The Century Foundation
Encyclopedia
The Century Foundation is an US progressive think tank
. It was founded as a nonprofit public policy research institution on the belief that the prosperity and security of the United States depends on a mix of effective government, open democracy, and free markets. The Foundation is headquartered in New York City and also has an office in Washington, D.C. Its staff, fellows, and authors produce books, reports, papers, pamphlets, and online publications. The Foundation also hosts policy related events and workshops for various audiences, including policy experts, journalists, college students and other academics, and the general public. It also manages several ongoing policy projects and operates a number of Web sites on various policy-related topics.
During the twentieth century, the Foundation published many reports that informed public policy, including Stock Market Control, a 1934 report that provided ideas for legislation enacted after the 1929 crash of the stock market; America’s Needs and Resources, a 1947 report that set forth a forecast of the nation’s needs, industrial production, and income over the following two decades; Jean Gottmann
’s Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States; the New Federalist Papers by Nelson W. Polsby
, Alan Brinkley
, Kathleen Sullivan
and Gunnar Myrdal
’s Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations.
The Foundation has provided information and analysis concerning Social Security since its earliest days. At the time of the inception of the Social Security program in the mid-1930s, the organization set up a “Committee on Old-Age Security” to look at the provisions of the Townsend Plan, a movement in this country to provide some pension protection for the elderly in the aftermath of the Great Depression
. The Committee determined that the Townsend plan was unworkable, but its members continued to examine the issue of the elderly poor, and in 1937, More Security for Old Age, a report and program for action was published, providing an analysis of the newly created Social Security program. Through the ensuing years, the organization has returned to the issue frequently. More recently, beginning in the 1990s, the organization has supported numerous studies and reports, including Ensuring the Essentials by former Social Security Administrator Robert Ball (2000); Social Security Reform: Beyond the Basics, edited by Richard C. Leone and Greg Anrig, Jr. (1999); and Countdown to Reform: The Great Social Security Debate by Henry J. Aaron, and Robert D. Reischauer (2001).
In the wake of the 2000 election, The Century Foundation and the University of Virginia’s Miller Center for Public Affairs organized The National Commission on Federal Election Reform
, which was co-chaired by former Presidents Jimmy Carter
and Gerald Ford
, and was composed of distinguished public leaders from across the political spectrum. The commission’s charge was to quickly evaluate an enormous body of research on election reform, review policy proposals, and offer a bipartisan analysis to the Congress, the administration, and the American people. It released its final report, To Assure Pride and Confidence in the Electoral Process, to Congress and the White House on July 31, 2001. In 2002, the Help America Vote Act
(HAVA) was passed by the Congress and signed into law by President Bush.
The Century Foundation also has supported two task forces that examined homeland security issues after the events of September 11, 2001. The first, chaired by Richard A. Clarke
, produced a report, Defeating the Jihadists: A Blueprint for Action, in 2005. The report assessed the nation’s successes and failures on homeland security and, building on the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission
, offered a detailed action plan for neutralizing the international movement at the core of worldwide terrorism. The second task force, co-chaired by Richard Clarke and Randy Beers, produced the report The Forgotten Homeland in 2006, in which leading homeland security experts analyze the nation’s most significant vulnerabilities and propose strategies to reduce them. In 2003, The Century Foundation published The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism, which included essays by scholars and journalists that pointed out what is wrong with the current rush to limit civil liberties in the name of national security.
The Foundation covers many areas of public policy, but recently it has focused particularly on four basic challenges:
The Century Foundation produces work on issues such as Social Security and pensions, health care, education, tax and budget policy, homeland security, immigration, election reform, international terrorism, the U.S. relationship with the United Nations and other multilateral institutions, and policies toward regions such as the Middle East and East Asia.
; constitutional law scholar Kathleen Sullivan
; Alicia Munnell
, Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences at Boston College's Carroll School of Management and Director of the Center for Retirement Research, who was a member of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers; Melissa Harris-Perry, political scientist and Associate Professor of Politics and African American studies at Princeton University; Lewis B. Kaden
, Vice Chairman of Citigroup, Inc.; globally recognized health policy and medical ethics expert Alexander Morgan Capron, Matina S. Horner, former vp of human resources, TIAA-CREF, and former president of Radcliffe College, Bradley Abelow
, chief operating officer of MF Global, Inc., John Podesta
, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, public health physician Harvey I. Sloane, M.D., William Julius Wilson
, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University; and current president of The Century Foundation Richard C. Leone.
Emeritus Trustees include H. Brandt Ayers, publisher of the Anniston Star; Hodding Carter III, former president of the Knight Foundation who was an official in the Jimmy Carter administration; Joseph A. Califano, Jr., founder and chairman of the board of The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University; Edward E. David, Jr., science adviser to president Richard M. Nixon; Brewster C. Denny, founder of the Graduate School of Public Affairs, University of Washington; former Lieutenant Governor of New York, Richard Ravitch
, Charles V. Hamilton; and Shirley Williams, co-founder of the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom and member of House of Lords.
The Foundation includes among its list of former Trustees such notable figures as Theodore Sorensen, lawyer and speech writer for President Kennedy; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., John Kenneth Galbraith
, Madeleine May Kunin, Newton D. Baker
, Adolf A. Berle, Jr., Patricia Roberts Harris
, Benjamin V. Cohen, David E. Lilienthal, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Luis Muñoz Marín
, Albert Shanker
, Morris Berthold Abram, James Tobin
, Peter A. A. Berle, Jessica Mathews
, James A. Leach, and Christopher Edley.
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
. It was founded as a nonprofit public policy research institution on the belief that the prosperity and security of the United States depends on a mix of effective government, open democracy, and free markets. The Foundation is headquartered in New York City and also has an office in Washington, D.C. Its staff, fellows, and authors produce books, reports, papers, pamphlets, and online publications. The Foundation also hosts policy related events and workshops for various audiences, including policy experts, journalists, college students and other academics, and the general public. It also manages several ongoing policy projects and operates a number of Web sites on various policy-related topics.
History
The Century Foundation was founded in 1919 by Edward A. Filene, an American businessman, social entrepreneur, and philanthropist, under the name of The Cooperative League. The organization’s mission was to act as an advisory committee for Filene in disbursing his funds in a way that could best benefit the world. Renamed the Twentieth Century Fund in 1922, and then The Century Foundation in 1999, the Foundation has sought liberal, progressive solutions to the nation’s problems.During the twentieth century, the Foundation published many reports that informed public policy, including Stock Market Control, a 1934 report that provided ideas for legislation enacted after the 1929 crash of the stock market; America’s Needs and Resources, a 1947 report that set forth a forecast of the nation’s needs, industrial production, and income over the following two decades; Jean Gottmann
Jean Gottmann
Jean Gottmann FRS was a French geographer who was most widely known for his seminal study on the urban region of the Northeast Megalopolis. His main contributions to human geography were in the sub-fields of urban, political, economic, historical and regional geography...
’s Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States; the New Federalist Papers by Nelson W. Polsby
Nelson W. Polsby
Nelson Woolf Polsby was an American political scientist. He specialized in the study of the United States presidency and United States Congress. He was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and former editor of the American Political Science Review from 1971-77.Polsby was born...
, Alan Brinkley
Alan Brinkley
Alan Brinkley is the Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University, where he was also Provost 2003–2009. He was denied tenure at Harvard University in 1986 despite being an award-winning teacher. He lives in New York City with his wife, Evangeline, daughter Elly, and dog Jessie...
, Kathleen Sullivan
Kathleen Sullivan
Kathleen Marie Sullivan is a professor at the Stanford Law School and name partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, a litigation-only law firm with offices in California, New York, Silicon Valley, Chicago, San Francisco, Germany, London, and Tokyo where she chairs their national appellate...
and Gunnar Myrdal
Gunnar Myrdal
Karl Gunnar Myrdal was a Swedish Nobel Laureate economist, sociologist, and politician. In 1974, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Friedrich Hayek for "their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the...
’s Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations.
The Foundation has provided information and analysis concerning Social Security since its earliest days. At the time of the inception of the Social Security program in the mid-1930s, the organization set up a “Committee on Old-Age Security” to look at the provisions of the Townsend Plan, a movement in this country to provide some pension protection for the elderly in the aftermath of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. The Committee determined that the Townsend plan was unworkable, but its members continued to examine the issue of the elderly poor, and in 1937, More Security for Old Age, a report and program for action was published, providing an analysis of the newly created Social Security program. Through the ensuing years, the organization has returned to the issue frequently. More recently, beginning in the 1990s, the organization has supported numerous studies and reports, including Ensuring the Essentials by former Social Security Administrator Robert Ball (2000); Social Security Reform: Beyond the Basics, edited by Richard C. Leone and Greg Anrig, Jr. (1999); and Countdown to Reform: The Great Social Security Debate by Henry J. Aaron, and Robert D. Reischauer (2001).
In the wake of the 2000 election, The Century Foundation and the University of Virginia’s Miller Center for Public Affairs organized The National Commission on Federal Election Reform
National Commission on Federal Election Reform
The United States presidential election, 2000 was one of the most controversial ever. Legal challenges were taken all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States before Al Gore conceded the election to President George W...
, which was co-chaired by former Presidents Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
and Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford
Gerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr. was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974...
, and was composed of distinguished public leaders from across the political spectrum. The commission’s charge was to quickly evaluate an enormous body of research on election reform, review policy proposals, and offer a bipartisan analysis to the Congress, the administration, and the American people. It released its final report, To Assure Pride and Confidence in the Electoral Process, to Congress and the White House on July 31, 2001. In 2002, the Help America Vote Act
Help America Vote Act
The Help America Vote Act , or HAVA, is a United States federal law which passed in the House 357-48 and 92-2 in the Senate and was signed into law by President Bush on October 29, 2002. Drafted in reaction to the controversy surrounding the 2000 U.S...
(HAVA) was passed by the Congress and signed into law by President Bush.
The Century Foundation also has supported two task forces that examined homeland security issues after the events of September 11, 2001. The first, chaired by Richard A. Clarke
Richard A. Clarke
Richard Alan Clarke was a U.S. government employee for 30 years, 1973–2003. He worked for the State Department during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to chair the Counter-terrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National...
, produced a report, Defeating the Jihadists: A Blueprint for Action, in 2005. The report assessed the nation’s successes and failures on homeland security and, building on the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission
9/11 Commission
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up on November 27, 2002, "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks", including preparedness for and the immediate response to...
, offered a detailed action plan for neutralizing the international movement at the core of worldwide terrorism. The second task force, co-chaired by Richard Clarke and Randy Beers, produced the report The Forgotten Homeland in 2006, in which leading homeland security experts analyze the nation’s most significant vulnerabilities and propose strategies to reduce them. In 2003, The Century Foundation published The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism, which included essays by scholars and journalists that pointed out what is wrong with the current rush to limit civil liberties in the name of national security.
Mission
The Century Foundations describes its mission as explaining and analyzing public issues in plain language, providing facts and opinions about the strengths and weaknesses of different policy strategies, and developing and calling attention to distinctive ideas that have been demonstrated to work as policy solutions to the nation’s problems.The Foundation covers many areas of public policy, but recently it has focused particularly on four basic challenges:
- persistent economic inequality combined with the shift to American households of financial risks previously borne by employers and government
- the aging of the population
- preventing and responding to terrorism while preserving civil liberties
- restoring America’s international credibility as an effective and cooperative leader in responding to global security and economic dangers
The Century Foundation produces work on issues such as Social Security and pensions, health care, education, tax and budget policy, homeland security, immigration, election reform, international terrorism, the U.S. relationship with the United Nations and other multilateral institutions, and policies toward regions such as the Middle East and East Asia.
Trustees
The Trustees of The Century Foundation include historian Alan BrinkleyAlan Brinkley
Alan Brinkley is the Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University, where he was also Provost 2003–2009. He was denied tenure at Harvard University in 1986 despite being an award-winning teacher. He lives in New York City with his wife, Evangeline, daughter Elly, and dog Jessie...
; constitutional law scholar Kathleen Sullivan
Kathleen Sullivan
Kathleen Marie Sullivan is a professor at the Stanford Law School and name partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, a litigation-only law firm with offices in California, New York, Silicon Valley, Chicago, San Francisco, Germany, London, and Tokyo where she chairs their national appellate...
; Alicia Munnell
Alicia Haydock Munnell
Alicia H. Munnell is the Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences at Boston College's Carroll School of Management. She also serves as the director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College...
, Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences at Boston College's Carroll School of Management and Director of the Center for Retirement Research, who was a member of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers; Melissa Harris-Perry, political scientist and Associate Professor of Politics and African American studies at Princeton University; Lewis B. Kaden
Lewis B. Kaden
Lewis B. Kaden is a Vice Chairman at Citigroup Inc.Prior to joining Citigroup, Mr. Kaden had spent most of his career in academia and working as a high-powered lawyer. He spent 21 years with the large international law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell and also taught labor relations and constitutional...
, Vice Chairman of Citigroup, Inc.; globally recognized health policy and medical ethics expert Alexander Morgan Capron, Matina S. Horner, former vp of human resources, TIAA-CREF, and former president of Radcliffe College, Bradley Abelow
Bradley Abelow
Bradley Abelow is an American businessman and political leader who formerly served as Chief of Staff to the Governor of New Jersey in the Cabinet of Gov. Jon Corzine. Prior to entering Governor Corzine's Cabinet as State Treasurer, he was a top executive for the Wall Street firm of Goldman Sachs...
, chief operating officer of MF Global, Inc., John Podesta
John Podesta
John David Podesta was the fourth and final White House Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton, from 1998 until 2001. He is the president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., and is also a Visiting Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law...
, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, public health physician Harvey I. Sloane, M.D., William Julius Wilson
William Julius Wilson
William Julius Wilson is an American sociologist. He worked at the University of Chicago 1972-1996 before moving to Harvard....
, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University; and current president of The Century Foundation Richard C. Leone.
Emeritus Trustees include H. Brandt Ayers, publisher of the Anniston Star; Hodding Carter III, former president of the Knight Foundation who was an official in the Jimmy Carter administration; Joseph A. Califano, Jr., founder and chairman of the board of The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University; Edward E. David, Jr., science adviser to president Richard M. Nixon; Brewster C. Denny, founder of the Graduate School of Public Affairs, University of Washington; former Lieutenant Governor of New York, Richard Ravitch
Richard Ravitch
Richard Ravitch is an American politician and businessman who served as the 75th Lieutenant Governor of New York from 2009 to 2010. He was appointed to the position in July 2009 by New York Governor David Paterson...
, Charles V. Hamilton; and Shirley Williams, co-founder of the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom and member of House of Lords.
The Foundation includes among its list of former Trustees such notable figures as Theodore Sorensen, lawyer and speech writer for President Kennedy; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith , OC was a Canadian-American economist. He was a Keynesian and an institutionalist, a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism...
, Madeleine May Kunin, Newton D. Baker
Newton D. Baker
Newton Diehl Baker, Jr. was an American politician who belonged to the Democratic Party. He served as the 37th mayor of Cleveland, Ohio from 1912 to 1915 and as U.S. Secretary of War from 1916 to 1921.-Early years:...
, Adolf A. Berle, Jr., Patricia Roberts Harris
Patricia Roberts Harris
Patricia Roberts Harris served as United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the administration of President Jimmy Carter...
, Benjamin V. Cohen, David E. Lilienthal, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Luis Muñoz Marín
Luis Muñoz Marín
Don José Luis Alberto Muñoz Marín was a Puerto Rican poet, journalist, and politician. Regarded as the "father of modern Puerto Rico," he was the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico. Muñoz Marín was the son of Luis Muñoz Rivera, a renowned autonomist leader...
, Albert Shanker
Albert Shanker
Albert Shanker was President of the United Federation of Teachers from 1964 to 1984 as well as President of the American Federation of Teachers from 1974 to 1997.-Early life:...
, Morris Berthold Abram, James Tobin
James Tobin
James Tobin was an American economist who, in his lifetime, served on the Council of Economic Advisors and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and taught at Harvard and Yale Universities. He developed the ideas of Keynesian economics, and advocated government intervention to...
, Peter A. A. Berle, Jessica Mathews
Jessica Mathews
Jessica Tuchman Mathews is the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a foreign policy think tank in Washington D.C. She has held the post since 1997...
, James A. Leach, and Christopher Edley.