Over fifty years ago, Merle Curti sought to open up the academic study of philanthropy - the phenomenon of voluntary giving for public purposes - or what historians and reformers have commonly called "neighborliness," "beneficence," or simply, as translated from the Greek word "philanthropia," "love of humankind." Until relatively recently, the 1980s or so, writings about philanthropy, though plentiful, were an uneven lot - generally penned by insiders (often celebratory reminiscences or house histories rather than systematic or analytical studies) or rather polarized and polarizing. In addition, scholars hoping to open up the field were constrained by having only limited access to the types of archival records needed to explore the motivations and dynamics of philanthropic giving, and lacked relevant theoretical literature to anchor studies. Whereas the academic context in Curti's day was not propitious for efforts to promote a university-based study of philanthropy, the opposite was true for the other area of research considered in this essay - the university study of higher education, including histories in the field.