The American Assembly
 |
|
| Formation | 1950 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Dwight Eisenhower |
| Type | Think tank |
| Focus | Education |
| Headquarters | 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 456, New York, NY 10115 |
| Location | |
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Area served
|
United States |
|
President
|
David Mortimer |
|
Revenue (2014)
|
$3,501,347 |
| Expenses (2014) | $1,282,496 |
| Website | americanassembly.org |
The American Assembly is a think tank at Columbia University, founded in 1950 by General Dwight Eisenhower. It has become his most enduring achievement and legacy as president of Columbia. For over 60 years, it has fostered nonpartisan public-policy discussions by convening, research, and publication. Over 100 "American Assemblies" have been held on topics ranging from prison reform to healthcare to nuclear disarmament. In recent years, Assembly projects have made a wide range of contributions to economic, urban, and cultural policy, including projects on workforce development, financial regulation, and the role of the arts in American universities.
In 1948, the board of Columbia agreed to a unique arrangement for a university president to allow Eisenhower to spend much of his time working on behalf of The American Assembly. In his book At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, Eisenhower wrote that his inspiration for the Assembly went back to his concerns about how to resolve the enormous social, economic, and political quandaries that had been thrust upon the nation after World War II. He came to believe that by marshalling the intellectual power across a range of sectors, thoughtful men and women could address difficult problems and identify wise solutions. The idea captivated him and was an absorbing pursuit throughout his first year as Columbia president. His conviction that imaginative and profound thought could help to resolve national public policy concerns became the framework for a new organization that he called "The American Assembly." He gave it the short mandate "to illuminate issues of national policy."
In the late 1940s, only a handful of public policy institutions existed, and structured conferences were a new and evolving form of exchange for the citizenry. Since its inaugural program, The American Assembly has initiated hundreds of national projects and many more subsequent programs throughout the United States and the world. Over the years the Assembly, has perfected a technique to allow thousands of participants representing a range of views, interests, and backgrounds to come together to discuss major public policy issues and work out wise solutions. The American Assembly has met Eisenhower's goals by sponsoring research on a vast range of topics, domestic and foreign, organizing meetings, issuing reports of findings and recommendations, and by commissioning books.
Through its published reports and books, it has provided leading law, policy, and decision makers and the general public, schools, and other educational institutions with materials for their own Assembly projects. The Assembly maintains ongoing relationships with a number of institutions that hold their own American Assemblies, such as the US Air Force Academy, which has cosponsored an annual Academy Assembly since 1959. The Assembly has also spawned several autonomous institutions that have been founded following co-sponsoring Assembly programs.
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