David Callahan


David Callahan is an American writer and editor. He is the founder and editor of Inside Philanthropy, a digital media site. Previously, he was a senior fellow at Demos, a public policy group based in New York City that he co-founded in 1999. He is also an author and lecturer. He is best known as the author of the books The Givers and The Cheating Culture.

Personal life

David Callahan is the son of Daniel Callahan, PhD, a bio-ethicist, and Sidney Callahan. He has four brothers and one sister.

Education

David went to public high school in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. He received his B.A. at Hampshire College and holds a PhD in Politics from Princeton University.

Career

Callahan was a fellow at The Century Foundation from 1994 to 1999. His work area was US foreign policy and international affairs. In 1999, Callahan co-founded Demos. Callahan left Demos in 2013 to start Inside Philanthropy.

Inside Philanthropy

Callahan launched Inside Philanthropy in early 2014. The site's tag line is "Who's Funding What, and Why." Inside Philanthropy covers news about recent gifts by foundations and major donors, as well as the world of fundraising and trends in philanthropy. The site also includes profiles of funders to help nonprofits find money and publishes a daily newsletter. In addition, it issues its own set of annual awards, the "IPPYs," that include categories such as the "Philanthropist of the Year" and "Foundation President of the Year." Inside Philanthropy is mainly funded by subscriptions, which currently cost $397 a year or $47 a month. The site says that it "has never taken money from the funders we cover and never will."

Publications

In 1990 he published his first book on U.S. foreign policy, , a biography of Paul Nitze. His second book on foreign policy was Between two worlds: realism, idealism, and American foreign policy after the cold war, which was published in 1994. His third book on foreign policy, Unwinnable wars: American power and ethnic conflict in 1998, is a study of U.S. involvement in such ethnic conflicts as the wars in Bosnia, Rwanda, Lebanon, and Biafra. He also published State of the union in 1998.
In 2002, Callahan wrote Kindred spirits: Harvard Business School's extraordinary class of 1949 and how they transformed American business, a history of the Harvard Business School Class of 1949. In an interview about the book with The New York Times, Callahan contrasted this earlier group of business leaders, many of whom frowned on conspicuous consumption, with later generations of business leaders more motivated by greed.
A New York Times review of his 2004 book, The cheating culture: why more Americans are doing wrong to get ahead, Chris Hedges called Callahan "a new liberal with old values." The Cheating Culture is a nonfiction work that links the rise in unethical behavior in American society to economic and regulatory trends—particularly growing inequality. He lectured widely on the book to business groups and university audiences, frequently as a keynote speaker. The libertarian magazine, Reason, criticized Callahan for placing too much blame for cheating on the rise of laissez-faire economics.
His 2007 publication, The Moral Center, which examines how a market-based economy, i.e. capitalism, with its elevation of self-interest, undermines values that both liberals and conservatives care about. The American Prospect reviewed The Moral Center."
In 2010 Callahan published Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking of America, in which he described an emerging upper class of "cosmopolitan elite", "super-educated" "professionals and entrepreneurs" who adopt "key liberal ideas as multiculturalism and active government" and who work in "knowledge" industries. He wrote that the rise of the knowledge economy has led to ideological shifts within the U.S. upper class.
In his 2017 book The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age which looked at top philanthropists such as Michael Bloomberg and Mark Zuckerberg. The book was widely reviewed, including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Time, and The Atlantic. Callahan also appeared on NPR's Weekend Edition to discuss the book, as well as several local public radio stations, such as WNYC. Callahan appeared at events around the U.S. about the book, including at the New York Public Library, Town Hall Seattle, and the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.
The Givers generated wide discussion and controversy in the world of philanthropy, including in industry publications such as Chronicle of Philanthropy, Sanford Social Innovation Review, and Philanthropy magazine. In a forum on the book in HistPhil, four experts in the field wrote essays sharing different perspectives on The Givers. HistPhil called The Givers "one of the more widely anticipated and widely discussed books on philanthropy in recent memory.'" While some critics said Callahan had written too positively about today's top philanthropists, others said that Callahan's ideas for reforming the charitable sector to limit the influence of private donors would be harmful. In an event at Philanthropy New York, Callahan engaged in a debate about the book with Emmett Carson, president of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Callahan also engaged in an online dialogues about the book with Sean Parnell, director of public policy for the Philanthropy Roundtable. In July 2017, Callahan responded to critics of the book in a lengthy essay in Inside Philanthropy.

Correspondent in main stream media outlets

Callahan has written articles for The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The American Prospect, and The Nation.

Publications

Articles by Callahan