Enterprise Report Restoring Liberty, Opportunity, and Enterprise in America
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Issue No. 3 Summer 2019 Enterprise Report Restoring Liberty, Opportunity, and Enterprise in America Special Edition Looking Ahead By AEI President Robert Doar I am honored to be writing to you as AEI’s president. As a member of the AEI community, you understand what a special organization this is and its vital role in defending America’s founding values: free people, free markets, limited government, and American leadership in the world. Thanks to my predecessors’ work and our donor community’s support, I believe AEI is indispensable to the future of the nation and the free world. Our commitment to serious scholarship and the competition of ideas has never been stronger. We are prepared to continue setting the standard for intelligent, fact-driven, and civil analysis. Indeed, my key priority for the year ahead is to double down on these strengths and invest in the long-term visionary thinking needed to counter attacks on free enterprise, increase economic and social mobility among Americans, uphold America’s constitutional principles, promote American global leadership, and develop leaders who share our values and can act as force multipliers for our work. “As a member of the AEI community, you understand what a special organization this is and its vital role in defending America’s founding values: free people, free markets, limited government, and American leadership in the world.” Within these pages, you will read about recent developments at AEI and highlights of programs and events that have taken place over the summer. In June, we established a new research division at AEI under the direction of National Affairs Founding Editor Yuval Levin. The Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies division aims to play a leading role in revitalizing the intellectual foundations of American public Robert Doar life. In addition to Levin, AEI is hiring significant new scholars for this research division. AEI President and For instance, Adam White, currently a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and director Morgridge Scholar of the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, is joining AEI in August. AEI is now also home to National Affairs. I believe there is no better way to start this next chapter of AEI’s history than by bringing the conservative movement’s most important intellectual publication into the AEI fold. In addition to recruiting more great scholars to AEI in key areas such as constitutional studies and regulatory policy, AEI will continue to focus on our nation’s next generation of scholars, policymakers, and practitioners. I had the pleasure of participating in AEI’s 10th annual Summer Honors Program, which we wrapped up in June. Nearly 230 undergraduate students representing 120 schools across the country took intensive seminar-style courses with AEI scholars. While more than 40 percent of the summer cadre self-identified as ideologically liberal or moderate, two-thirds of participants reported that the program achieved its mission of rigorous policy education and instilling an appreciation for the competition of ideas. AEI is also deepening our engagement with state and local leaders and experimenting with new ways of reaching broader audiences with our scholars’ ideas. Page 6 of this newsletter features AEI’s Bridging the Divide Summit, which we hosted in Denver, Colorado, in June for more than 375 members of our community. This was a massive undertaking that exposed new audiences to AEI’s work across a host of policy issues while recognizing the work of local leaders and organizations that are driving change in their states and communities. We’re in the peak days of summer, but at AEI, my colleagues and I have hit the ground running to ensure we don’t miss a beat during this crucial time in our country when AEI’s leadership and ideas are as important as ever. We have a strong foundation—built on our scholars, staff, and wonderful community of donors and friends—and in the months and years ahead, we look to be even stronger. I’m excited for what the future holds and am optimistic about what we can achieve together. I look forward to getting to know many of you, and I welcome your thoughts on how we are doing and what we can improve. Thank you for your support of AEI. Onward and upward, AEI Launches New Research Division Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies AEI recently launched a new research SCCS will serve as a crucial division under the leadership of resource to our nation’s policy- Yuval Levin, renowned scholar, makers, both by supplying new policy author, and editor of the policy approaches and ideas rooted in conserva- journal National Affairs. The Social, tive values and by broadening the right’s Cultural, and Constitutional range of debate and depth of thinking. Studies (SCCS) division will focus on It will also further AEI’s position as the three major research areas: constitutional center of the free enterprise movement. and legal studies, politics and public The SCCS scholarship will help reenergize opinion, and social, cultural, and and unite the free enterprise movement civic life. around the institutions and principles that SCCS scholars will undertake research animate our nation. examining the underpinnings of self- legislators around the country, journalists, For more information about AEI’s new government and the meaning of and academics. The journal will retain research division, please contact Spencer America’s constitutional principles; its own branding and editorial inde- Moore at [email protected]. If you take an active role in key policy battles pendence and will continue publishing would like to subscribe to National Affairs, around regulation, the administrative authors from various backgrounds, visit www.nationalaffairs.com/ state, and the courts; articulate for a affiliations, and views. subscribe. new generation the ideals that define American political and economic life; and build an intellectual community that will unite diverse scholars and writers around these core priorities. The research division will build on AEI’s “Yuval’s depth and breadth of rich history of scholarship and impact experience brings a new on these issues and draw on the work dimension to AEI’s work on the of nearly 20 AEI resident and visiting ideas that underpin our democracy.” scholars, including Karlyn Bowman, Timothy Carney, Jonah Goldberg, —AEI President Robert Doar Charles Murray, Ramesh Ponnuru, and Peter Wallison. It will also seek new scholars focusing on history, sociology, political science, and regulatory and Yuval Levin is the founder and editor of National Affairs, which is a successor to the constitutional studies. Public Interest, the public policy journal Irving Kristol ran for four decades. In addition, SCCS will house National He previously served as the Hertog Fellow and vice president of the Ethics & Public Affairs—the conservative movement’s Policy Center (EPPC). Before joining EPPC, Levin served on the White House domestic leading quarterly journal of public policy policy staff under President George W. Bush. He was also executive director of the and political ideas—starting with its fall President’s Council on Bioethics and a congressional staffer. 2019 10th anniversary issue. Founded His essays and articles have appeared in numerous publications, including the New by Levin in 2009, National Affairs has York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Commentary. He is a contributing been a key source of Republican editor of National Review and the author, most recently, of The Fractured Republic: policy ideas on health care, education, Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism (Basic Books, 2016). His energy policy, tax reform, regulatory next book, A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, reform, and institutional reform of How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream (Basic Books), Congress. The magazine is distributed will be published in January 2020. to every member of Congress, members He received a 2013 Bradley Prize for intellectual achievement and holds a BA from of the cabinet, White House staffers, American University and a PhD from the University of Chicago. every governor’s office, many state 3 independence at AEI, just as AEI’s own & scholars do. And the two institutions have always shared a common perspective: a commitment to intellectual rigor and Q scholarship in defense of the rule of law, Yuval Levin American constitutionalism, democratic capitalism, the necessity of civil society, community, and family for a free society. A So AEI will offer the magazine a new and supportive home so that the two can advance some crucial common causes together better than either “National Affairs is a sturdy shelter in an age of storms, where could alone. friends of the American republic can regroup to think.” What has your experience as the —George Will, Washington Post editor of National Affairs taught you about the state of conservatism today? I think conservatism is in a state of uncertainty and flux, in good ways and bad. And not just conservatism. What brought you to Washington, From there I moved to a job on the In every part of our national life—in and what was your experience on the domestic policy staff at the Bush White politics, economics, world affairs, White House domestic policy staff? House, advising the president on health culture, media, and many other arenas— I first came to Washington, DC, as a care, veterans’ issues, some welfare issues, we Americans have spent the past college student interested in politics and other matters. It was an extraordinary decade and a half basically trying to and eager to get involved in the world opportunity to be involved at the highest extend the arrangements that served us of conservative ideas.