance legal reform and human rights; and
• support innovative frameworks that promote international peace and security.
We work in Russia, with our Russian colleagues, to advance the universal values of science, education, and the rule of law. A strong democracy and a healthy civil society cannot be imported from abroad. MacArthur provides financial resources, independent of any foreign government's goals, and helps demonstrate the possibilities for international cooperation and meaningful partnerships between private and public institutions.
A good example of this public-private cooperation is MacArthur's eight-year partnership with the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. Through this partnership – and working together with the Carnegie Corporation of New York, other donors, and implementing agencies – we have funded 25 new centers of research and educational excellence at state universities across Russia. These centers are helping to integrate teaching and research, develop a new type of research university, and train a new generation of scientists and scholars to take their place in Russian higher education.
Download the PDF to read the full publication.
