Often accused of a being a bastion of Straussian scholarship and a neoconservative stronghold, the Claremont Institute, based in Claremont, California, is home to a number of rightist academics and advocacy programs. Founded in 1979 "to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life," the Claremont Institute is part of a tightly knit group of conservative academic institutions that often serve as home bases for foreign and domestic policy scholars and policymakers with close ties to Republican administrations. Others of its ilk include the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs, based in Ashbrook, Ohio; Missouri State University's Department of Defense and Strategic Studies; Hillsdale College, based in Hillsdale, Michigan; and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Among the people and institutions cited on the "Claremont Institute Links" page are: Rush Limbaugh, Empower America, the Center for Security Policy, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Freedom House, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the Independent Women's Forum, the Manhattan Institute, as well as the neoconservative journals Commentary, the Weekly Standard, and First Things.
Claremont hosts the Ballistic Missile Defense Project, whose website, MissileThreat.com, argues that "a robust and layered ballistic missile defense comprised of systems based on land, sea, air, and space has become an absolute necessity if we are to fulfill the constitutional duties to insure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense." Project advisers include Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy; Hank Cooper of High Frontier; and William Van Cleave of Missouri State University's Department of Defense and Strategic Studies.
MissileThreat.com offers a number of slick web pages aimed at driving home the right-wing message that the homeland stands in grave, daily threat from an assortment of missiles that could be employed by rogues and terrorists. One page, suggestively titled "Scenarios," features brief video clips showing "textual descriptions and animations" of how an enemy could attack America and how U.S. missile interceptors might defend against them. One scenario, titled "Ship-Based Attack on Hollywood," opens with a quote from the so-called Rumsfeld Missile Commission, a congressionally mandated 1998 investigation led by Donald Rumsfeld that was heavily criticized by many arms control experts for exaggerating the ballistic missile threat to the United States. Pointing out that there are thousands of ships entering and exiting U.S. waters everyday, anyone of which "could be equipped to launch a ballistic missile," the film proceeds to show an animated hypothetical Scud missile attack on Hollywood&mdash"a high profile symbol of American popular culture"—from a ship stationed off the coast of California. The clip concludes: "Because of political opposition at home and abroad, it is by no means certain that a missile defense will be built before such an attack occurs."
Claremont served as a sponsoring institution of the 2006 "Independent Working Group on Missile Defense, the Space Relationship, and the 21st Century," a task force of hardline foreign policy ideologues whose final report claimed that the 21st century maintenance of the "U.S. lead in space may indeed be pivotal to the basic geopolitical, military, and economic status of the United States. Consolidation of the preeminent U.S. position in space is akin to Britain's dominance of the oceans in the 19th century." Other sponsors of the task force included the American Foreign Policy Council, Missouri State University's Department of Defense and Strategic Studies, the George C. Marshall Institute, Heritage, High Frontier, and the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. As missile defense expert Theresa Hitchens wryly commented: "'Independent Working Group' is, therefore, a bit of a misnomer" (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 2007).
Additionally, according to analyst Tom Barry of the International Relations Center, task force members and sponsors included "many key figures and institutions that advocate a more aggressive nuclear weapons and space weapons policy, including the four sectors of the space weapons lobby: defense contractors (including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Assured Space Access Technologies), think tanks and policy institutes (including the Hoover Institution), former military (including the Air Force Space Command), and university research institutes (including Tufts and MIT)" (Tom Barry, " Space: The Phantom Menace," Right Web Analysis, November 8, 2006).
Claremont cosponsors, with the Ashbrook Center, the website VindicatingTheFounders.com, which was designed to accompany the book by the same title authored by Thomas G. West and published by Rowman & Littlefield in 1997. According to the website, the book is a "defense of the Founders' views and actions on slavery, women's rights, property rights, voting rights, and other controversial issues." The website was created "to make available to the public an extensive collection of original historical documents on the themes of this book. These documents provide evidence from original sources in support of the book's arguments." According to Library Journal, the book aims "to defend the U.S. Constitution and the men who drafted it in 1787 from the accusations of sexism, racism, and prejudice against the poor. West writes from a conservative perspective, and, as he frequently pauses to remind the reader, his arguments are learned and logical. However, this is a deeply flawed book. West writes in a supercilious and dismissive tone. Worse, he digresses far afield to introduce his ideas on contemporary issues, which have almost nothing to do with the founders; his chapter on the family is simply a compendium of current conservative views and he rarely mentions the founders, who said and wrote little on the subject" (Library Journal, October 1, 1997).
Claremont also apparently sponsors the William Bennett-led Americans for Victory over Terrorism (AVOT), one of a number of letterhead groups that emerged in the wake of 9/11 to support an aggressive U.S. military response to the terrorist attacks. According to AVOT's home page, the group is a "project of the Claremont Institute." However, Claremont's website gives little supporting evidence for this. Claremont's website offers a biography of Bennett, who is identified as a Claremont Washington fellow and AVOT chairman; the site also indicates that Seth Leibsohn, another Claremont fellow, serves as AVOT's executive director.
Besides several programs, Claremont also offers fellowships, including the Abraham Lincoln Fellowship in Constitutional Government: "B eginning in 1996, we have gathered the rising stars of the conservative movement every other summer for a week-long, intensive seminar in politics: the Abraham Lincoln Fellowship program. Our purpose is to teach them how to be 'able and orthodox' teachers."
Among Claremont's more well-known board members and affiliated scholars are Lawrence Kadish, a high-powered real estate investor who has been an important financial backer of the Republican Party and various neoconservative-aligned pressure groups, including AVOT and the Center for Security Policy; Harry Jaffa, a well-known scholar of Leo Strauss, a political theorist who was an important intellectual influence on a number of early neoconservatives like Irving Kristol; J.D. Crouch II, a hardline foreign policy academic who served several posts in the George W. Bush administration, including as deputy national security adviser; and Victor Davis Hanson, a Hoover fellow and frequent contributor to a number of right-wing publications, including the National Review.
The institute also runs a blog called "The Remedy," apparently after this quote from the Federalist Papers: "We behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government." The blog's stance is predictably conservative, for example, this paean to Ronald Reagan, on what would have been his birthday: " Our country and our state today, government is too big, growing too fast, too intrusive in our lives, costs too much, and delivers too little value for the dollar" (Claremont Institute, February 5, 2007).
Claremont enjoys the support of a plank of conservative foundations. According to MediaTransparency.com, between 1985 and 2005, Claremont received nearly $10 million in donations from core rightist foundations, including the Scaife, Bradley, Olin, and Earhart foundations.
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Contact Information
Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy
937 W. Foothill Blvd., Suite E
Claremont, CA 91711
E-mail: info@claremont.org
Phone: (909) 621-6825
Fax: (909) 626-8724
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