The White House announced that it intends to appoint Thomas Nides as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Previously, Nides served as Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources from 2010 to 2013. He has also served on the Board of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
Here is what Wilson Center Director, President and CEO Jane Harman has to say about the new appointment.
Mr. Nides will replace Joseph Gildenhorn, Founding Partner of JBG Companies, as Chairman of the think tank. The Board of Trustees are appointed to six-year terms by the President of the United States. Here is the current leadership at the Wilson Center.
Nides will follow numerous former Obama Administration officials to think tank land. Here is a list that Think Tank Watch has compiled on some of those newly minted think tankers from Obamaland.
The think tank, which is funded in part by annual appropriations through the Interior, Environment, and other Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, recently issued a document on its plan for a federal funding hiatus.
In that document, the Wilson Center says that if there is a lapse in federal funding as a result of failure to pass an appropriations bill, the think tank will not close. "The Wilson Center has facilities and personnel not funded through annual appropriation...about two-thirds of Wilson Center staff is not funding through federal appropriation."
The Wilson Center was recently ranked
as the 11th best think tank in the world by the annual University of
Pennsylvania think tank rankings. It was also ranked as the 6th best
think tank in the United States.
