Think tanks and foundations[edit] Hoover Tower at the Hoover Institution In 1971 Lewis F. Powell Jr. urged conservatives to retake command of public discourse by "financing think tanks, reshaping mass media and seeking influence in universities and the judiciary."[157] Aware that the Brookings Institution had played an influential role for decades in promoting liberal ideas, the American Enterprise Institute and later the Heritage Foundation were designed as counterparts on the right. They brought in intellectuals for shorter or longer periods, financed research, and disseminated the products through conferences, publications, and systematic media campaigns. They typically focused on projects with immediate policy implications.[158] In the following decades conservative policies once considered outside the liberal mainstream—such as abolishing welfare, privatizing Social Security, deregulating banking, embracing preemptive war—were taken seriously and sometimes passed into law due to the work of the Hoover Institution, Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and smaller tanks.[159] Complaining that mainstream academe was hostile to conservatives, several foundations have been especially active in funding conservative intellectuals, notably the Adolph Coors Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, the Koch Family Foundations, the Scaife Foundations, and (until it closed in 2005), the John M. Olin Foundation. They typically have emphasized the need for market-based solutions to national problems.[160] The foundations often invested in conservative student publications and organizations, such as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and for law students the Federalist Society
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 15:18:50 +0000
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