“Every morning, when I walk into the Ford Foundation’s historic, landmark headquarters, I feel a sense of exhilaration and possibility,” the legendary philanthropic organization’s 10th president tells Kirkus via email. “Every single day, we are helping to make our world a better place—to advance fairness and justice, human dignity and human rights. It gives a sense of purpose, but also a profound sense of hope: Radical, righteous, energizing hope. The work will continue, but I will miss that feeling very much.”

At the end of 2025, Walker will depart the foundation to pursue new challenges in humanitarianism and arts administration. His latest book, The Idea of America: Reflections on Inequality, Democracy, and the Values We Share (Wiley, September 3), is a capstone collection of reflections, essays, and speeches, commemorating 12 inspiring years spent traveling the globe, listening, learning, and acting in defense of democracy and American ideals.

Walker recently answered some questions about the book and his ongoing mission.

In an admiring foreword to The Idea of America, President Bill Clinton identifies your 2015 Annual Message to the Ford Foundation, “Toward a New Gospel of Wealth,” as a landmark essay. What is its aim?

There remains today, as in the era of modern philanthropy’s founding, a central contradiction built into the very existence of foundations: We are the product of our market system’s unequal benefits—and yet we also are charged with addressing its unequal outcomes.

In other words, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. taught, the thing that makes philanthropy possible is also the thing that makes philanthropy necessary: inequality.

A decade ago, I began to argue that philanthropy needed a new “Gospel of Wealth” befitting our new Gilded Age—a reimagination of our founding charter, if you will. My objective was to expand Andrew Carnegie’s original thesis—and to challenge all of us, especially those of us who gain advantage from inequality, to recognize that it’s necessary but not sufficient to “give something back”; to serve our missions and values fully, we, the most privileged, also might “give something up.” This is how we pursue philanthropy beyond charity—and justice beyond generosity.

Why was The Idea of America the right title?

“The idea of America”—these four words have been the most powerful but also the most tested and contested in our history. I selected this title both to acknowledge this fundamental tension and in recognition that my own life’s journey is the promise of America at work—the idea of America at work.

I moved to New York from Texas in the summer of 1986—and I remember that July 4 weekend, when the New York Times published a posthumous essay from the celebrated journalist Theodore White. He wrote then, capturing the zeitgeist, “Englishmen are English. Frenchmen are French.…But Americans are a nation born of an idea.” We always have been and always will be.

As I argued in my 2024 address at Cooper Union (included in the book), “Our American identity emerges not from ‘blood and soil’ but from fidelity to these truths we hold self-evident even still.” Everything about my life’s journey—everything about my work—reflects this fidelity.

I was personally inspired by “There Is No Leadership Without Risk,” a piece of yours that appeared in the New York Times on October 20, 2024. At this crucial juncture in history, what does courageous moral leadership demand?

I think courageous moral leadership demands, from all of us, some reflection and introspection about how we arrived at this critical juncture—and about how we can move forward together. In that essay and others, I explored the many ways that inequality has created the conditions in which the American people are both desperate for leadership and programmed for cynicism about anyone who offers it.  This is one of numerous reasons, I believe, that leaders ought to focus on reducing inequality as a means of securing and sustaining our democratic values, traditions, and institutions.

What’s your proudest achievement as president of the Ford Foundation?

My heart is full of pride and gratitude for so many of our accomplishments, but one on which I’ve been reflecting recently—and about which I include a selection in The Idea of America—is the Ford Foundation’s rapprochement with the Ford family.

For some four decades, the estrangement between the philanthropy and the family was a subject of fascination—fodder for tabloids and even a kind of cautionary tale for donors. The truth, of course, was more nuanced and complex—and the departure of Henry Ford II from our board in 1976 was both regrettable and unfortunate.

Nevertheless, by the time the city of Detroit faced its historic bankruptcy in 2013, we knew that the moment for reengagement had long since arrived. So the foundation and family joined forces—as part of a broader coalition—to help resolve the crisis while protecting the community, its institutions, and its workers.

In the decade since, the foundation has invested nearly $380 million in our hometown of Detroit, in our sister Ford-family institutions, and across southeast Michigan. And in 2019, our board appointed Henry Ford III as a trustee—the first Ford to serve in that capacity since Henry II’s resignation—officially beginning a new chapter in the century-old story we share.

The lesson for all of us, I believe, is that we can resolve even long-standing differences when we reaffirm that the enduring values that bring us together matter more than the old narratives and grievances that too often keep us apart.

The Obama Foundation announced you’ll join its board of directors on November 1—congratulations on the exciting new role.

I am humbled by the trust that President and Mrs. Obama have placed in me. It’s an enormous honor to work with them, with Valerie Jarrett, with the foundation’s board, and with its leadership team on their many signature programs. And I’m especially excited to join them as we eagerly anticipate the 2026 opening of President Obama’s library.

You identify as a tremendous fan of Alexander Hamilton. This year, the musical Hamilton celebrates its 10^th anniversary. How are you marking the occasion?

I’m going to see it again! I think one of the reasons that Hamilton was so powerful—one of the reasons that it will endure for the ages—is that it argues implicitly but unambiguously that the story of America, the idea of America, belongs to us all. Audiences may have heard that message a little differently in 2015, or when Lin-Manuel Miranda began writing in 2008 and 2009, but it’s more urgent now than ever before. I’ll always remember seeing Hamilton on opening night at the Public Theater—the transcendent feeling of pride and hope. We could all use a little more of that today. 

In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton et al. present a collection of essays advocating for the ratification of the Constitution. What would you say the pieces in The Idea of America are advocating for?  

Like the poet says, America has never been America—but it can be, and it will be, if we renew our faith in and fidelity to the values that we share.

What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

A sense of hope—a sense that now is not the time to throw up our hands but to roll up our sleeves. After all, hope is the oxygen of democracy.

Editor at large Megan Labrise hosts the Fully Booked podcast.