American Enterprise Institute

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The American Enterprise Institute's Logo

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is a conservative think tank, founded in 1943, whose stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism — limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate." AEI labels itself as an independent, non-profit organization. It is supported primarily by grants and contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals.

Like all think tanks that maintain non-profit status under the federal tax code, AEI is officially nonpartisan and takes no institutional positions on pending legislation or other policy questions.

AEI has emerged as one of the leading architects of the second Bush administration's public policy. More than two dozen AEI alumni have served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government's many panels and commissions. AEI, along with the more conservative Heritage Foundation, is often cited as a center-right counterpart to the center-left Brookings Institution. In 1998, AEI and Brookings established the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies.

"Irrational exuberance"

AEI garnered significant global attention on December 5, 1996, when Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan addressed the institute and remarked, just a few years before the 2000 stock market correction, that the American stock market may have ascended unduly, attributable to what Greenspan called the "irrational exuberance" of investors.

Greenspan's comments to AEI proved to be among his most notable, leading to significant debate over whether American stock evaluations were, in fact, overvalued and even to a book named for the comment, Irrational Exuberance.

Global warming

In February 2007, a number of sources, including the British newspaper The Guardian reported that the AEI had sent letters to scientists, offering US$10,000 plus travel expenses and additional payments, asking them to critique a consensus report on global warming by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The letters alleged that the IPCC was "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and asked for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs." According to the Guardian article, the AEI received $1.6 million in funding from ExxonMobil. The article further notes that former ExxonMobil CEO Lee R. Raymond is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.

The Guardian article has been rebutted both by AEI and in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. The rebuttals claimed factual errors, distortions and extreme lack of balance, noting the ExxonMobil funding was spread out over a ten-year period and totaled less than 1% of AEI's budget. The Wall Street Journal column stated "AEI doesn't lobby, didn't offer money to scientists to question global warming, and the money it did pay for climate research didn't come from Exxon."

AEI scholars deny that the organization is skeptical about global warming, writing in the The Weekly Standard:

[I]t has never been true that we ignore mainstream science; and anyone who reads AEI publications closely can see that we are not "skeptics" about warming. It is possible to accept the general consensus about the existence of global warming while having valid questions about the extent of warming, the consequences of warming, and the appropriate responses. In particular, one can remain a policy skeptic, which is where we are today, along with nearly all economists.

President and trustees

• Christopher DeMuth, who served in the Reagan administration, has been president of AEI since 1986.
• Bruce Kovner is the chairman of the board of trustees.
• Lee Raymond, ex-CEO of ExxonMobil, is the vice chair of AEI's board of trustees.

Current members of the board are: Gordon Binder, Harlan Crow, Chris DeMuth, Morton Fleischer, Chris Galvin, Raymond Gilmartin, Harvey Golub, Robert Greenhill, Roger Hertog, Martin Koffel, John Luke, Ben Lytle, Alex Mandl, Robert Pritzker, Joe Ricketts, Kevin Rollins, John W. Rowe, Edward Rust, William Stavropoulos, Wilson Taylor, Marilyn Ware, and James Q. Wilson.

Emeritus trustees of the organization are: Willard Butcher, Richard Madden, Robert Malott, Paul McCracken, Paul Oreffice, and Henry Wendt.

Scholars and fellows

• John R. Bolton, former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
• Lynne Cheney, wife of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, AEI senior fellow.
• Mark Falcoff, Resident Scholar Emeritus and Latin America expert.
• David Frum, an author and former speechwriter for Bush, is a resident fellow.
• Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow. He is the director of the Project for the New American Century's Middle East Initiative and a former Middle East specialist at the CIA.
• Newt Gingrich, member of the Republican Party and Speaker of the United States House of Representatives between 1995 and 1999, is a senior fellow at AEI focusing on health care (he has founded the Center for Health Transformation), information technology, the military, and politics.
• James K. Glassman, author of Dow 36,000, is a resident fellow.
• Michael Greve is the John G. Searle Scholar and director of AEI's Federalism Project.
• Frederick M. Hess studies education policy and is executive director of Education Next.
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a former Dutch politician, women's rights activist and critic of Islamism & Shar'ia Law.

Frederick Kagan is a military historian and signatory of Project for the New American Century manifesto titled Rebuilding America's Defenses (2000) along with his brother Robert (co-founder of the PNAC) and his father and fellow neo-conservative, Donald Kagan.

• Jeane Kirkpatrick was the former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations and was an AEI senior fellow until she died in 2006.
• Michael Ledeen was previously involved in the transfer of arms to Iran during the Iran-Contra affair — an adventure that he documented in his book, Perilous Statecraft: An Insider's Account of the Iran-Contra Affair.
• Allan Meltzer is one of the foremost academics studying monetary policy and the Federal Reserve Bank. He, along with economist Milton Friedman, pioneered monetarism, the now widely accepted theory that inflation is entirely the result of the growth of the money supply. Meltzer is currently working on the second volume of his History of the Federal Reserve.
• Joshua Muravchik is a resident scholar. He researches Middle East politics, democracy, neoconservatism and the history of socialism.
• Charles Murray, an influential policy writer and a researcher, is the W.H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom. He is best known as the co-author of the controversial 1994 book, The Bell Curve.
• Michael Novak is the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy and Public Policy and Director of Social and Political Studies at the institute. He has written extensively about the role of faith in government.
• Norman Ornstein has been a Congressional analyst and political commentator for more than thirty five years.
• Richard Perle served on the United States Defense Policy Board and is a former Assistant Secretary of Defense.
• Sally Satel is a psychiatrist and author of PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine.
• Christina Hoff Sommers is a critic of the feminist movement. She is the author of Who Stole Feminism and The War Against Boys.
• Fred Thompson, Television and film actor, currently appearing on the television show Law & Order, former U.S. Senator, is a visiting fellow.
• Ben Wattenberg, a speechwriter for President Lyndon B. Johnson, is a senior fellow.
• John Yoo, formerly of the Office of Legal Counsel, and a professor at Boalt Hall, is a visiting scholar.

Funders

AEI has received more than $30 million (combined) in funding from sources including:

• The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Inc.
• Castle Rock Foundation
• Coors Brewing Company
• Earhart Foundation
• ExxonMobil
• JM Foundation
• Microsoft Corporation [1]
• Philip M. McKenna Foundation, Inc.
• John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.
• Rockefeller Brothers Fund
• Sarah Scaife Foundation
• Scaife Family Foundation
• Smith Richardson Foundation

External links

• The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Official Web Site.
• Profile of the American Enterprise Institute, SourceWatch.
• The American print magazine.
• Media Transparency profile of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.