Institute for Policy Studies


The Institute for Policy Studies is an American progressive
think tank that was started in 1963 and is presently based in Washington, D.C. It has been directed by John Cavanagh since 1998. The organization focuses on U.S. foreign policy, domestic policy, human rights, international economics, and national security.
IPS has been described as one of the five major, independent think tanks in Washington.
Members of the IPS played key roles in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s, in the women's and environmental movements of the 1970s, and in the peace, anti-apartheid, and anti-intervention movements of the 1980s.

History

1960s

The institute was founded in 1963 by two former governmental workers, Marcus Raskin and Richard Barnet.
IPS was involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement from its establishment. In 1965, Raskin and Associate Fellow Bernard Fall edited The Vietnam Reader, which became a textbook for teach-ins across the country. In 1967, Raskin and IPS Fellow Arthur Waskow penned "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority", a document signed by dozens of prominent scholars and religious leaders which helped to launch the draft resistance movement. IPS also organized Congressional seminars and published numerous books that challenged the national security state, including Gar Alperovitz’s Atomic Diplomacy and Barnet's Intervention and Revolution. IPS was the object of repeated FBI and Internal Revenue Service probes. The Nixon Administration placed Barnet and Raskin on their now infamous Enemies List.
In 1964, several leading African-American activists joined the Institute's staff and turned IPS into a base for supporting for the Civil Rights Movement in the nation's capital. Fellow Bob Moses organized trainings for field organizers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on the links between civil rights theory and practice, while Ivanhoe Donaldson initiated an assembly of African-American government officials. Port Huron SDS co-writer and Civil rights veteran, IPS Fellow Robb Burlage launched the critical health care justice movement in 1967 with his "Burlage Report". Later Burlage founded the Health Policy Advisory Center which published the initially monthly bulletin, Health/Pac Bulletin, first in 1968 and thereafter semi-annually and eventually quarterly for nearly 3 decades.
The IPS was also at the forefront of the feminist movement. Fellow Charlotte Bunch organized a significant women's liberation conference in 1966 and later launched two feminist periodicals, Quest and Off Our Backs. Rita Mae Brown wrote and published her notable lesbian coming-of-age novel Rubyfruit Jungle while on the staff in the 1970s.

1970s

In 1976, agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet assassinated two IPS members of staff on Washington’s Embassy Row. The target of the car bomb attack was Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean government minister and ambassador to the United States, one of Pinochet’s most outspoken critics and the head of IPS's sister organization, the Transnational Institute. Ronni Karpen Moffitt, a 25-year-old IPS development associate, was also killed.
The Institute for Policy Studies hosts an annual human rights award in the names of Letelier and Moffitt to honor them while celebrating new heroes of the human rights movement from the United States and elsewhere in the Americas. The award recipients receive the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award.
The Transnational Institute, an international progressive think tank based in Amsterdam, was originally established as the IPS's international program, although it became independent in 1973.
In its attention to the role of multinational corporations, it was also an early critic of what has come to be called globalization. Richard Barnet's 1974 examination of the power of multinational corporations, Global Reach was one of the first books on the subject.

1980s

In the 1980s, IPS became heavily involved in supporting the movement against U.S. intervention in Central America. IPS Director Robert Borosage and other staff helped draft Changing Course: Blueprint for Peace in Central America and the Caribbean, which was used by hundreds of schools, labor unions, churches, and citizen organizations as a challenge to U.S. policy in the region.
In 1985, Fellow Roger Wilkins helped found the Free South Africa Movement, which organized a year-long series of demonstrations that led to the imposition of U.S. sanctions.
In 1986, after six years of the Reagan administration, Sidney Blumenthal claimed that "Ironically, as IPS has declined in Washington influence, its stature has grown in conservative demonology. In the Reagan era, the institute has loomed as a right-wing obsession and received most of its publicity by serving as a target."

1990s

In the early 1990s, IPS began monitoring the environmental impacts of U.S. trade, investment, and drug policies.
Since 1994, IPS has also published an annual report on the disparity between CEO and worker pay that has garnered widespread coverage in the mainstream media and helped put the issue of economic inequality at the center of the political debate.

Criticism

, professor of politics and history at Emory University, in his 1988 book Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today said that IPS "serves as an intellectual nerve center for the radical movement, ranging from nuclear and anti-intervention issues to support for Marxist insurgencies". Joshua Muravchik, a former scholar with the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute has also accused the institute of communist sympathies. An analysis from The Heritage Foundation, another conservative think tank, described IPS as, "an avowedly radical organization."
In 1974, the Institute created an "Organizing Committee for the Fifth Estate" as part of its "Center for National Security Studies" which published the magazine CounterSpy until 1984. CounterSpy was in turn the subject of scrutiny by various sources, claiming that the magazine's "driving force" was Philip Agee and whose publications of the names and addresses of several CIA employees contributed to the murder of the then CIA Station Chief in Greece, Richard S. Welch,
In his book The KGB and Soviet Disinformation: An Insider's View Ladislav Bittman, a former Státní bezpečnost agent who worked in misinformation operations, claimed that the IPS was part of the Soviet intelligence network. Bittman argued that IPS was one of the several liberal think tanks that acted as pro-Soviet propaganda agencies.

Administration

Fellows

Start-up funding was secured from the Sears heir, Philip Stern, and banker, James Warburg. Most of the money came from a foundation of Samuel Rubin.