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Institutional
Affiliations
Research Council of America (2)
The Pinkertown Foundation: Board (2)
The Philanthropy Roundtable: Board (2)
Clare Booth Luce Fund: Board (2)
Foundation Francisco Marroquin: Trustee (4)
Bradley Foundation: President and CEO until July, 2001 (1)
Goldseker Foundation: Former CEO (1)
John M. Olin Foundation: Former Executive (1)
Project for the New American Century: Signed PNAC's September 20, 2001 letter to the president on the war on terrorism
Project for the Republican Future: Co-Founder, with William Kristol (1993) (2)
Government
Posts/Panels/Commissions
Reagan Presidential Transition Team (2)
Corporate
Connections/Business Interests
Cobalt Corp.: Board member (1)
Harp & Eagle, LTD: Board member (2)
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Highlights
& Quotes
Michael Joyce, once described by neoconservative guru Irving Kristol as the “godfather of modern philanthropy,” has played a central role in creating the modern conservative movement. (1) He has led a number of rightist foundations—including the Bradley, Olin, and Goldseker foundations—engineered several rightwing policy campaigns, and supported various advocacy groups, including William Kristol’s Project for the New American Century. During his 15-year tenure as head of the Bradley Foundation, Joyce turned the foundation into one of the most powerful conservative funders in the country. He helped establish two of William Kristol’s outfits, PNAC and the Project for the Republic Future, which helped spearhead the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. As the Glasgow Herald reported (April 13, 2003), “The Republicans love [the Bradley Foundation] and some even call it the patron saint of hawkish causes, thanks to the considerable amounts of money it doles out to neocon causes.”
Before his early retirement from the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation in 2002, Joyce created Americans for Community and Faith-Centered Enterprise to build support for President Bush’s controversial faith-based initiative. According to the Washington Post (June 25, 2001), “The administration has also been working behind the scenes to build support for the plan. Michael S. Joyce, a proponent of school choice who has been developing the intellectual framework for faith-based efforts for 12 years, said Bush asked him at a Rose Garden ceremony May 10, ‘Did Karl call you yet?’ Joyce said Karl Rove, Bush’s senior adviser, phoned later that day and asked Joyce ‘to undertake a private initiative to help get this legislation through.’ … On June 1, Joyce opened Americans for Community and Faith-Centered Enterprise with a stable of consultants and lobbyists and an office on Pennsylvania Avenue. … ‘For a lot of people, this conjures images of serpent-handlers and speaking in tongues,’ Joyce said. ‘We’re busy convincing centrist Democrats that allowing equal access to public resources is not establishing a religion’.” Other members of this organization (including the affiliated Foundation for Community and Faith-Centered Enterprise, led by his wife Mary Jo) (6) include Richard John Neuhaus, William J. Bennett, and William Kristol.
According to Milwaukee journalist Barbara Miner, Joyce, who grew up in a Democratic family from Cleveland, first got involved in national politics and philanthropy after he moved to New York City in 1978 and began working for the Institute for Educational Affairs, “a neoconservative organization started by right wing trailblazer Irving Kristol and William Simon, secretary of the treasury for Presidents Nixon and Ford. The following year Simon asked Joyce to head the Olin Foundation.” Less than 10 years later, in 1986, the Atlantic Monthly called Joyce one of the three most important individuals behind the success of the conservative movement. (7)
During his time at Olin and Bradley, Joyce refined the strategy of waging what he terms a “war of ideas” to change the course of U.S. policies. The strategy has been replicated by conservative foundations and think tanks across the country with enormous success in recent years. In a speech at Georgetown University shortly after he retired from Bradley, Joyce said: “At Olin and later at Bradley, our overarching purpose was to use philanthropy to support a war of ideas to defend and help recover the political imagination of the [nation’s] founders—the self-evident truth that rights and worth are a legacy of the creator—not the result of some endless revaluing of values.” (8) |
