New America Foundation
Encyclopedia
The New America Foundation is a non-profit public policy
Public policy
Public policy as government action is generally the principled guide to action taken by the administrative or executive branches of the state with regard to a class of issues in a manner consistent with law and institutional customs. In general, the foundation is the pertinent national and...

 institute and think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...

 with offices in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 and Sacramento, CA. It was founded in 1999 by Ted Halstead
Ted Halstead
Ted Halstead is a Think Tank executive as well as an author. His areas of specialty are environment, economics and energy and he has authored several articles and books on these subjects.-Education:...

, Sherle Schwenninger, Michael Lind
Michael Lind
Michael Lind is an American writer. Currently Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., Editor of New American Contract and its blog Value Added, and a columnist for Salon magazine. Lind was a guest lecturer at Harvard Law School and...

 and Walter Russell Mead
Walter Russell Mead
Walter Russell Mead is James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and Editor-at-Large of The American Interest magazine, and is recognized as one of the country's leading students of American foreign policy . Until 2010, Mead was the Henry A. Kissinger Senior...

.

In 2007 Steve Coll
Steve Coll
Steve Coll is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and writer. Coll is currently president and CEO of the New America Foundation. Prior to assuming that post on September 17, 2007, Coll was a staff writer for The New Yorker, and served as managing editor of The Washington Post from 1998 to...

, a former managing editor of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...

, succeeded Ted Halstead as President of the New America Foundation. Well-known board members include political commentator Fareed Zakaria
Fareed Zakaria
Fareed Rafiq Zakaria is an Indian-American journalist and author. From 2000 to 2010, he was a columnist for Newsweek and editor of Newsweek International. In 2010 he became Editor-At-Large of Time magazine...

, Atul Gawande
Atul Gawande
Atul Gawande is an American physician and journalist. He serves as a general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts and associate director of their Center for Surgery and Public Health...

, international relations theorist Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama is an American political scientist, political economist, and author. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford. Before that he served as a professor and director of the International Development program at the School of...

, Atlantic Monthly correspondent James Fallows
James Fallows
James Fallows is an American print and radio journalist. He has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly for many years. His work has also appeared in Slate, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and The American Prospect, among others. He is a...

, former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Roger Ferguson, and economist Laura D'Andrea Tyson
Laura D'Andrea Tyson
Laura D'Andrea Tyson is an American economist and former Chair of the US President's Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration. She also served as Director of the National Economic Council...

. Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt
Eric E. Schmidt
Eric Emerson Schmidt is an American software engineer and the current executive chairman of Google. From 2001 to 2011, he served as the chief executive officer of Google....

, is chairman of the foundation's board of directors.

History and mission

The New America Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit, public policy institute whose stated mission is to “invest in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States.” The organization has a staff of over a hundred employees and fellows with offices in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 and Sacramento, CA.
New America’s early vision was embodied by The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics, (Doubleday, 2001) co-authored by Michael Lind and Ted Halstead. The book laid out the politics and policies of a radical center
Radical center
The term radical center can refer to:* Radical center , a political movement* a mathematical construct: also called the power center...

, arguing that America’s “moderate majority” had become increasingly alienated by the ideological extremes of America’s “increasingly dogmatic two-party system.” Many of the book’s policy proposals, such as universal health care based on an individual mandate, became the founding principles behind the organization’s policy programs.
The organization continues to “emphasize work that is responsive to the changing conditions and problems of our 21st Century information-age economy” with “big ideas, impartial analysis and pragmatic solutions” Newsweek’s Howard Fineman called New America “a hive of state-of-the-art policy entrepreneurship."

Organization and structure

The New America Foundation houses programs and initiatives focused on specific domestic, economic and global issues. New America also houses a variety of fellowships.

Domestic programs

New America’s domestic policy programs focus on a wide range of issues including assets and ownership, education, health, politics and government, among other topics. Additionally, the organization has an office in California with state-specific programs focusing on health, education, and asset building.
Investigative reporting by the Higher Ed Watch blog of New America’s Education Policy Program’s helped break the student loan scandal of 2007, triggering investigations by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo
Andrew Cuomo
Andrew Mark Cuomo is the 56th and current Governor of New York, having assumed office on January 1, 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 64th New York State Attorney General, and was the 11th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development...

 into anti-competitive relations between student lenders and universities and helped bring about reforms enacted through the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010
Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010
The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 is a law that was enacted by the 111th United States Congress, by means of the reconciliation process, in order to amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act...


New America’s Health policy program actively supported health reform at both the state and federal level. The organization’s California branch was a proponent of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposals for universal coverage in California. In a 2007 paper for the Economic Policy Institute, the political scientist Jacob Hacker
Jacob Hacker
Jacob Stewart Hacker is the Director of the and Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University and has written works on social policy, health care reform, and economic insecurity in the United States...

, then a fellow at New America, outlined the framework of a public health insurance option
Public health insurance option
The public health insurance option is a proposed government-run health insurance agency which competes with other health insurance companies. It is not the same as Publicly-funded health care. Called the public insurance option or public option, for short, it was a proposed health insurance plan...

  that would become a central plank of Democratic health reform proposals. Len Nichols, the former director of New America’s health policy program worked with Senators Ron Wyden and Bob Bennett on their health reform plan. A strong proponent of the individual mandate, Nichols also helped craft a “level-playing field” alternative to public health insurance option.

New America's Open Technology Initiative (OTI) led by Sascha Meinrath
Sascha Meinrath
Sascha Meinrath is the Director of the New America Foundation's "Open Technology Initiative" and heads the "Internet in a Suitcase" effort to create ad-hoc mesh wireless technologies...

 has become the largest programs within the organization. Focus areas of OTI include wireless community networks building, the creation and management of an open source platform that supports broadband research tools and speed tests, the development of a technology to lower barriers for building distributed communications networks, among other projects. In the same vein of technology, New America's Future Tense initiative, a partnership with Arizona State University
Arizona State University
Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...

 and Slate Magazine, explores emerging technologies and their effects on society and public policy. Central to the partnership is a series of events in Washington, D.C., that take an in-depth look at issues that, while little-understood today, could reshape the policy debates of the coming decade.

Economic programs

Several programs at New America focus on economic issues, including the Economic Growth Program and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. In April 2010, the Committee's policy director, Marc Goldwein joined President Obama's bipartisan Fiscal Commission
National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform
The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is a Presidential Commission created in 2010 by President Barack Obama to identify "…policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run."...

.

Global programs

New America’s many programs and initiatives dealing with foreign policy and international issues are housed primarily under the American Strategy Program, directed by Steve Clemons. Clemons is also the publisher of ‘’The Washington Note’’, a blog that focuses on foreign policy issues, as well as general US policy debates. With the presence of journalists such as Steve Coll
Steve Coll
Steve Coll is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and writer. Coll is currently president and CEO of the New America Foundation. Prior to assuming that post on September 17, 2007, Coll was a staff writer for The New Yorker, and served as managing editor of The Washington Post from 1998 to...

 and Peter Bergen
Peter Bergen
Peter Bergen is a print and television journalist, author, and CNN's national security analyst. Bergen produced the first television interview with Osama Bin Laden in 1997. The interview, which aired on CNN, marked the first time that bin Laden declared war against the United States to a Western...

, New America has carved out a policy niche in the issues of Afghanistan and counter-terrorism. Bergen and colleague Katherine Tiedemann, have produced a widely cited database of U.S. Drones Strike in Pakistan.

In June of 2009, Patrick Doherty, the deputy director of the Foundation's American Strategy Program, co-wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post where he argued that the result of the 2009 Iranian presidential election
Iranian presidential election, 2009
Iran's tenth presidential election was held on 12 June 2009, with incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad running against three challengers. The next morning the Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's official news agency, announced that with two-thirds of the votes counted, Ahmadinejad had won the election...

 may not have been fraudulent, based on a poll sponsored by Terror Free Tomorrow and the New America Foundation. Jon Cohen, of the Washington Post's polling department, argued for wariness "of a poll taken so far before such a heated contest, particularly one where more than half of voters did not express an opinion."

Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation organised the Afghanistan Study Group, which produced a report called A New Way Forward: Rethinking U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan. It was directed by Matthew Hoh and "included some four dozen denizens of think tanks, academics and former US government officials."

Fellows program

The organization provides fellowships to “foster the next generation of thinkers and public intellectuals”—primarily through the Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows program. The Schwartz fellowship “supports talented journalists, academics and other public policy analysts who offer a fresh and often unpredictable perspective on the major challenges facing our society.” Current and past fellows include, Peter Beinart
Peter Beinart
-Early life and education:Beinart was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of South African immigrants. His mother, Doreen, works at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and his father, Julian Beinart, is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His stepfather is theatre...

, Jorge Castañeda Gutman, Jacob Hacker
Jacob Hacker
Jacob Stewart Hacker is the Director of the and Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University and has written works on social policy, health care reform, and economic insecurity in the United States...

, Megan McArdle
Megan McArdle
Megan McArdle is a Washington, D.C.-based blogger and journalist. She writes mostly about economics, finance and government policy from a moderate libertarian or classical liberal perspective. She currently serves as the business and economics editor, as well as a blogger, for The Atlantic. She is...

, Parag Khanna
Parag Khanna
Dr. Parag Khanna is an Indian American author and international relations expert. He is a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, Research Fellow in the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. and Director of...

 , Reihan Salam
Reihan Salam
Reihan Morshed Salam is an American non-fiction writer and policy analyst. He is a columnist for The Daily and lead writer of National Reviews "The Agenda" blog, as well as a policy adviser at e21 and a contributing editor at National Affairs...

, Tim Wu
Tim Wu
Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School, the former chair of media reform group Free Press, and a writer for Slate Magazine. He is also a former Bernard L. Schwartz and Future Tense fellow at The New America Foundation...

, among many others. Additionally, New America’s Knight Media Policy Fellows focus on media policy, and its Irvine Fellows focus on issues relating to California.

Published articles

Articles by numerous New America Foundation members have appeared in leading publications. The Atlantic Monthly has had extensive coverage in several issues from New America Foundation writers, expounding on their analyses and proposing solutions to persistent US problems. Board members and fellows have written cover stories for a large number of periodicals, including Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...

, Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy is a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970 by Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel.Originally, the magazine was a quarterly...

, The Wilson Quarterly, Wired, The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...

, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, The National Interest
The National Interest
The National Interest is a prominent conservative American bi-monthly international affairs magazine published by the Center for the National Interest. It was founded in 1985 by Irving Kristol and until 2001 was edited by Anglo-Australian Owen Harries...

, The American Conservative
The American Conservative
The American Conservative is a monthly U.S. opinion magazine published by Ron Unz. Its first editor was Scott McConnell, his successors being Kara Hopkins and the present incumbent, Daniel McCarthy....

, The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

, The American Prospect
The American Prospect
The American Prospect is a monthly American political magazine dedicated to American liberalism. Based in Washington, DC, The American Prospect is a journal "of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics" which focuses on United States politics...

, and Mother Jones
Mother Jones (magazine)
Mother Jones is an American independent news organization, featuring investigative and breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. Mother Jones has been nominated for 23 National Magazine Awards and has won six times, including for General Excellence in 2001,...

.

Funding

New America operates with a decentralized funding model, with heads of programs and initiatives usually responsible for their own funding. The test for success at the program level and below has often been less ideological than the ability to raise funds. It is best to examine the ideological orientation (and funding sources) of each program and initiative individually rather than as part of a New America brand. The list of organizations and individuals who supported New America in 2010 includes more than 100 contributors.

Board of Directors

The New America Foundation's Board of Directors consists of 22 members and is chaired by Eric Schmidt - Executive Chairman, Google, Inc. who succeeded founding Chairman James Fallows
James Fallows
James Fallows is an American print and radio journalist. He has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly for many years. His work has also appeared in Slate, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and The American Prospect, among others. He is a...

 in 2008. Other members include Laurene Powell Jobs - President of the Board, College Track, Zachary Karabell
Zachary Karabell
Zachary Karabell is an American author, historian, money manager and economist.Karabell is President of , where he analyzes economic and political trends. He is also a Senior Advisor for Business for Social Responsibility...

 - President, River Twice Research, Kati Marton
Kati Marton
Kati Marton is a Hungarian-American author and journalist. Her career has included reporting for ABC News as a foreign correspondent and National Public Radio, where she started as a production assistant 1971 in her 20s, as well as print journalism and writing a number of books.She is the former...

 - Author & Journalist, Bernard L. Schwartz
Bernard L. Schwartz
Bernard Leon Schwartz was the Chairman of the Board and CEO of Loral Space & Communications, Chairman and CEO of K&F Industries, Inc., Chairman and CEO of Loral Corp., and president and CEO of Globalstar. He retired from Loral and his positions at its various subsidiaries and affiliates as of...

 - Retired Chairman and CEO, Loral Space & Communications Ltd.

Leadership Council

New America's Leadership Council, chaired by Scott Delman, recognizes those individuals who contribute $25,000 or more to the Foundation each year. As members of the Leadership Council, they participate in the intellectual life of the Foundation in numerous ways. For instance, they are invited to attend a special annual retreat with New America senior staff, Fellows and Board of Directors, as well as a series of salon dinners across the country. The Leadership Council currently has 16 members, which includes Craig Newmark
Craig Newmark
Craig Alexander Newmark is an Internet entrepreneur best known for being the founder of the San Francisco-based international website Craigslist.-Biography:...

 - Customer Service Rep and Founder, craigslist.org, Leo Hindery, Jr. - Managing Partner, InterMedia Partners, and Neal Baer
Neal Baer
Neal Baer, MD is an American pediatrician and television writer and producer. He is best known for his work on the television shows ER and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.-Education:...

, M.D. - Executive Producer, Law & Order: SVU.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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