Commonwealth Club of California

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The Commonwealth Club of California is a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization based in Northern California. Founded in 1903, it is the oldest and largest public affairs forum in the United States. Membership is open to everyone.

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[edit] Activities

The Commonwealth Club has more than 19,000 members who help host over 400 events each year on topics ranging across politics, culture, society, and the economy. Around 50,000 people attend these events. It is currently headed by Dr. Gloria Duffy and is broadcast on many public radio stations in the longest-lasting continuous radio program in the nation.

The Club has broadcast its forums since 1924, and current broadcasts are carried weekly by about 150 public and commercial radio stations across the nation. Local residents in the Bay Area can view televised programs from The Club on KGO TV, and video of selected programs is carried on the FORA.tv web site. The Club also issues free podcasts each week, and a monthly magazine.

In addition to hosting speeches and panels, The Club hosts several public policy projects. These include the Voices of Reform project, a nonpartisan effort to bring together California's policy makers and opinion leaders to improve state governance, the Innovation in Education policy reform project, and the California Media Project. The Club also offers travel programs, which leads educational trips abroad each year to destinations ranging from Turkey to Russia to China.

The Commonwealth Club occasionally comes under criticism from people who think it represents one or the other political philosophies, and they often center upon criticism of specific speakers with whom the critics disagree. But the Club's more than 400 events a year feature speakers from a wide range of viewpoints -- conservative and liberal and moderate and radical, religious and secular, pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian. And its membership is split about 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats.[citation needed]

[edit] California Book Awards

The Commonwealth Club administers the California Book Awards, which were initiated in 1931 to honor "exceptional literary merit of California writers and publishers".[1] Medals (gold and silver) are now awarded in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, First Work of Fiction, Californiana, Young Adult Literature (up to age 10), Juvenile Literature (age 11-16) and Notable Contribution to Publishing.

[edit] History

The Commonwealth Club was founded in 1903. Its motto is "find the truth, and turn it loose in the world," and its mission is the non-partisan study of public affairs.

The Club has hosted numerous world-class speakers including many former U.S. Presidents and other major political leaders in the USA and abroad, business leaders and influential social activists. Speakers receive no honoraria.

The Club has offices in San Francisco and San Jose. Though the majority of its programs are in San Francisco, San Jose, and Lafayette (in the East Bay area northeast of San Francisco), it also hosts occasional events in Sacramento and Southern California.

[edit] Speakers

The list of notable speakers and speeches numbers in the thousands and includes domestic and foreign political and military leaders, Nobel prize-winning scientists, authors, activists, and artists. A book of important Club speeches, Each a Mighty Voice, was published in 2004 by Heyday Books.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his New Deal speech at the Club. While in office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke at the Club, as did Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. During his term as Vice President, Dan Quayle delivered his famous Murphy Brown speech to the group. One recent live "Address to the Club" was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's presentation of her new policy initiatives before her 2005 tour of the Mideast. Other major recent speakers include third-party political candidates Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez; broadcasters Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, and Walter Cronkite; governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Janet Napolitano;, Vice President Al Gore; former Playboy President Christie Hefner; journalist Anna Quindlen, conservative radio host Michael Savage; author Shelby Steele; former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown; and technology business leaders Meg Whitman and Steve Ballmer.

[edit] Projects

Over the years a number of issues have been studied by Club leaders, member committees, or scholars commissioned by The Commonwealth Club. Among the topics studied have been direct democracy (the initiative process), air pollution, a statewide water plan, restrictions on child labor, automobile and industrial accident compensation, and legislative procedures. The long-standing mandate of many such studies has been the creed "to investigate and discuss problems affecting the welfare of the Commonwealth and to aid in their solution." Many policy innovations in California - such as public defenders' offices and a printed voter explanation booklet to go with ballots - originated in studies and discussions at the Commonwealth Club.

One of the most extensive of these studies was commissioned in 1953 and lasted until 1956. It resulted in the book California Social Welfare: Legislation, Financing, Services, Statistics published by Prentice-Hall. Vaughn Davis Bornet, a recent Ph.D. recipient from Stanford University, authored the book.

One current initiative is Climate One, which convenes leaders from business, government and civil society to discuss a low-carbon, global economy. Climate One holds private leadership roundtables as well as public discussions. Recent Climate One guests include California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt, Chair of the Nobel Peace Prize winning IPCC Rajendra Pachauri, and General Motors Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner.

Other ongoing studies and projects include The Commonwealth Club's Voices of Reform project, which works with state leaders to build bipartisan consensus on improvements to the state's governance, and Innovation in Education, a program launched in 2007 to build statewide consensus on ways to improve the public education system. It is also launching a program to examine the implications on public policy and an informed citizenry of the decline in the newspaper industry. These projects carry on The Club's century-long tradition of pursuing answers to common problems.

[edit] References

  1. ^ "California Book Awards". Commonwealth Club of California. http://commonwealthclub.org/bookaward. 

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Club_of_California"