1.

THE LEFT-LEANING THINK TANK
By Peter Kovler

Change (The Magazine of Learning)
Vol. 10, No. 5
May 1978

It is axiomatic these days that "the Movement" is dead. Liberalism and radicalism are becoming passé and neo-conservatism is making an overwhelming philosophic debut. But this national development has had little influence on the Institute for Policy Studies, the left-leaning Washington think tank. IPS -- as demonstrated in its associates' papers -- has resisted the fashion; it continues to espouse such progressive causes as nuclear disarmament, limitation of arms sales, and community control of public capital. Such issues, hopes IPS' new chief, Robert Borosage, "will play a leading role in resurrecting the flagging spirits of liberals and the left."

IPS was formed in 1963 by Marcus Raskin, a graduate of the University of Chicago law school and aide to McGeorge Bundy, and by Richard Barnet, an aide to the State Department's John McCloy. The two men had seen government from the inside and concluded that the military dominated most of national policy making, and that to counter this influence the government needed independent advice. They arranged funding from Philip Stern, heir to the Sears fortune, and James Warburg of the international banking family. Once they had the money they were able to recruit several academic and political people to hold seminars or do research. Among the more well-known are Hans Morgenthau and Hannah Arendt from the University of Chicago, counter-culture authors like Allen Ginsberg and Paul Goodman, and military strategists like Paul Warnke and Jerome Wiesnet.

Throughout the middle sixties, the institute unhesitantly backed the civil rights and antiwar movements. At the time of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, for instance, when even leaders like Senator Fulbright were supporting President Johnson, the institute provided a forum for Bernard Fall -- the former State Department official who was predicting that the United States would copy France's experience in Indochina. During that period IPS published some important books and organized seminal local movements. For example, Raskin coedited The Vietnam Reader, which was to become the basic text for the teach-in movement. And Richard Barnet wrote Global Reach, one of the first books to expose the power of multinational corporations. Several associates worked with the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party while others were organizing neighborhood governments in big northern cities.

But not all has been prescience and success. Within its 14-year history IPS has been frequently beset by internal problems. Perhaps the most critical was in 1973 when several associates, declaring that IPS was elitist, sexist, and racist, quit and formed their own organization, the Public Resource Center (PRC). The basic cause of dissension, said the splinter group, was a difference in political philosophies: The PRC wanted to emphasize work with Movement and citizen groups while IPS was more interested in influencing Congress.

But within the last two years the Institute has been struck by probably its greatest loss. One of the Institute's divisions, the Transnational Institute (TNI), had Orlando Letelier, former Chilean ambassador to the United States, as an associate. On September 21, 1976, Letelier's car was blown up and he, along with another IPS associate, Ronni Moffitt, was killed. The assassination saddened and angered institute fellows, some of whom believe the CIA colluded with the FBI and Justice Department to prevent a thorough investigation.

But the institute seems to have recovered from that tragedy now. "As in the past", says a confident Borosage, "our job is to pursue intellectual work that is connected to ongoing political questions. We are having continuous political discussions from which will evolve our priorities and projects. What we'll probably come up with is a mix of things we're good at and which seem crucial."

At present, the Institute -- located on four floors of an office building just off Dupont Circle -- has 30 associate scholars who come from a variety of backgrounds. They're selected from a vast number of applicants -- about 10 per day. Some are Ph.D.s, some have worked in the government, and some were active in the antiwar movement. "The mix", says Borosage, "gives the institute the needed balance between practice and theory." The new director also has a definition of what the institute should do: "One of our difficulties has been to try to pick up where the movement left off. There was a question after Vietnam as to what stage was next. There was fatigue. It is our task to develop a progressive movement."

Asked whether he thinks this sort of work could be performed by an academic institution, Borosage says, "I doubt it. In the history of intellectual thought there are periods when ideas are in universities -- when there are intellectual changes from the inside and you have younger academics who are doing the questioning. That doesn't exist now. Instead, in economics the European radical political economists are the first ones to have seriously challenged the Keynesians, the first to stress the significance of oligopolies. They're not squelched by academia: They've organized outside of it. I think you may even have the same thing in psychology, although, of course, that's not our expertise".

Borosage sees the institute moving in three principal directions. The first is the development of the Conference of Alternative State and Local Public Policies. This program, says Borosage, "is an attempt to set up a network of progressive state and local officials who are trying to develop practical programs. For example, we're looking into the possibility of state or community development banks which would be more responsive to the needs of poorer citizens." A recent conference newsletter goves a good notion of the kinds of domestic problems IPS will be addressing. There are articles about how consumers, as opposed to utilities, should own on-site solar heating systems; an article about "upbeat" Hartford, Connecticut, where publicly capitalized winterization and solar heating research are being conducted; and a series of short pieces on progressive legislation: Tough antiredlining laws in California; a "delawyerizing" movement in Maryland (an attempt to simplify legal procedures so lay citizens can handle their own cases); and news of an artists' resale act whereby artists would get a cut of the profit when their works are resold.

A second area concerns investigations of international human rights violations as well as studies on the new economies order and the power of multinational organizations. Most of this work is done under the auspices of the Transnational Institute -- what might be thought of as the State Department of IPS. Scholars and authors there are publishing books and pamphlets about the power of U.S. corporations in the third world, about U.S. meddling in the economies of third world governments, and about world hunger "caused by plunder and not by scarcity." In brief, says founder Raskin, "We're looking at the whole new relationship between corporations and the third world and trying to develop a definition of an equitable economic order."

TNI's viewpoint was recently expressed in an article by Howard Wachtel, a professor of economics at American University and fellow at TNI, and Michael Moffitt, the husband of the woman who was slain in the September bombing. "In the ornate boardrooms of multinational corporations and banks in New York, Bonn, and Tokyo, and in the austere conference rooms of the United Nations in Geneva, decisions are being made that will determine the shape of the world economy for the remainder of the century. The old international economic order erected after World War II has collapsed, leaving in its wake an economic and political instability that rivals the conditions of the thirties. The fifties and the sixties are now nostalgically recalled as the age of prosperity in marked contrast to our time of simultanous unemployment and inflation, bloated debt structures, and the worldwide stagnation of economic growth . . . The third world is the victim."

A third major area of study for IPS is arms control and national security. According to Borosage, "The country is in a precarious state. Kissinger uses weapons as bargaining chips and the result is increasing proliferation. For the first time in a while I think we're getting another red scare. The notion is now popular that the Soviet Union is superior in arms strength and, so the argument runs, we have to build up ours. It's really just more arms race. Most important, we can't help the poor if we're spending money on weapons. We're trying to bring this to the attention of legislators and the public."

Michael Klare is one of the institute's authorities on arms control and has been the author of some of IPS's most provocative work. Recently, Klare wrote an article telling how the U.S., via Italy, is supplying arms to South Africa. Klare has demonstrated that despite President Carter's announced adoption of a new policy of arms restraint, there will be "a continuing flow of advanced U.S. arms to an ever growing number of countries abroad."

Other issues being studied are governmental accountability to citizens and employees. A recent IPS effort has been aimed at whistle blowers -- federal employees who witness abuses, mismanagement, or waste and are punished for reporting it. Last fall the institute sponsored a national conference of these federal employees, declaring in a policy statement that "if Americans learned nothing else from Watergate they learned what federal employees have always known: The professional civil service is American democracy's last line of defense against those who could corrupt our institutions . . . When federal employees point out wrongdoing, they are rarely rewarded. Often they face the threat of penalty. Federal employees who speak to a supervisor, testify before a congressional committee, or write to a newspaper often risk sacrificing their careers." IPS is trying to get legislation passed that will protect federal whistle blowers.

Pne of the most significant questions now facing IPS is how many issues it should pursue. The institute has always prided itself on being ahead of the mainstream -- able to diagnose problems before they receive widespread public attention. But some have argued recently that because IPS is contantly hunting for bright new issues, its energies have become too scattered. Writing in Esquire in 1971, journalist Gary Wills said, "The institute has tended to ride off in too many directions at once. A reason for its comparative obscurity has been the failure to stake out one area, work persistently on it, and achieve widely recognized results." But Raskin denies such a weakness. He says: "Instead of looking at the institute that way, people should be judging the work. They should look at the national security work of Barnet and at the civil rights efforts of the sixties."

Another critical question confronting the institute is whether to accept government money. It has tradionally been IPS policy to stay away from government grants. Advisors, it has been felt, must maintain their financial independence if they are to examine federal policy on its merits, rather than its political possibilities. But money-raising problems have forced a reconsideration of this option. Some fellows perceive no obstacles, pointing out that dozens of other think tank consulting groups have accepted money and maintained their integrity and independence. Others, however, insist that cooption would be inevitable. Raskin seems to favor the latter viewpoint, noting that "the general feeling is that the institute should be supported by individuals and foundations."

At present, IPS seems to have lost some of its audience. During the sixties, campuses were welcoming radical and progressive ideas; now there is no simple category of people who can be regarded as an IPS public. So in order to get its research more widely known, IPS has had to rely more heavily on Washington and regional conferences, and on work specifically aimed at the Congress. For instance, at the request of 56 members of Congress, IPS has just completed an alternative national budget for 1979. In it are recommendations for amounts to be spent in all areas of the federal government, emphasizing what the government can do in housing, education, and medical care. Twenty-three institute fellows and resarchers worked on the budget.

Since life at IPS is less tumultuous now than in the sixties, one may be inclined to believe that the institute has had its heyday. Indeed, a recent article in the New Republic described IPS as a place "Where left-wing issues and left-wing thinkers grow old together." But Raskin is not flustered by such commentary. He says, "We've been in operation for 14 years and we're better off than ever. Talk that it has been tough to raise money is nonsense. The institute has been established on the principle that it will exist for the next 20 years and beyond." And he adds, "I think there is still a great deal of the left in the Democratic party and in the nation. Thousands of projects that we helped to start have continued. Too, there has been acceptance in much of the country that our foreign policy should be noninterventionist and antiwar. The best example of this was in Angola.

One senses a quiet determination among IPS fellows to try to make the "Me Decade" aware of political problems. "The country is in a dangerous situation," remarks Michael Moffitt. "We aee at a crucial point", declares Borosage. Throughout IPS there is a sense of urgency. Such expressions, of course, at first seem almost anachronistic, a form of Movement nostalgia. But if one recalls how wild IPS's warnings seemed in the early sixties, one has to concede the think tank more credibility. Clearly, IPS is not suffering from academic dementia. As founder Richard Barnet describes it: "What we're doing is pointing out what's irrational in our society -- before it becomes part of the conventional wisdom."

2.

THE INSTIUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES

** Ideas into Action for Peace, Justice, and the Environment **

[As of December 2005]

http://www.ips-dc.org/overview.htm

For more than four decades, IPS has transformed ideas into action for peace, justice, and the environment. The Institute has strengthened and linked social movements through articulation of root principles and fundamental rights, research and analysis on current events and issues, and connections to policymakers, academics, and activists at all levels. As a multi-issue think tank that has worked with the movements that shaped the late 20th Century, from Civil Rights onwards, we offer a cross-cutting analysis with a historical perspective.

The Institute for Policy Studies is a 501(c)3 organization under the IRS code. Donations are tax-deductible.

MAJOR AREAS OF WORK

To facilitate long-term planning as well as rapid response to world events, IPS's projects are configured in three clusters, supported by an administrative and outreach cluster. However, we foster interaction and collaboration among all staff so that our research cuts across academic disciplines to a broad view of how the world really works.

DEMOCRACY AND FAIRNESS CLUSTER

The projects of the Democracy and Fairness Cluster unite scholars, local activists, national advocacy groups, and policymakers to further democracy and economic justice in the United States. The Progressive Challenge works with over 200 progressive groups in pursuing the consensually created Fairness Agenda for America. Paths for the 21st Century is a collaborative research project seeking to define the economic, social, and political requisites for human decency over the next generation. The Break the Chain Campaign is an IPS-led coalition seeking to end the exploitation and abuse of thousands of domestic workers brought to the U.S. to work for diplomats, officials of international agencies, and others. The Social Action and Leadership School for Activists (SALSA) teaches the basics of organizing, management, communications, and other movement-building skills to hundreds of activists each year. IPS also participates in the Democracy Action Project, a youth-led coalition to tranform democracy.

GLOBAL JUSTICE CLUSTER

The international flow of capital is reshaping lives and the environment dramatically all around the world, with the world’s poorest people paying the price for prosperity for the few. The Institute’s Global Justice Cluster comprises three projects that collaborate with activists and scholars throughout the world to generate alternatives to the current, corporate-led globalization. The Global Economy project offers broad analysis of free trade initiatives and their impacts, and serves as a watchdog on the world’s wealthiest corporations. The Sustainable Energy and Economy Network (SEEN) examines the social and environmental consequences of public lending for fossil fuel projects. The Ecotourism project studies how ecotourism can aid sustainable and equitable development in the Global South, with a particular focus on certification initiatives. The New Voices on Globalization coalition, which includes IPS, works to increase the visibility of perspectives of a more diverse range of people in the anti-corporate globalization movement.

PEACE AND SECURITY CLUSTER

The projects of the Peace and Security Cluster seek to make the U.S. a more responsible global leader and global partner. Foreign Policy In Focus, a collaboration with the Interhemispheric Resource Center, offers policymakers and journalists ready analysis of breaking world events. The New Internationalism project offers an unflinching progressive voice on U.N. and Middle East affairs. The Drug Policy project advocates a harm-reduction approach to the “War on Drugs” at home and abroad. The Nuclear Policy project examines U.S. management of nuclear weaponry, power production, and waste management. The Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards recognizes champions of human rights in the name of two IPS staffers who were killed in 1976 by agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

SENIOR SCHOLARS AND INTERNSHIPS

Established public scholars contribute expertise and insight to each cluster as IPS Senior Scholars. The Institute takes on scores of interns each year, offering each an opportunity to contribute meaningfully to our research.

ADMINISTRATION AND OUTREACH CLUSTER

Experienced professionals provide administrative, public relations, and fundraising support, making it possible for our researchers to focus their attention on substantive work.

MISSION STATEMENT

The Institute for Policy Studies strengthens social movements with independent research, visionary thinking, and links to the grassroots, scholars, and elected officials. Since 1963, we have empowered people to build healthy and democratic societies in communities, the U.S., and the world.

VALUES STATEMENT

IPS public scholars pursue their work with a common set of 10 core values and principles: peace, justice, environmental sustainability, participatory democracy, human rights, freedom, dignity, diversity, community, and international law.

DISCLAIMER ON TAKING POSITIONS

IPS works with but is independent of political parties and movements. We embrace internal diversity of thought, and believe that discussion and debate are crucial in forging solid, practical public scholarship. In order to give our scholars and projects the widest freedom to explore and express their own views, IPS as an institution does not take positions on issues.

3.

Obituaries

RICHARD BARNET

Times (London)
January 12, 2005

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1435782,00.html

Richard Barnet, co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies, was born on May 7, 1929. He died on December 23, 2004, aged 75. Barnet's wife, two daughters, a son, and a foster son survive him.

Co-founder of IPS, a liberal-leaning think-tank in Washington which has argued energetically against aggressive U.S. foreign policies, Richard Barnet was co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington.

The IPS, the leading radical think-tank in the U.S., is unusual, if not unique, in that it advocates social action as well as academic research. Funded by the Fabergé cosmetics family, it employs a relatively large staff of very competent researchers and analysts from a wide range of disciplines. IPS’s stated aim is to develop alternative strategies to U.S. policies, “to create a more responsible society -- one built around the values of justice, non-violence, sustainability, and decency.”

Over the years it has been actively involved in issues such as civil rights, the Vietnam War, and national and global security, globalization, environmental justice, and fair trade.

At a time when most U.S. think-tanks favor increasing national wealth, deregulating markets, and maximizing growth, the IPS has to struggle to make its voice heard.

“What we’re doing,” Barnet said, “is pointing out what’s irrational in our society -- before it becomes part of the conventional wisdom.”

Richard Jackson Barnet was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1929 and raised in nearby Brookline. After obtaining an undergraduate degree at Harvard University in 1951, he went on to take a law degree, also at Harvard, in 1954. He then served for two years in the U.S. Army. He practised law in Boston until 1959 when he became a fellow at the Russian Research Center at Harvard University [renamed in 1996 the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. --A.D.J].

In 1961 he joined the U.S. State Department, working in the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency as an aide to John McCloy. Two years later he co-founded, and became the co-director of IPS with Marcus Raskin, who had been working in the White House as an aide to McGeorge Bundy, adviser to President John F. Kennedy. In 1978 he gave up the co-directorship to become a Senior Fellow and a Distinguished Fellow of the institute until he retired in 1998.

Barnet and Raskin decided to found IPS in 1963 when they came to realise that the Kennedy Administration was not seriously interested in peace and security issues. From their experiences when working as insiders, they learnt that the government assumed that major problems were administrative and managerial, whereas Barnet and Raskin believed they were moral and that social change should, and perhaps could only, be promoted directly. They also learned that the military dominated national policymaking.

Barnet and Raskin were able to recruit to the institute some first-rate people to do research and participate in seminars -- people like Hannah Arendt, Hans Morgenthau, Allen Ginsberg, and Paul Warnke. During the 1960s, the IPS strongly supported the opposition to the Vietnam War, providing, for example, a platform for Bernard Fall, the former State Department official who correctly predicted that the U.S. would experience the same fate as France in Indochina.

Their implacable opposition to the Vietnam War provoked the Johnson Administration to infiltrate FBI agents into the institute and to tap its telephones. Barnet was also on President Nixon’s “enemies list” -- which he took as a compliment.

A tragic episode in the life of the IPS was the murder of two of its associates. On September 21, 1976, the car carrying Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt was blown up. Letelier was a former Chilean Ambassador to the U.S. who became a vocal critic of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Many suspected that the CIA, the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department prevented a thorough investigation of the crime to avoid upsetting the Chilean regime.

IPS has made major studies of the global arms trade, showing how U.S. arms are flowing to a large number of countries. For example, it showed how U.S. arms were supplied to South Africa’s apartheid regime via Italy.

Government accountability was another issue studied during Barnet’s time at IPS. In particular, the institute encouraged whistle-blowers. It tried to get legislation passed that would protect civil servants who publicised government wrongdoing.

Perhaps the most famous whistleblower helped by Richard Barnet was Daniel Ellsberg, the former Pentagon official and U.S. Marine company commander who, in October 1969, smuggled out of his office and made public a top-secret, 7,000-page study of decision-making in Vietnam. The material, which soon became known as the Pentagon Papers, was published in the New York Times and the Washington Post. It was a sensation that changed the course of history.

Ellsberg’s courageous feat exposed the deceptions and delusions of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and implicated several presidents and administrations. The Pentagon Papers revealed that Washington had known for years that the Vietnam War was a catastrophe.

Today, the IPS is a major opponent of the war in Iraq. Although liberalism is on the decline in the U.S. and neoconservatism is on the rise, the IPS continues to argue for progressive causes, confident that the spirits of liberals can be revived.

Barnet was a prolific writer of books and articles on many topics. His first book, published in 1960, was Who Wants Disarmament? -- a study of the disarmament negotiations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. His other books include: Roots of War (1972); Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations (1974), one of the first books to expose the huge power of multinational corporations; The Giants (1977), an analysis of Soviet-U.S. relations; Lean Years (1980), an account of the environmental movement; and *Global Dreams (1994), an analysis of the most powerful corporations. In 1998, he wrote, with his wife Ann, a paediatric neurologist, Youngest Minds: Parenting and Genes in the Development of Intellect and Emotion.

The New Yorker magazine serialized many of his longer articles and surveys. He also wrote for Harper’s Magazine, the Nation and the Christian ecumenical magazine Sojourners, among other publications.

Barnet’s strong religious beliefs moulded his views, particularly on war and peace, and civil rights. He was an inspiration to many young people, researchers, and campaigners. And he was a talented violinist -- in his later years he taught music to children from poor neighborhoods.