Hudson Institute

Although the institute calls itself a "non-partisan policy research organization," scholars at Hudson consistently reveal an ideological agenda in their work. For example, during the 2006 battle over the renomination of John Bolton as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Hudson president Herbert London coauthored, with American Enterprise Institute (AEI) head Christopher DeMuth, an op-ed in the right-wing Washington Times. The two argued that Bolton's critics wrongly "contended [Bolton] could not work constructively with others, that he was too abrasive, and held the UN in too low regard to be effective there. In fact, on issue after issue, John Bolton has represented the United States with great effectiveness. He has engaged respectfully and productively with his counterparts from other countries and the UN bureaucracy wherever possible." Responding to the numerous press reports citing diplomats who painted a very different picture of Bolton's tenure at the UN, DeMuth and London complained that "it should come as no surprise that Mr. Bolton's critics have been reduced to citing unnamed foreign diplomats who say they do not get along with our UN ambassador" (Washington Times, September 7, 2006).

Similarly, during George W. Bush's second term, some Hudson scholars have been vociferous advocates of an aggressive U.S. posture vis-à-vis several Mideast countries, particularly Syria and Iran. Hudson adjunct fellow Norman Podhoretz, an early neoconservative trailblazer and former editor of Commentary magazine, was one of the loudest U.S. voices calling for attacking Iran. In a June 2007 article for Commentary titled "The Case for Bombing Iran," Podhoretz, who advises Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign team, wrote: "The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences. The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon." He concluded his diatribe pointing to European weakness, a familiar Podhoretz theme: "In fact, it could almost be said of the Europeans that they have been more upset by Ahmadinejad's denial that a Holocaust took place 60 years ago than by his determination to set off one of his own as soon as he acquires the means to do so. In a number of European countries, Holocaust denial is a crime, and the European Union only recently endorsed that position. Yet for all their retrospective remorse over the wholesale slaughter of Jews back then, the Europeans seem no readier to lift a finger to prevent a second Holocaust than they were the first time around. Not so George W. Bush, a man who knows evil when he sees it and who has demonstrated an unfailingly courageous willingness to endure vilification and contumely in setting his face against it. It now remains to be seen whether this president, battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory, and weakened politically by the enemies of his policy in the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular, will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both toward us and toward Israel."

In September 2007, Hudson's Meyrav Wurmser, cofounder of the controversial Middle East Media Research Institute, authored a "strategic briefing" for the UK-based Henry Jackson Society titled "Iran-Hamas Relations: The Growing Threat from a Radical Religious Coalition," which argued that an Iranian threat was looming across the Middle East (a nearly identical article was posted on the Hudson website in October 2007 under the title "The Hamas-Iran Alliance"). Wurmser wrote: "Hamas' coup against the Palestinian Authority in Gaza in May 2007 was a monumental event, not just for the Palestinians, but also the Middle East. ... One central aspect of Iran's ambitions is its growing alliance with Hamas, a relationship dating back to the first official meeting between both in December 1990. These ties grow closer and more intimate, particularly after August 2005, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power."

Scholars and Leadership. Hudson's list of current and former scholars and associates reveals a clear partisan tendency. Several Hudson associates have supported the work of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the advocacy outfit that played a singular role in pushing for the invasion of Iraq in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The overlap between Hudson and the now-defunct PNAC includes many who signed PNAC's 1997 "Statement of Principles," including Elliott Abrams, the pardoned Iran-Contra convict who serves as a Mideast adviser to the Bush administration and is a former Hudson scholar; Francis Fukuyama, the erstwhile neoconservative fellow traveler and author of the "end of history" thesis who in recent years has rejected many of the faction's policy ideas; Donald Kagan, a conservative classicist; and former Vice President Dan Quayle, an honorary Hudson trustee.

Other Hudson scholars and fellows include Carol Adelman (who is married to Ken Adelman), Anne Bayefsky, Robert Bork, Hillel Fradkin, Laurent Murawiec, Nina Shea, Irwin Stelzer, Ben Wattenberg, and William Schneider Jr.

The Hudson institute also has multiple connections to the Center for Security Policy, a hardline advocacy outfit founded by former Reagan administration Defense official Frank Gaffney, through members like Charles Horner, George Keyworth, Richard Perle, and Schneider.

London, Hudson's president since 1997, has been affiliated with the institute for more than three decades, either as a trustee or senior fellow, founding Hudson's Center for Employment Policy during his tenure. London is also a former Olin Professor of Humanities at New York University. London sits on the boards of numerous private sector businesses and organizations, including Merrill Lynch Assets Management. He previously served as board member to the Center for Naval Analyses.

Kenneth R. Weinstein is Hudson's chief executive officer and a member of the board's executive committee. He joined the institute in 1999 and is a former research fellow. He previously worked at the Heritage Foundation, the New Citizenship Project, the Shalem Center, Claremont McKenna College, and Georgetown University.

Walter P. Stern, who has also served a vice president of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is the chairman emeritus of Hudson's Board of Trustees, which has strong ties to the corporate world, including defense industries. Former trustees include Conrad Black, Donald Kagan, Emmanuel Kampouris, and Dan Quayle. Current trustees include Perle, Nina Rosenwald, and Lawrence Kadish. Hudson cofounder Max Singer, who remains a senior fellow, is associated with the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, which is part of Bar-Ilan University in Israel. He writes frequently for the Jerusalem Post and other major newspapers, routinely advocating hardline views about Saudi Arabia and supporting Israel's actions toward the Palestinians. He was also a fervent supporter of Ahmed Chalabi.

Hillel Fradkin, who joined Hudson as a senior fellow in summer 2004, has been a longtime member of the network of rightist and neoconservative institutions, serving as head of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a fellow at AEI, and an officer at the Bradley and Olin foundations. In 2004 article for the Irving Kristol-founded Public Interest, Fradkin argued, "It is hard to overstate the collective psychological effect of the decline of Islamic power, coincidental with the rise of Christian power and its modern political organization" (Public Interest, Spring 2004).

Another outspoken Hudson scholar is Irwin Stelzer, who directs its Center for Economic Policy Studies. In a September 26, 2006 article for Hudson about Federal Reserve Board policy, Stelzer argued that the esoteric detail about monetary policy was lost on most Americans. He wrote: "They see Ford and General Motors laying off tens of thousands of workers, read that nutters in Venezuela and Iran are plotting to cut off supplies of oil, get depressed about the situation in Iraq as the nightly television news casts a pall over dinner tables, and see American foreign policy impotent in the face of a drive by America's old adversary, France's Jacques Chirac, to thwart President George Bush's efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons" (London Sunday Times, September 26, 2006).

Stelzer is the editor of the 2004 volume The Neocon Reader (Grove Press, New York), a compendium of writings from different political figures and authors that describes aspects of neoconservatism. Commenting in the book's introduction on Joshua Muravchik 's contribution to the book, in which the AEI fellow endeavors to dispel the myth that neoconservatism is a Jewish "cabal," Stelzer argues that this can hardly be the case "since neither Colin Powell nor Condoleezza Rice, the president's principal foreign policy advisers, are Jewish; nor are Vice President Dick Cheney ... Donald Rumsfeld ... or George Tenet." Implying inaccurately that neoconservatism encompasses a large array of individuals, as Stelzer does, is a common thread in much of neoconservative rhetoric.

History. After the institute was founded in 1961 by Herman Kahn, Max Singer, and Oscar Ruebhausen in New York's Westchester County, it moved to Indianapolis in 1984, and then finally settled in Washington, DC in 2004. During its more than 40 years of operation, the institute claims to have helped shift "the world away from the no-growth policies of the Club of Rome," enabling the former Soviet republics to become "booming market economies." It also claims to have pioneered "Wisconsin welfare reform" that was later applied nationally. More recently, however, the institute has focused much of its work on security issues, declaring that its move to Washington was made "in an effort to focus its research on foreign policy and national security issues." While it appears to adhere to an equal-opportunity approach in addressing America's many alleged enemies, a significant portion of its white papers and publications have been heavily focused on Islam and the Muslim world.

One of Hudson's founders, Kahn, was one of the more infamous products of the RAND Corporation, where, beginning in 1947, he developed nuclear strategies that downplayed the impact of a thermonuclear war and was supposedly the inspiration for the character of Dr. Strangelove. In a discussion of Kahn's ideas in the New Yorker, Louis Menand quoted Kahn's 1960 book, On Thermonuclear War: "Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, objective studies indicate that even though the amount of human tragedy would be greatly increased in the postwar [i.e. nuclear] world, the increase would not preclude normal and happy lives for the majority of survivors and their descendants."

Menand commented: "The reason [Kahn's] scenarios are fantastic to the point, almost, of risibility is that they deliberately ignore all the elements—beliefs, customs, ideas, politics—that actual wars are fought about, and that operate as a drag on decision making at every point" (New Yorker, June 27, 2005).

Funding. The Hudson Institute received close to $25 million between 1987 and 2003 in foundation, corporate, and government grants, according to Media Transparency and the Capital Research Center. In 2005, the Sarah Scaife Foundation gave Hudson $150,000 for projects, and the Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation gave $75,000 "toward general support for the U.S., China, Russia, and Iran Diplomacy and Security project, and the work of Russian scholar and writer Dr. Andrei Piontkowski," according to Media Transparency. In 2004, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation gave Hudson hundreds of thousands for various projects. Other top Hudson funders have included Olin, Smith Richardson, Pew, the Donner Foundation, and the Department of Justice.

Hudson Institute
1015 15th Street NW, 6th Floor
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: (202) 974-2400
Fax: (202) 974-2410
Email: info@hudson.org
Web: http://www.hudson.org

Norman Podhoretz, The Case for Bombing Iran," Commentary, June 2007.

Hudson Institute (various pages), www.hudson.org.

Herbert London and Christopher DeMuth, "What the UN Needs Now," Washington Times, September 7, 2006.

Louis Menand, "Fat Man: Herman Kahn and the Nuclear Age," New Yorker, June 27, 2005.

Robert H. Bork and Daniel Rifkin, "A War the Courts Shouldn't Manage," Washington Post, January 21, 2005.

Max Singer, "The Crucial Controversy over Ahmed Chalabi," Jerusalem Post, June 18, 2002.

Hillel Fradkin, "America in Islam," Public Interest, Spring 2004.

Irwin Seltzer, "When Standing Is the Best Way to Progress," London Sunday Times, September 26, 2006.

Irwin Seltzer, ed., The Neocon Reader (New York: Grove Press, 2004), p. 7.

Media Transparency, Recipient Grants: Hudson Institute, http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=160.

Capital Research Center, Hudson Institute.

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