“University of Chicago President Don Michael Randel’s decision, announced last week, to leave next July to become president of the New York-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has import for more than scholars in Hyde Park. Randel will be heading the leading funder of the humanities among U.S. philanthropies. The humanities always have scratched for foundation support but usually could count on a handful of old reliables. According to a 2004 report by the Foundation Center and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, five foundations accounted for a quarter of the $335 million in grants to the humanities in 2002, the most current year for such data. Mellon was the leading provider that year, with $25.9 million in grants (representing about 12 percent of its total giving), as it was for much of the prior decade.”