Institute for the Study of Economic Culture

Boston, MA

(Grants go to Boston University)

[From a report by NCRP]

Boston University's Institute for the Study of Economic Culture's [ISEC] many activities reflect a solid resource base. It has made considerable efforts to work with other conservative institutions to disseminate its work broadly. The Institute reported in its 1995/1996 progress report its plans to produce a series of small books dealing with the "moral" basis of civil society, with possible publication by the right-wing Institute for Contemporary Studies Press. (ICS itself is a major grantee of the conservative foundations, receiving over $1.5 million for its activities in the 1992-1994 period.)

Another ISEC project, developed with the American Enterprise Institute, focused on the role of "mediating structures" in social service delivery. The project produced a volume of project findings, entitled To Empower People: From State to Civil Society, edited by Michael Novak of AEI (also a major grantee), and was launched at a conference in Washington, D.C.

The "crisis of the welfare state" has also been of Institute concern, the project idea for which came from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. The Institute is also working on additional studies. One study is on the burdens that government regulations impose on private sector service providers, conducted by a writer from the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review. It will likely be published by the Boston-based Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research, a state think tank that also received grant support from some combination of the 12 foundations.

The other study concerns the relationship of the welfare state to "religiously defined social services." The Institute reported that the two studies are aimed at finding "ways of protecting private institutions from the 'fatal embrace of government."

In addition to receiving sizable grants from conservative foundations, the ISEC has been generously supported by Boston University, whose president, John Silber, is a political and intellectual conservative who chairs the right-wing National Association of Scholars, also a major grantee. Silber's political orientation is clearly revealed in his 1993 President's Report to University Trustees:

"We have resisted the official dogmas of radical feminism. We have done the same thing with regard to gay and lesbian liberation... We have resisted the fad of Afro-centrism. We have not fallen into the clutches of the multiculturalists. We recognized that western civilization, so-called, is in fact a universal culture."

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Institute for the Study of Economic Culture