RAND

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The RAND Corporation (Research ANd Development[1]) is a nonprofit global policy think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the United States armed forces. The organization has since expanded to working with other governments, private foundations, international organizations, and commercial organizations. Reportedly, it is known for rigorous, often-quantitative, and non-partisan analysis and policy recommendations.[1][2][not in citation given][3][4][not in citation given]

Rand Corporation Headquarters, Santa Monica, CA
Rand Corporation Headquarters, Santa Monica, CA
Rand Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA
Rand Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA

RAND has approximately 1,600 employees and four principal locations: Santa Monica, California (headquarters); Washington, D.C. (currently located in Arlington, Virginia); Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (adjacent to Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh); and Cambridge, United Kingdom (RAND Europe).

There are also several smaller offices of RAND in the United States, including the RAND Gulf States Policy Institute in Jackson, Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2003, it opened the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute in Doha.

RAND is also the home to the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School, one of the original graduate programs in public policy and the first to offer a Ph.D. The program is unique in that students work alongside RAND analysts on real-world problems. The campus is at RAND's Santa Monica research facility. The Pardee RAND School is the world's largest Ph.D.-granting program in policy analysis.

RAND publishes The RAND Journal of Economics, a scholarly peer-reviewed journal of economics.

Contents

[edit] Project RAND

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RAND was set up in 1946 by the United States Army Air Forces as Project RAND, under contract to the Douglas Aircraft Company, and in May 1946 they released the Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship. In May 1948, Project RAND was separated from Douglas and became an independent non-profit organization. Initial capital for the split came from the Ford Foundation.

[edit] Mission statement

RAND was incorporated as a non-profit organization to "further promote scientific, educational, and charitable purposes, all for the public welfare and security of the United States of America." Its self-declared mission is "to help improve policy and decision making through research and analysis", using its "core values of quality and objectivity."[1]

[edit] Achievements and expertise

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The achievements of RAND stem from its development of systems analysis. Important contributions are claimed in space systems and the United States' space program, in computing and in artificial intelligence. RAND researchers developed many of the principles that were used to build the Internet. Numerous analytical techniques were invented at RAND, including dynamic programming, game theory, the Delphi method, linear programming, systems analysis, and exploratory modeling. RAND also pioneered the development and use of wargaming.

Current areas of expertise include: child policy, civil and criminal justice, education, environment and energy, health, international policy, labor markets, national security, infrastructure, energy, environment, corporate governance, economic development, intelligence policy, long-range planning, crisis management and disaster preparation, population and regional studies, science and technology, social welfare, terrorism, arts policy, and transportation.

RAND designed and conducted one of the largest and most important studies of health insurance between 1974 and 1982. The RAND Health Insurance Experiment, funded by the then-U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, established an insurance corporation to compare demand for health services with their cost to the patient.

According to the 2005 annual report, "about one-half of RAND's research involves national security issues."

Many of the events in which RAND plays a part are based on assumptions which are hard to verify because of the lack of detail on RAND's highly classified work for defense and intelligence agencies. Some RAND participants who have gone on to large roles are often believed to have had a role in shaping RAND research.

The RAND Corporation posts all of its unclassified reports, in full, on its official website.

[edit] Notable RAND participants

[edit] Governance

The organization's governance structure includes a board of trustees. Current members of the board include: Frank Carlucci, Lovida Coleman, Timothy Geithner, Rita Hauser, Karen House, Jen-Hsun Huang, Paul Kaminski, Lydia H. Kennard, Ann Korologos, Philip Lader, Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, Ronald Olson, Paul O'Neill, Michael Powell, Donald Rice, James Rohr, James Rothenberg, Ratan Tata, James Thomson, and Marta Tienda.

Former members of the board include: Walter Mondale, Condoleezza Rice, Newton Minow, Brent Scowcroft, Amy Pascal, John Reed, Charles Townes, Caryl Haskins, Walter Wriston, Frank Stanton, Carl Bildt, Donald Rumsfeld, Harold Brown, Robert Curvin, Pedro Greer, Arthur Levitt, Lloyd Morrisett, and Jerry Speyer.

[edit] Criticisms of RAND

The RAND Corporation has been criticized as militarist

Due to the nature of its work, the RAND corporation also frequently plays a role in conspiracy theories.[citation needed]

In 1958, Senator Stuart Symington accused the RAND Corporation of defeatism for studying how the United States might strategically surrender to an enemy power. This led to the passage of a prohibition on the spending of tax dollars on the study of defeat or surrender of any kind. However, the senator had apparently misunderstood, as the report was a survey of past cases in which the US had demanded unconditional surrender of its enemies, asking whether or not this had been a more favorable outcome to US interests than an earlier, negotiated surrender might have been.[6]

In April 1970, a Newhouse News Service story reported that Richard Nixon had commissioned RAND to study the feasibility of canceling the 1972 election. This was denied by RAND, which subsequently undertook a fruitless review of its recent work to see if there was anything that could have been misunderstood to spark the rumor.[7]

[edit] Trivia

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  • U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay quipped that RAND meant "Research And No Development".
  • The film Dr. Strangelove made a jab at RAND, with the title character mentioning a study conducted by the "BLAND Corporation."
  • While the RAND Corporation has produced many notable publications, one of its best-selling books contains entirely random numbers: A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates.
  • In the show The Simpsons (season 6, episode 2F07 "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy"), the character Milhouse quotes the RAND Corporation as being involved in a conspiracy with fictional groups to eliminate the meal of dinner.
  • Among the inventions emanating from the RAND Corporation are the windsurfer and packet switching.
  • In the show King of the Hill, Dale Gribble says that the RAND corporation is involved with tattooing barcodes on unknowing American citizens.
  • A RAND researcher was selected to be the lunar module pilot for Apollo 7.
  • A RAND researcher designed the bridge of the Starship Enterprise on the original Star Trek TV show.
  • A 1994 RAND publication, U.S. Nuclear Strategy for the Post-Cold War Era, noted: "The dependence of the West and Japan on Persian Gulf oil and the power and wealth that comes from controlling that oil guarantee the U.S. interest in that part of the world for as far into the future as anyone can see."

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c The Rand Corporation. History and Mission. RAND Corporation. Retrieved on 2008-04-15.
  2. ^ Nicole Lurie. "Public Health Preparedness in the 21st Century: Testimony presented before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness on March 28, 2006 (CT-257)", 2006-03-28. Retrieved on 2007-03-19. 
  3. ^ Brigette Sarabi, "Oregon: The Rand Report on Measure 11 is Finally Available", Partnership for Safety and Justice (formerly Western Prison Project), January 1, 2005. Retrieved on April 15, 2008.
  4. ^ Harvard University Institute of Politics. Guide for Political Internships. Harvard University. Retrieved on 2008-04-18.
  5. ^ Habitable Planets for man (6.4 MB PDF). RAND Corporation (free PDFs).
  6. ^ Poundstone, W. (1992). Prisoner's Dilemma. Doubleday. 
  7. ^ Poundstone, W. (1992). Prisoner's Dilemma. Doubleday. 

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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