Writing in The New Yorker in 1956, the critic Dwight Macdonald described the Ford Foundation as “a large body of money completely surrounded by people who want some”.

Foundations such as the Ford and the Rockefeller hold a unique place in US society. Their power and ambition is salutary, even if the Ford Foundation was the outcome of tax avoidance (Henry and Edsel Ford bequeathed most of their stock to the family foundation in response to an estate tax).

They are also widely envied – there is no equivalent elsewhere of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which pours hundreds of millions into HIV/Aids and malaria research. As governments squeeze education funding, European universities covet the endowments of US counterparts such as Harvard and Stanford.