The Pew Charitable Trust plans to forge a "bipartisan" consensus about social mobility in America by bringing together analysts from both liberal and conservative think tanks.

I'm sure all those people who loved "bipartisan" consensus must have loved the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939....

Brookings is even remotely left-of-center?

Pew is the perfect example of ref-working.

Hoover Institution, at Stanford?

That is, big, well regarded, centrist conservative, fundamentally interested in honest research rather than simply advancing a partisan agenda, etc.?

The word "conservative" in the sentence above doesn't really track with "fundamentally interested in honest research."

Face it: per Colbert, the facts have a liberal bias.

To be well regarded and conservative would seem to be hard to do in an academic setting.

"Centrist Conservatives" in an academic setting tend not to identify themselves as such; it's not good for one's career, given the left list at most universities. Thus, the people who are openly conservative are very much so, while the moderately conservative folks downplay their leanings.

It may be nit-picking, but AEI tends to have a bit more libertarian lean and can put together some center-right packages, while Heritage is standard-issue conservative.

Hmm:

"Conservative... fundamentally dedicated to honest research." Does not compute.

Maybe we should look for a shark that is fundamentally dedicated to friendship with other fish.

Hawk, take that back. poot.

Having done research in policy, I have actually read (rather economically neoliberal) research papers published by people doing visiting research fellowships at Brookings. As far as I can tell, the AEI doesn't actually produce any research from any well-regarded academic thinkers. Rather, AEI serves as a conduit through which talking points for the Republican Party are laundered and then sent out as press releases for the purpose of being reprinted verbatim in the Washington Times.

Brookings, of course, has its share of unqualified jokers masquerading as "fellows." Greg Easterbrook is a prime example.

Having done research in policy, I have actually read (rather economically neoliberal) research papers published by people doing visiting research fellowships at Brookings. As far as I can tell, the AEI doesn't actually produce any research from any well-regarded academic thinkers. Rather, AEI serves as a conduit through which talking points for the Republican Party are laundered and then sent out as press releases for the purpose of being reprinted verbatim in the Washington Times.

Brookings, of course, has its share of unqualified jokers masquerading as "fellows." Greg Easterbrook is a prime example.

Mark Byron, you've obviously never worked at a university. Political leanings depend utterly on which department you are in and whether you are a member of the faculty or administration.

If your part of the administration then the general political leanings range from libertarian to raging neo-conservative. Liberals and leftists are very few and very far between.

If your in Economics, Finance, Business, or similar departments your find the exact same political leanings.

Liberals infest the hard sciences and honest-to-goodness leftists the social/psychological sciences, literature, and arts.

I had thought AEI was not "movement" conservative. Right-leaning, yes, but not a bunch of American Hawk-type whackjobs. One of their guys was on the Al Franken Show all the time.

When I see Brookings Institute briefings about the Middle East, I know it is not a 'liberal' organization. It may not be wholly funded by Exxon-Mobil, but it certainly is an establishment institution that will not deviate from the capitalist complex' platitudes.

How about the Hudson?

"That is, big, well regarded, and centrist conservative in background but still fundamentally dedicated to honest research rather than simply advancing a partisan agenda."

That is a description of the Brookings Institute. Hard to believe Richard Nixon wanted to firebomb it.

Dr. Morpheus >"...Liberals infest the hard sciences..."

Yea, areas where their work can actually be tested & proven correct or not. Where reality matters (so to speak).

Why am I not surprised, hmmmmm ?

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." - Galileo Galilei

are there any conservative versions of Brookings?

Brookings and Urban are the conservative versions of Brookings and Urban. EPI and CAP are the liberal versions of Brookings and Urban.

That this is unclear to anyone is evidence of the right-wing's success in moving the playing field.

Instead I have a different question: are there any conservative versions of Brookings? That is, big, well regarded, and centrist conservative in background but still fundamentally dedicated to honest research rather than simply advancing a partisan agenda.

I don't understand the question. Do you mean are their any well regarded conservative think tanks in addition to Brookings?

Damn! aretino beat me to it.

are there any conservative versions of Brookings? That is, big, well regarded, and centrist conservative in background but still fundamentally dedicated to honest research...?

Other than a ladies quilting club in Dubuque none come to mind.

Wait -- how about the people who do the Neilsen Ratings? They seem honest enough.

Dinesh D'Souza is a Fellow at the Hoover Institute, which would disqualify it as an institution dedicated to honest research. It is an institution dedicated to preserving the wealth of those that already got it.

Hudson Institute. General Odom is there and it's conservatively conservative.

Dinesh D'Souza is a Fellow at the Hoover Institute, which would disqualify it as an institution dedicated to honest research.

Yep, that would do it.

mmy, Norm Ornstein is and AEI fellow and on Al Franken all the time. to play off Kevin's post over the weekend, someone with a poor grasp on logic and the English language might say he's the "exception that proves the rule."
Ornstein isn't really liberal, but a good government goo-goo guy, who also happens to be obsessed with "continuity of government plans." But he's the only "centrist" I can think of at AEI, and doesn't usually talk about big partisan issues like Iraq or taxes or anything

Norm is not a centrist. He is a conservative, but a *real* conservative, not a partisan hack, which I guess most people mistake for being centrist now-a-days.

Just to show you how far they have moved the playing field, Herman Kahn was the main guy they based the composite character of Dr. Strangelove on. I consider Hudson and Brookings to be as far right as you can go without being off the map. The Hoover Institute has Dinesh Desewer. How embarassing for them.

The Hudson Institute is a non-profit think tank headquartered in Washington D.C.

While describing itself as "non-partisan" and preferring to portray itself as independently "contrarian" rather than as a conservative think tank, the Hudson Institute gains financial support from many of the foundations and corporations that have bankrolled the conservative movement. The Capital Research Center, a conservative group that seeks to rank non-profits and documents their funding, allocates Hudson as a 7 on its ideological spectrum with 8 being "Free Market Right" and 1 "Radical Left." [1]

Hudson has traditionally had a strong focus on U.S. domestic policies such as national defense, education, crime, immigration, welfare, pesticides and biotechnology. However, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks it has substantially boosted its focus on international issues such as the Middle East, Latin America and Islam.

History
The Institute was founded in 1961 by the late Herman Kahn and his colleagues Max Singer and Oscar Ruebhausen from the RAND Corporation. Initially its policy focus, while right-wing, was dictated by Kahn's own interests (such as domestic and military uses of nuclear power, the future of the US workplace, and the science of "futurology"). Following his death in 1983, the Institute expanded its staff and took on a more overtly conservative stance.

Hudson states in its 2002 annual report that its guiding principles continue "Kahn's optimism about the future, his commitment to free markets and individual responsibility, his belief in the connection between the advance of technology and economic progress, a respect for the importance of religion and culture in human affairs, and his understanding that the prosperity and security of the United States are vital to the prosperity and security of the world." [2]

Hudson insists that its policy positions are not influenced by either its funding sources or ideology. "Whether in domestic policy, national security, or international events, the institute guards its intellectual integrity. Neither dollars nor ideology will sway our opinions. At Hudson Institute, we always strive for the betterment of our world," Walter P. Stern and Herb London wrote in an introductory message in the think tanks 2002 annual report.

RAND Corporation?

Conservatives don't have any need for a think tank to do research, because they have had something infinitely more effective: an entire advanced democracy to serve as the guinea pig for a perfectly controlled experiment of all conservative policy ideas, domestic and foreign.

Over the last six years, the combination of the Bush Presidency and the Republican Congress has turned the United States into an enormous petri dish, from sea to shining sea. The mold of conservative ideas has been injected into the medium of reality to see how they might flourish.

What we got was dead, putrid fungus.

Scientific case closed.

You're best bet is academia. Glancing at the Nobel prize winner list is a nice way to find distinguished economists with a nice mix of liberal and conservative beliefs. Find academic articles written by those folks, and then find their coauthors. Then find articles written by those folks as well. (Ronald Coase, Vernon Smith, Robert Lucas are good examples.)

Plenty of great conservative research in economics. I've seen Vernon Smith's stuff at Cato, but by and large conservative 'think tanks' are political front operations. It would be great if actual thinking conservatives had an actual think tank for assessing their actual ideas in Congress. (The President, of course, picks advice at his leisure, so there's certainly no shortage of conservative advocacy directed at the President.)

What is the Congressional Research Service?

I have been impressed with the moderate thrust of the New America Foundation. Thoughts?

The Brookings Saban Center for Middle East Policy was set up by a billionaire Israeli, ex-politician (probably with ties to the Mossad). On issues relating to the Middle East, they've got an agenda. On non-foreign policy stuff, Brookings Institute is fairly objective, if decidedly centrist as opposed to left-wing.

And the AEI people aren't "movement conservatives" but neo-cons, i.e., people who might have been liberal on social issues at one time, until they let their paranoia drive them into "bomb the muslims, all the time". On economic and social issues, they might not be completely awful.

The Hudson Institute is an astroturf organization. Before 9/11 they had a pro-industry focus, with their neo-conservatism taking second place. Since, it's got a strong focus on national security, with Centers for Islam, and Democracy, and when the hell are the Arabs gonna get their shit together, or do we have to bomb them some more, etc. A pretty consistent neo-conservative, pro-Israel line. Norman Podhoretz and Richard Perle, those kinda guys.

I've seen some pretty fair stuff out of Cato, as long as you factor in their hard-core libertarian mindset. Same with RAND.

The Hoover Institute is a joke. It seems like whenever I see something put out by them it seems it is intentionally misleading, twists facts, inaccurately analyzes data. They are an embarassment to Stanford.

And I would say that in academia, the hard sciences are only moderately left leaning. I think there would be a lot more scientists identifying as republicans if the republican party didn't take such an anti-science stance. But scientists seem for the most part to have fairly moderate, even conservative, personalities.

Seriously!
http://fpc.state.gov/c4763.htm
And that's just State ...

In answer to your question the reason that none come to mind is that there are none. Oh by the way it's well known fact that anyone named American Hawk is an asshole.

The Manhattan Institute does some decent work, though I would say they would more of a replacement for AEI and Heritage than a centrist organization.

The AEI used to be the right-equivalent of Brookings. I used to use their stuff back in the 1980's: quite reliable and not very ideological. The crazies were in Heritage. Now, AEI is a carbon copy of Heritage--that happens to still employ Norm Ornstein.

Now? As others have suggested: RAND? If you move right of RAND, your choices are between honest rigid ideologues (CATO, Manhattan) and whorehouses.

are there any conservative versions of Brookings?

Naval Postgraduate School? Naval War College? Et cetera?

The Hoover is a mixed bag. There are the Dinesh D'Souzas and Tom Sowells, who exist solely in the Hoover, but there are also the Larry Diamonds, the late Seymour Martin Lipset, and others with joint appointments in the real Stanford University. The academic departments do the joint appointments, and have a strong bias against fact-free "scholars," of whatever ideology. Glenn Campbell, the late Director of the Hoover liked to proclaim that the Hoover was AT Stanford, but not OF Stanford. He was right.

But scientists seem for the most part to have fairly moderate, even conservative, personalities.

I work in the hard sciences (in an academic lab), and I think I'd characterize scientists as socially liberal, fiscally moderate, pro-capitalism, mostly secular, and pacifist-leaning. In other words, center-left. Very few conservatives of any sort, unless your definition of liberal is "socialist class warrior", which seems to be the opinion of most of the posters here. I certainly don't run into many Republicans, especially hardcore Bush fans.

You guys are all crazy. I worked at the Brookings Institution for 3 years and are just like Kevin politically (that may be too conservative for many commenters here, but certainly doesn't make them conservative vis-a-vis the country at large). They are liberals who vote for Democrats ...

I guess I'd say the Cato Institute is conservative without being partisan, but that's only one requirement for a "conservative Brookings" - the other would be honest research, and they have a mixed bag in that department.

Hoover and RAND would be the closest.

Think tank, wtf is that? Lobbyists and propagandists funded by billionaires and other special interests. Because these think tank pseudo-scholars are in DC just waiting to spout, real scholars, who live elsewhere, aren't consulted.

D'Souza and Victor Davis Hanson are wingnuts. Similarly, Brookings is not liberal. That said, the Hoover Institution does, in fact, produce quite a bit of very serious research. It also has very many liberal scholars on its payroll. DJ Moonbat had it right the first time.

I know this because I have worked with Hoover fellows. There is no discernable partisan bias. In fact, Hoover promotes fellows who vote for the Peace and Freedom Party and vocally defend social insurance programs.

I should mention here that I have had stuff published in Hoover volumes. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am rather vocally left-liberal on a wide range of issues. They published me regardless.

And I would say that in academia, the hard sciences are only moderately left leaning. I think there would be a lot more scientists identifying as republicans if the republican party didn't take such an anti-science stance. But scientists seem for the most part to have fairly moderate, even conservative, personalities.
Posted by: J.B.

Nat already pretty much summed it up ... center-left is about correct. Academic scientists with PhDs are, in my experience, a fair bit more liberal than the MDs I'm currently around.

I've definately run into more doctors who were likely to vote repub than scientists. Some are flat out, bomb-the-muslims cut-my-taxes fuck-the-poor wingnuts who would only be out of place on free republic because their spelling is better.

It's so wonderful that those think tanks I agree with are moderate, objective, centrist and wise, compared to those ignorant partisan hacks at the think tanks I disagree with.

Just to remind people that the Capital Research Center was spawned from the Heritage Foundation and is pretty anti-left, anti-environmental, so their ratings of other organizations might be a tad skewed.

"Think tank" itself has devolved from places that actually did think and published what were essentially research papers to too many that start with a preconceived opinion and frame their argument around it, never answering to any legitimate critique of their opinion. So, yes, it is a pity that legitimate academic work is so little referenced.

Free markets aren't the answer any more than a socialist construction, appealing as black versus white is for those who can't think.

+++++++++++++
Pedantic but: "...If YOU'RE in Economics, Finance, Business, or similar departments YOU'D find the exact same political leanings...."
Obviously not the English dept.

Brookings is the conservative version.

I've definately run into more doctors who were likely to vote repub than scientists. Some are flat out, bomb-the-muslims cut-my-taxes fuck-the-poor wingnuts who would only be out of place on free republic because their spelling is better.

I will second that - I work with both.

The Hoover is a mixed bag. There are the Dinesh D'Souzas and Tom Sowells, who exist solely in the Hoover, but there are also the Larry Diamonds, the late Seymour Martin Lipset, and others with joint appointments in the real Stanford University. The academic departments do the joint appointments, and have a strong bias against fact-free "scholars," of whatever ideology. Glenn Campbell, the late Director of the Hoover liked to proclaim that the Hoover was AT Stanford, but not OF Stanford. He was right.

Evidently the Hoover is a mixed bag of dishonest conservatives and dead moderates, since two of the three exculpatory examples you cited were "the late." When you use a dead guy to balance out a nutjob, you don't balance out the nutjob.

Interesting the difference in political outlook between doctors of medicine and doctors of hard sciences, physics/chemistry/biochemistry/etc.

Let me see, now what could possibly be the difference. Hmmmmm. I went to school with a lot of people that ended up in both professions. Let me think. Hmmmm. Both groups trained extensively in math and science. Hmmmm.

Wait, Wait!!!! I think I have it. I think, I think, no I'm sure of it. It's the money!!!!!

Funny how that works.

Wait, Wait!!!! I think I have it. I think, I think, no I'm sure of it. It's the money!!!!!
Funny how that works.
Posted by: TT

not to put TOO fine a point on it, but yeah, that plays a significant role.

it isn't everything, though, since I'm still running into the occasional wingnut during residency, where we're just clearing $40,000/yr. of course, some of these may have grown up in MD households, and so have inherited/learned conservatism.

but there are also factors like an overblown significance to the malpractice issure, and successfully being convinced that poor people are looking to scam them. and the paternalistic aspect of parts of being a doctor. and the lack of active scientific pursuit, which leads to the intellectual malaise so common amongst conservatives.

but yeah ... a lot of these guys will toe the repub line as long as it gets them their tax cuts. of course, I have student loans, too, so we'll see how long until I sell out. :)

Although I've seen a lot of garbage from AEI, I find it interesting that Ayaan Hirsi Ali (author of Infidel) is on their staff. While I can see conservative traits, Ayaan also has some liberal leanings too. One thing for sure, she is not a Republican hack!

As a libertarian (both big and little "L"), I've usually been disappointed by CATO. Most of their stuff looks more like corporate propaganda (get rid of all regulations, no matter what) instead of what I think of liberty promoting.

During the Bush reign, they even started promoting Bush style conservative stuff that was far from both traditional conservative and libertarian ideas. I saw less of this in 2005 and 2006, so perhaps they have regurgitated some of the Bush kool-aid, and have gone back to their traditional corporatism boosting?

One final word about libertarianism, I've become less of one over the years. The problem is that the market has been so slanted against certain things (like 80 years of copyright laws written mostly by copyright holders without consideration of citizens and the benefits of public domain), that just backing off of the current hot-issue and "letting the market decide" is not good enough. We need law reforms before the market will work.

Hirsi Ali fulfills the anti-Muslim bias of AEI, which demotes her to minor wingnut status.

she's certainly better educated, better informed, more articulate, and more personally invested in her own propaganda than ... say malkin or coulter, who are simply racist.

but she's painted with far too broad a brush, and has since fallen to offensive wingnut status. and she's allowed herself to be used by a thinktank which has little use for moderation when it comes to Muslims.

Perhaps the Baker Institute at Rice University? I don't know how conservative they are in practice, but their genealogy is old-line conservative (James A. Baker, George H. W. Bush).

Aspen. CSIS. Council on Foreign Relations. Hudson. RAND. etc., etc. There are more than a few, and many of them do good work, which is then studiously ignored by the administration and the media, both of which prefer the sparring mentality of the aggro-conservatives at AEI or Heritage.

I'm just guessing here, but I suspect the conservative think tanks will conclude that the poor are "that way" because they are lazy. Ya think?

A few years ago Dan Rather was allowed to get away with saying CBS and the NYTimes were mainstream and Fox News was the ultra-right wing. Now Kevin and Exra try the same argument.

It's a little known fact that all experts in institutions of higher learning are unable to distinguish between "your" and "you're".

It's a little known fact that all pedants picking nits in other's writing are unable to distinguish between "'you're'." and "'you're.'"

Kevin asks: ...are there any conservative versions of Brookings? That is, big, well regarded, and centrist conservative in background but still fundamentally dedicated to honest research rather than simply advancing a partisan agenda.

In today's political climate, if you are not advancing a partisan conservative agenda, then that means you are advancing a liberal agenda. If you are not convinced of the correctness of conservatives, then you are a liberal. If you believe that research is important before coming to a conclusion, then you are a liberal.

American Hawk writes: Well, liberals define anything to the right of Kucinich as "hard right conservative"...

I'm pretty confident that Kevin is to the right of Kucinich, and so is Barack Obama, and so is Hilary Clinton, and so is John Edwards and so is Al Gore. Come to think, most people who call themselves liberals are to the right of Kucinich (on most issues). So you are saying that most liberals define themselves as "hard right conservatives"?