In the early 1970s the first large cohorts of Chicano PhD scholars entered academia, often hired into faculty positions at newly created Chicano departments or centers. The academic identities of the first Chicano PhD scholars were firmly grounded in "Chicanismo," a term which emphasizes ethnic nationalism, political and economic equity, and cultural and community pride. This essay explores a period of rapidly developing collective consciousness among this group whom the authors call "Chicano intellectual nationalists" as they negotiated with new forms of power and political capital in academia. The creation of a new field of history, which challenged old paradigms with revised interpretations, was aided through grants from private foundations. Specifically, the Ford Foundation's funding of Mexican-American research projects and scholars from the mid-1960s to the height of "el movimiento" in the 1970s exemplified this shifting terrain. The changing and complex interactions between the Ford Foundation, Mexican-American/Chicano Studies as a discipline, and newly identified Chicano intellectual nationalists are explored in this article. In so doing, the authors reveal: (1) the complex role that private foundations played as progressives or conservators in U.S. education; (2) a reliance among philanthropic organizations on historical experiences with African Americans as a guide for dealing with Chicanos; (3) the self-determination of Chicano scholars during a critical stage in "el movimiento"; and (4) the impact of these projects on the Chicano/a community. The authors argue that in this radical phase of the Chicano movement, identity politics occasionally trumped conceptions of a greater good for the community. Drawing their work, in part, theoretically on examinations of the relationship between philanthropists and the social sciences, they further argue that foundations such as Ford attempted to shape the new discipline of Chicano history. The Ford Foundation used the selection of scholars and hiring of program officers to create cultural brokers between the Foundation and tenets of Chicano ideology. However, unlike the often hegemonic portrayal of foundations exerting their power over communities, Chicanos resisted and placed their own imprint on the characteristics of new Chicano research. This essay, part of a larger project on the relationship between Ford Foundation and Chicano/Latino scholarship, draws attention to the rich possibilities available for scholars of Latino higher education and philanthropy to examine the complex dynamics at play in the evolution of new lines of research in the late twentieth century. (Contains 112 footnotes.)