Think Tankers Help Resurrect Group to Warn Against China's Rise

Here is more from the New York Times:

The Committee on the Present Danger, a long-defunct group that campaigned against the dangers of the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, has recently been revived with the help of Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, to warn against the dangers of China.

Once dismissed as xenophobes and fringe elements, the group’s members are finding their views increasingly embraced in President Trump’s Washington, where skepticism and mistrust of China have taken hold. Fear of China has spread across the government, from the White House to Congress to federal agencies, where Beijing’s rise is unquestioningly viewed as an economic and national security threat and the defining challenge of the 21st century.

An increasing number of people in Washington now view the decoupling of the two economies as inevitable — including many of the members of the Committee on the Present Danger. At an inaugural meeting in April, Mr. Bannon, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and others issued paeans to Ronald Reagan — a former member of the group — and were met with standing ovations as they called for vigilance against China.

The committee’s two earliest iterations, in the 1950s and again in the 1970s, called for an arms buildup to counter the Soviets. The second iteration, formed over a luncheon table at Washington’s Metropolitan Club in 1976, issued documents warning against Soviet expansionism, with titles like “Is America Becoming Number 2?”

The group was briefly active again starting in 2004, this time to warn against the threat of Islamic extremism. The committee’s vice chair, Frank Gaffney, is the founder of the Center for Security Policy, a think tank that argues that mosques and Muslims across America are engaged in a “stealth jihad” to “Islamize” the country by taking advantage of American pluralism and democracy.

The group’s activity largely died down until concern over China rekindled interest.

Other think tankers on the committee include Mark Stokes of Project 2049 Institute, Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center, and Mark Helprin of the Claremont Institute.  Besides Frank Gaffney, others from his think tank on the committee include Clare Lopez, Michael Waller, and Robert McEwen.  A full list of members can be found here.

AEI Think Tanker Tom Donnelly Transitions to Being a Woman

Here is more from Josh Rogin of the Washington Post:

Giselle Donnelly is a renowned national security expert, author and conservative think-tank scholar — and even though she’s 65 years old, she was “born” only this year. That’s because Giselle has just recently transitioned to living openly as a trans woman. She is now re-introducing herself to the Washington community she has been a part of her entire adult life.

Giselle came into the world as Thomas Donnelly, the name most of Washington’s foreign policy establishment has known her by over her long career in media, policy and politics. She has now “changed her name and crossed genders,” she told me in an interview.

The conservative national security community in Washington is not known for its enlightened thinking on gender identity. Yet, so far, Giselle said, she has received nothing but support from her bosses at the American Enterprise Institute, where she works as a resident fellow in defense and security studies.

A turning point came five years ago, when, a few months after separating from her first wife, Giselle met a photographer and makeup artist named Elizabeth Taylor. A former naval nuclear instructor, Taylor opened up a beauty shop in Washington called Makeovers that helps trans women find their style. The shop became an important node in a small but growing trans community in D.C., and was featured by the Washington Post in 2015.

Giselle and Beth shared a love of national security, wine, gender fluidity and BDSM.

When one visits the biography of Thomas Donnelly on American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) website, it notes that Thomas "transitioned in October 2018" and has a link to Giselle Donnelly's current bio.

Co-Founder of Liberal Think Tank IPS Dies

Marcus Raskin, the co-founder of liberal think tank Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) has died.  Here is more from the New York Times.

Marcus Raskin, who channeled his discontent as a young aide in the Kennedy administration into helping found the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank that became an abundant source of research about nuclear disarmament, the Vietnam War, economic inequality, civil rights and national security, died on Dec. 24 in Washington.  He was 83.

Mr. Raskin and Richard J. Barnet started the institute in 1963, fiercely devoted to maintaining its independence by refusing to accept government funding.  "We also had extraordinary conceit," Mr. Raskin told The New York Times in 1983.  "We were going to speak truth to power."

With its seminars and research, the institute tapped into a changing national mood: The optimism of President John F. Kennedy's New Frontier had yielded to an increasing disillusionment over the government's conduct of the Vietnam War.  Mr. Raskin helped position the institute at the center of the growing antiwar movement.

In 1967, he and Arthur Waskow, a senior fellow at the institute, wrote a "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority," a manifesto that urged young men to refuse to participate in war.

The obituary goes on to note that Mr. Raskin played a role in the revelation of the Pentagon Papers, the classified study that unmasked the decision making that had led the US into the Vietnam War.

It says that in 1970, Daniel Ellsberg, the "disillusioned analyst for the RAND Corporation who had drafted the study," gave Mr. Raskin and Mr. Barnet a copy of a part of it.  They then passed it on to the New York Times, which later contacted Ellsberg and received the full report.

The article also quotes Sidney Blumenthal, who said that the Heritage Foundation was "modeled directly on IPS."

Secret $20 Million Gift Given to DC Think Tank

Here is what The Intercept is reporting:

The United Arab Emirates on pace to contribute $20 million over the course of 2016 and 2017 to the Middle East Institute, one of Washington’s leading think tanks, according to a document obtained by The Intercept. The outsized contribution, which the UAE hoped to conceal, would allow the institute, according to the agreement, to “augment its scholar roster with world class experts in order to counter the more egregious misperceptions about the region, inform U.S. government policy makers, and convene regional leaders for discreet dialogue on pressing issues.”

MEI was founded in 1946 and has long been an influential player in Washington foreign policy circles. It serves as a platform for many of the U.S.’s most influential figures, allowing them to regularly appear on cable news, author papers, host private briefings and appear on panels in between stints in government.

Think tanks in Washington play a role perhaps as important as K Street, though with far less public insight into their activity or sources of funds. While the political establishment is gripped by the question of Russia’s influence on the 2016 elections, Washington itself is awash in money from both foreign corporations and foreign governments.

The whole Intercept piece, authored by Ryan Grim, is worth reading in its entirety.  It has appearances by UAE Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba, think tanker Bilal Saab, UAE-based consultant Mac McClelland Jr., MEI President Wendy Chamberlain, Egyptian activist/scholar Ramy Yaacoub, Richar Mintz of The Harbour Group, Egyptian oligarch Naguib Sawiris, MEI board chairman Richard Clarke, Managing Director of Qorvis MSLGroup Michael Petruzzello, Barry Pavel of Atlantic Council, top lobbyist for Occidental Petroleum Ian Davis, former Center for a New American Security (CNAS) staffer Andrew Exum, think tank ECSSR, and many more.

Here is a recent Think Tank Watch post on the UAE's influence at other think tanks in the United States.

Fake Think Tank Raises Alarm for Think Tank Scholars

A new nuisance is emerging for think tanks and think tank scholars that has the potential to severely damage their brands and reputation: fake think tanks touting fake news.

Brian Mefford, a Senior Nonresident Fellow at the Eurasia Center of the Atlantic Council recently wrote a blog post on a "think tank" that, among other things, appears to be posting fake articles and publishing them using bylines of real think tank scholars, without permission.

Here is more from Mr Mefford:

A few weeks ago, a colleague asked why I was a part of an organization called the Center for Global Strategic Monitoring (also known as the CGS Monitor). Despite working in foreign policy for seventeen years, I had never heard of this organization. Imagine my surprise when I discovered my photograph and biography listed on the CGS Monitor website as one of their “experts.”

I immediately began searching the website for contact information to request that my name be removed. However, it became clear that there was something fishy about this website. Not only was no mailing address given; the only email contact to be found was a ubiquitous “info@” address. My email requesting that my name be removed has never been answered and the website continues to list me as one of their experts.

The Center for Global Strategic Monitoring website appears to be an impressive and thoughtful news and opinion site at first glance. However, one does not have to dig deep to discover that the organization is phony. Here’s how they do it: First, the website re-publishes analysis and opinion pieces from real, respectable research institutions (apparently without permission). Then these legitimate pieces are mixed with “news” from Russian-controlled sources without attribution. Worse yet, the website even posts some fake articles under the names of distinguished think tank scholars. As a result, the website contains an assortment of good analysis from actual think tanks, pseudo intellectual drivel produced by propaganda outlets and conspiracy theorists, and fake opinion pieces camouflaged as the handiwork of foreign policy experts.

The website for the Center for Global Strategic Monitoring (CGS) can be found here.  The site says that CGS is a "nonprofit and nonpartisan research and analysis institution dedicated to providing insights of the think tank community publications."  In other words, it says it is a think tank promoting the work of other think tanks.

A number of US and non-US think tank scholars are listed on the site as "experts," including those from Chatham House, Brookings Institution, Cato Institute, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Atlantic Council, and American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Here is what Michael Isikoff has uncovered about CGS.

Think Tank Watch recently wrote that fake think tanks are quite fashionable these days.  Well, that is becoming the biggest think tank understatement of 2017.

Update: After Think Tank Watch's story, Vanessa Williamson and Norman Eisen of Brookings published a piece entitled "We Were the Victims of Fake News," which notes Brookings is exploring different options to address the "hijacking" of its scholar's reputations.

Think Tank Presence Slim at Obama's Last State Dinner

It was the last chance for think tankers to get invited to a President Barack Obama state dinner, and only two think tankers made the cut to honor Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Renzi to the White House.

The two who made it were Robert Kagan, a Senior Fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution, and Jane Harman, Director, President, and CEO of the Wilson Center.

It helps that Kagan is the husband of Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.

Interestingly, Mae Podesta, the daughter of Center for American Progress (CAP) founder John Podesta, also made the list.  Perhaps Mr. Podesta was going to go but become a bit too preoccupied with his ongoing email issues.

Earlier in the year Think Tank Watch wrote about the likelihood of think tankers being invited to a White House state dinner.  Basically, it doesn't happen too often.

Why not?  Part of the reason is that the current president and those who advise him do not see eye to eye on a number of issues.  In fact, many at the White House refer to Washington's foreign policy elite (i.e., think tankers) as "The Blob."

But do not fret all you think tankers.  For if you you did not get your invitation these past eight years, a new administration will always bring more opportunities.

Brookings Going Gaga Over Pokemon Go

The venerable Brookings Institution usually focuses on rather soporific topics such as foreign aid, the broadband spectrum, and domestic politics in Mongolia.

But scholars at the think tank are finally pivoting to a much more serious issue at hand: the location-based augmented reality mobile game Pokemon Go.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a Senior Fellow with the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, along with Robert Michnick Golinoff of the University of Delaware, writes that Pokemon Go is the latest fad that "opens up a new vista for exploring learning."

Another Brookings scholar, Jack Karsten, wrote a piece of Pokemon Go saying that the game may be a fad but the technology behind it is not.

You heard it think tankers, it is perfectly fine to play Pokemon Go during work hours for the sake of education and technology advancement.  But as think tanker Jason Hong of New America warns, while you track Pokemon, Pokemon Go tracks you.

Possible Trump Veep Pick Pence a Think Tanker

A little-known fact about Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R), a possible vice presidential pick for Donald Trump, is that he has a deep connection to think tank land.

From 1991 to 1994, Pence ran the Indiana Policy Review Foundation (IPR), a conservative, state-level think tank that was founded in 1989 by Craig Ladwig.

In fact, Pence apparently claimed in 2012 that he helped found the think tank.  In 2008 Pence said: "I was part of what we called the seed corn Heritage Foundation was spreading around the country in the state think tank movement.  We actually called our little foundation in Indiana the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, very much as a homage to Policy Review magazine of Heritage, and we modeled on the state level what Heritage had done before."

Policy Review was a conservative journal that was published from 1977 to 2013.  In 2001 it was acquired by the Hoover Institution, a Stanford University-based conservative think tank.

Here is more about the Indiana Policy Review Foundation from its own website:

Our mission is to marshal the best thought on governmental, economic and educational issues at the state and municipal levels. We seek to accomplish this in ways that:

• Exalt the truths of the Declaration of Independence, especially as they apply to the interrelated freedoms of religion, property and speech.
• Emphasize the primacy of the individual in addressing public concerns.
• Recognize that equality of opportunity is sacrificed in pursuit of equality of results.

The Indiana Policy Review Foundation is a non-profit education foundation focused on state and municipal issues. It is free of outside control by any individual, organization or group. It exists solely to conduct and distribute research on Indiana issues. Nothing written here is to be construed as reflecting the views of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the legislature or to further any political campaign.

The foundation’s white papers are intended to make scholarly research on Indiana issues more widely available to policy analysts and researchers. White Papers represent research in progress and are published to invite comment and discussion as preparation for their submission to academic journals and other professional publications. The authors are solely responsible for the content of their research and analysis.

But besides IPR, it is a little-known fact that Pence has been a non-staff member of the conservative Heritage Foundation.  Pence has spoken at Heritage on several occasions, including this 2005 talk on journalists, and this 2006 talk on immigration reform.  Pence has also written special guest posts for Heritage, including this one remembering 9/11.

Pence also has allies at Heritage, including policy analyst Katie Tubb, who was once at intern for Pence when he was in the US Congress.

In 2015, Heritage wrote a piece entitled "What Are Mike Pence's Prospects for a 2016 Presidential Run?"

Pence has also spoken at other think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).  In fact, in 2005, Pence took part in an AEI conference along with Newt Gingrich, another possible VP pick for Trump.

New Rules May Lead to Fewer Paid Think Tankers, More Interns

New Obama Administration overtime work rules are causing a huge stir at think tanks as they scramble to understand the implications on their wonky workforce.

The new rules require employers to pay time-and-a-half overtime pay to most salaries workers making less than $47,476 a year.

Here is more from Dan Drezner:

It is not just New York publishing houses and Hollywood film studios that are affected. There is no exemption for nonprofit organizations. According to the Labor Department’s website, “the proposed rule may impact non-profit organizations having an annual dollar volume of sales or business done of at least $500,000.” Indeed, I violated my own rule of not acting like a reporter and actually queried some of D.C.’s indigenous think tanks to see if it would cover them. Bruce Jones, vice president and director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution, confirmed to me that that the new rules were a “big issue” and that Brookings “will be covered by this but not quite clear yet how extensively.”

Throughout the think tanks and policy shops that litter Washington, there exists a veritable army of research assistants scurrying around performing a hundred thankless tasks, from organizing panels to managing schedules to processing reimbursements to proof-reading working papers to making sure the questioner at a panel aired by C-SPAN knows how to operate the microphone. They are uber-competent and adroit at managing the fragile egos of their bosses and bosses’ bosses. I know many outstanding experts in international relations who got their start by working as assistants at the Council on Foreign Relations or RAND or AEI. And I guarantee you that most of them worked more than 40 hours a week.

What will the effect of the new overtime rule be on this unrecognized army of research assistants who make the Ideas Industry function? Scheiber quotes one person in his story suggesting that there might be “a wink-and-nod approach” in which assistants ‘volunteer’ to work late without reporting it as overtime. That is certainly a possibility, which would mean not much of a shift from the status quo.

My fear, however, is that some think tanks might respond to this rule by hiring fewer paid assistants and offering more unpaid internships instead. A few talented research assistants might thrive under these new rules, but the real winners would be those undergraduates, postgraduates and graduate students who can afford such unpaid internships as a way to get their foot into the door of the Ideas Industry. And as aggrieved as research assistants might feel, there are even more serious problems with the intern economy.

As Think Tank Watch has reported, the average think tank salary has been calculated to be around $47,136 to $66,000.

2016 Election Sparks Firings at Think Tanks

The 2016 election season still has many more months to go, but it is already taking a toll on think tank land, with a pair of recent firings at different think tanks that were linked to presidential politics.

The conservative think tank Center for the National Interest (CNI), which recently hosted Donald Trump for a foreign policy speech, has fired one of its employees who questioned the think tank's ties to Trump.  Here is more from Foreign Policy:

The dust-up marks the latest feud among the country’s top foreign-policy realists over whether to embrace the real estate tycoon — whose more narrow interpretation of U.S. national interests bears some resemblance to their own — or disown him as a charlatan with no serious ties to any intellectual tradition.

The employee, a junior fellow named Alexander Kirss, sharply rebuked the think tank for inviting Trump to explain his foreign-policy platform in an April 27 event at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel.

In hosting the mogul, Kirss said the think tank exhibited the same “opportunism displayed by others who have sided with Trump, such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, and former presidential candidate Ben Carson.”

He was fired the same day the story published.

Paul Saunders, the executive director of the center, told FP that the decision to terminate Kirss’s position had “nothing to do with Trump.”

“The real issue is that this individual publicly disparaged the organization he was working for,” he said, noting that Kirss had never voiced his misgivings about the event to his superiors. “I don’t think that any employer would tolerate that.”

Some of Kirss past writings for the think tank can be found here.  Kirss, who is a Senior Consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton, was a member of the inaugural five member class of resident junior fellows tasked with pursuing independent research to support the mission and goals of Center for the National Interest.  In the past, he was a Research Assistant at the International Center for Defense Studies, and a Research Intern at the Cato Institute.

In response, the think tank said that when think tanks invite someone to speak, it does not constitute an endorsement.  CNI said that over the years, it has hosted then-President Bill Clinton, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), former Defense Secretaries Robert Gates and Ash Carter, and National Security Advisor Susan Rice, but those guests were not necessarily endorsed by the think tank.

In response to suggestions that CNI has been unable to contribute any policymakers inclined toward realism for government service, the think tank said that three of its current program directors have served as political appointees in the US government.  It also noted that former CNI employees are working in the State Department, Defense Department, National Security Council (NSC), and the intelligence community (as well as Capitol Hill).

In another think tank firing, progressive blogger Matt Bruening of the liberal think tank Demos was reportedly axed for calling a Hillary Clinton ally (Neera Tanden - the head of Center for American Progress) a "scumbag."

Center for American Progress (CAP) has strong ties to the Clintons, and Tanden is often mentioned as a possible chief of staff for a Hillary Clinton Administration.  (And as Mother Jones said, being president of CAP is a "Big Effin Deal.")

Here is what Demos, a New York-headquartered think tank founded in 2000, had to say about the firing.

During the past few years a number of think tankers have been fired for various reasons.  Examples include one who was let go for lying on a resume, and someone who was sacked for having a different policy stance from the think tank he belonged to.

Few Think Tankers at Nordic State Dinner

The White House just held what is probably one of its last state dinners, and only a lucky few think tankers got to attend.

More specifically, there were only two current think tankers on the guest list for the Nordic state dinner: Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution and Walter Isaacson, President and CEO of the Aspen Institute.

Isaacson brought his wife, Cathy Isaacson to the state dinner, while Winthrop, who is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, brought Jean-Marc Bernard, Deputy Chief Technical Officer at the Global Partnership for Education.

That said, there were a number of former think tankers at the state dinner (particularly those who still serve in the Obama Administration), including Colin Kahl, Denis McDonough, and Susan Rice.

As previously reported by Think Tank Watch, it is extremely hard for a think tanker to score a White House state dinner invitation.

Think Tanker Disinvited to Speak at University

Jason Riley, a Senior Fellow at the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute (MI), was recently disinvited to speak at Virginia Tech, he wrote, because of concerns that he could spark a protest.  Here is more from Mr. Riley in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece:

...You don’t have to be in such distinguished company to earn the ire of the campus left. Last month I was invited by a professor to speak at Virginia Tech in the fall. Last week, the same professor reluctantly rescinded the invitation, citing concerns from his department head and other faculty members that my writings on race in The Wall Street Journal would spark protests. Profiles in campus courage.

Mr. Riley's publications and commentary can be found here.  The Manhattan Institute was recently ranked as the 39th best think tank in the United States.

All Think Tankers Need to Take the "Bubble Quiz"

Whether your are a seasoned think tanker who has put in decades on think tank row, or a newly minted think tanker still trying to learn exactly where think tank row is, you need to take the "Bubble Quiz."

Or so says Chuck DeVore, Vice President of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, who discussed the Bubble Quiz in a recent post in Real Clear Politics.  Here is more:

Do the staff at national think tanks reflect the nation as a whole? Or are they more representative of the Acela Corridor, that narrow slice of America from D.C. to Boston where they are headquartered?

It's a serious shortcoming if national policy staffers too frequently have an urban pedigree, only have friends with similar views and education, and don't think much of their fellow Americans in flyover country, if they think of them at all. If staff at these institutions — who are charged with generating new ideas, turning those ideas into policies, and then convincing government officials to implement those policies — have little in common with the very people they claim to help, how can they be effective?

Elites' lack of familiarity with mainstream America is extensively documented in Angelo Codevilla's book The Ruling Class, and it was recently acknowledged by liberal writer Emmett Rensin in a Vox essay as well.

But state-level think tanks likely don't share this national-level weakness. Where national think tanks generally draw on a narrow base of experience, then offer advice to the entire nation, state think tanks are apt to more closely represent residents in the surrounding state and offer solutions crafted with first-hand knowledge.

To test this proposition, I turned to Charles Murray's "Bubble Quiz" — a 25-question survey that attempts to gauge a respondent's "isolation from mainstream white America" (which, while receding as a percentage of the population, is still a majority). Questions include whether you've lived in a small town, whether you've served in the military, etc.

Murray estimates that the mean for a nationally representative sample would be 44, with a lower score indicating more isolation from, and ignorance of, mainstream culture and experiences. When Murray analyzed scores from those who took the quiz online through PBS, he found that elite enclaves from Manhattan to Silicon Valley — and even Austin — had median scores ranging from 12.5 to 24.5.

As Kara Jones, nicely summarized in a tweet: "Translation: Make sure at least a few people at your beltway think tank still view Chili's as fine dining."

So go on think tankers, take the Bubble Quiz and let Think Tank Watch know how you do.

Pivot: French Ambassador Now Hates Think Tankers

At one time, Gerard Araud, French Ambassador to the United States, loved to hang out and party with think tankers.  Now, after a year and a half in Washington, DC, it looks like he has had a bit of a falling out with think tankers.

Here is more from Moises Naim in The Atlantic:

Gerard Araud, the French ambassador to the United States, has said, in the words of the Financial Times, that Washington “is mostly about ‘PR’” and that he feels like a prisoner in the city. The ambassador also mocked Washington’s men and the city’s mores. He feels, in the FT’s words, that in D.C. “men wear suits three sizes too large for them, and dinners always start too early. Socializing with Washington’s politicians, journalists and ‘think-tankers’ takes more out of him than bargaining with adversaries.”

As a remedy, Mr. Naim actually suggests that Amb. Araud embrace think tanks even more, saying that he "could participate in one of the dozens of talks, conferences, and panel discussions held daily at the 393 think tanks that are just minutes away from his embassy."  Think Tank Watch is not sure if that was meant to be or joke or not...

Why the hate?  Is it because he has created some waves at certain think tanks?