Public Policy Training

From a report by NCRP

The conservative foundations also direct substantial resources to subsidize students' training in public policy analysis, economics and government. Nearly $17 million was awarded as fellowship money (from 1992-1994) to support the intellectual development of students, from college to post-graduate education. Augmenting this was $26 million more for various academic programs, domestic and foreign policy research, research centers, conferences and meetings mostly on the same campuses as the student fellowship money was spent, permitting expanded study, work and social interaction for the targeted students.

The heavy stream of money invested in George Mason University offers a striking example of the attention that conservative foundations have paid to the recruitment and training of college youth. Located just outside the Washington, D.C. beltway and offering good access to national decision makers, George Mason University has been a magnet for right-wing money for over a decade.

From 1992 through 1994, the 12 foundations invested a combined total of $8.55 million in various academic programs and institutes of George Mason University. This amount placed the University third among all academic and non-academic grantees, trailing only the more prestigious University of Chicago and the Heritage Foundation. Among other things, awards to George Mason University supported the work of the Center for Market Processes ($2.1 million), the Center for the Study of Public Choice ($524,100), the Institute for Humane Studies ($3 million), and the Law and Economics Program and Center ($1.4 million), headed by Henry Manne.

Both the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) and the Center for Market Processes (CMP) offer training programs for young conservatives to prepare them for public policy careers. The Institute for Humane Studies' mission is to support "the achievement of a freer society by discovering and facilitating the development of talented, productive students, scholars, and other intellectuals who share a commitment to liberty and who demonstrate the potential to change significantly the current climate of opinion to one more congenial to the principles and practices of freedom."

Among its many objectives, the Institute seeks "to enhance [young peoples'] career skills and their understanding of strategically targeted career paths through seminars, mentoring, internships, and networking." Toward that end, IHS holds summer seminars for students on free market economics and libertarian thought. Participation at these seminars is free. The Institute is also well enough funded to offer student fellowships of up to $17,500 for continued study.

The Center for Market Processes offers a fellowship summer training program, bringing students from across the country to participate in two weeks of "intellectual" training on market-based public policy followed by an eight-week internship placement with conservative policy institutions. CMP also maintains an active Policy maker Education Program for senior Congressional staffers, organizes conferences and other policy meetings, promotes public policy research in areas of special interest, and publishes several newsletters including Pro-Market Network News, distributed free to anyone who wants it and intended, as the publication states, "to facilitate communication between market-oriented professionals, policy centers, government offices, education institutes, and other organizations."

The Law and Economics Center mission is to educate judges in how to apply principles of economic analysis to the law. By 1991, the Center had provided such training - with seminars held at resort locations to enhance their attractiveness - to over 40 percent of the federal judiciary. Like the Center for the Study of Market Processes, the LEC is run independently of George Mason, with corporate and foundation sponsors covering "all travel, lodging and meal expenses for the most powerful players in the legal system - judges.

Other grantees, such as Claremont McKenna College on the West Coast, or Hillsdale College in Michigan, or Boston University in the East, have been generously supported for their conservative leadership or intellectual orientation. Claremont received just over $3 million for a range of activities, including grants to establish and support the Rose Institute of State and Local Government, the Henry Salvatori Center, fellowships in economics and political theory, professorship pledges and faculty book and research projects.

Approximately $1.5 million was awarded to Boston University, with just over $1 million awarded to the heavily-funded Institute for the Study of Economic Culture [ISEC]. The Institute's 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 (see below). 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.

Other grantees, such as Hillsdale College, appear to be even more ideologically-driven in their training efforts. In order to be able to train its students in "traditional values" and scholarship, Hillsdale makes a point of accepting no federal funding. Its promotional literature highlights the fact that theTempleton Foundation Honor Roll for Free Enterprise Teaching has ranked Hillsdale first among the nation's colleges and universities for its traditional approach to higher education, quoting the following section of Sir John Marks Templeton's letter of congratulation to the College president:

"In this age of 'politically correct' advocacy among our colleges and universities, it is especially refreshing to honor Hillsdale College for its preservation of traditional values and its defense of liberty."

The College publishes Imprimis, a monthly newsletter with the motto, "Because ideas have consequences," and a circulation, the College claims, of more than 600,000. A 1993 issue profiled conservative philanthropy, with an article by the Bradley Foundation's Michael Joyce on the role of giving in cultivating "good citizenship." Perhaps more of the flavor of the College's approach to higher education can be found in the writings of Hillsdale theology professor M. Bauman. In an article in Disciples and Democracy: Religious Conservatives and the Future of American Politics, he wrote:

The comments that are most successful today are those that are pointed, that are sharp, that are memorable... Logical arguments don't very often win the day... It takes rhetorical power and aggressiveness to mobilize people around your cause.

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Public Policy Training

From a report by NCRP

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