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Revision as of 22:48, 24 August 2008

American Enterprise Institute
File:Aei.png
AbbreviationAEI
Formation1943
TypePublic Policy Think Tank
Headquarters1150 Seventeenth Street NW
Location
PresidentChristopher DeMuth
Websitewww.aei.org

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is a conservative think tank, founded in 1943. According to the institute its mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism — limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate." AEI is an independent, non-profit organization. It is supported primarily by grants and contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. It is located in Washington, D.C.

AEI has emerged as one of the leading architects of the second Bush administration's public policy. More than twenty AEI alumni and current visiting scholars and fellows have served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government's many panels and commissions. Former United States Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is a visiting scholar, and Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a senior fellow.

Political stance

AEI is often cited as a right-leaning counterpart to the left-leaning Brookings Institution. In 1998, AEI and Brookings established the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. In 2006, the two organizations jointly launched the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project.

AEI has connections with the neoconservative movement in American politics. Irving Kristol, widely regarded as the movement's founder, is a Senior Fellow at AEI.

Officers and trustees

AEI's officers are Christopher DeMuth, president; David Gerson, executive vice president; Jason Bertsch, vice president for marketing; Henry Olsen, vice president and director of the National Research Initiative; and Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies. On January 1, 2009, Arthur C. Brooks will succeed DeMuth as the eleventh president of AEI.


Its board is chaired by Bruce Kovner. Current notable trustees include:


AEI has a Council of Academic Advisers, chaired by James Q. Wilson, which includes Martin Feldstein, Gertrude Himmelfarb, R. Glenn Hubbard, Samuel P. Huntington, William M. Landes, Sam Peltzman, George L. Priest, Jeremy A. Rabkin, Murray L. Weidenbaum, and Richard J. Zeckhauser.

Scholars and fellows

AEI lists their scholars and fellows on their web site. Some prominent current AEI scholars and fellows include:

Former scholars

Global warming

AEI staff and fellows have been frequent critics of the prevailing scientific view of global warming and especially of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the international scientific body tasked to evaluate the risk of climate change caused by human activity. In February 2007, a number of sources, including the British newspaper The Guardian, reported that the AEI had sent letters to scientists offering US$10,000 plus travel expenses and additional payments, asking them to critique the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. The letters alleged that the IPCC was "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and asked for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs." According to the Guardian article, the AEI received $1.6 million in funding from ExxonMobil. The article further notes that former ExxonMobil CEO Lee R. Raymond is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.

The Guardian article was disputed both by AEI and in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. The rebuttals claimed factual errors and distortions, noting the ExxonMobil funding was spread out over a ten-year period and totaled less than 1% of AEI's budget. The Wall Street Journal editorial stated "AEI doesn't lobby, didn't offer money to scientists to question global warming, and the money it did pay for climate research didn't come from Exxon."

AEI denies that the organization is skeptical about global warming. Criticizing the story as part of a "climate inquisition" published in "the left-wing press", the AEI's Steven Hayward and Kenneth Green wrote in the The Weekly Standard:

t has never been true that we ignore mainstream science; and anyone who reads AEI publications closely can see that we are not "skeptics" about warming. It is possible to accept the general consensus about the existence of global warming while having valid questions about the extent of warming, the consequences of warming, and the appropriate responses. In particular, one can remain a policy skeptic, which is where we are today, along with nearly all economists.

Hayward has described efforts to reduce global warming as being "based on exaggerations and conjecture rather than science." He also has stated that "even though the leading scientific journals are thoroughly imbued with environmental correctness and reject out of hand many articles that don’t conform to the party line, a study that confounds the conventional wisdom is published almost every week." Green has referred to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as "the positively silly idea of establishing global-weather control by actively managing the atmosphere’s greenhouse-gas emissions," and endorsed Michael Crichton's novel State of Fear for having "educated millions of readers about climate science."

AEI President Chris DeMuth accepts that the earth has warmed in recent decades, but states that "it's not clear why this happened" and charges that the IPCC "has tended to ignore many distinguished physicists and meteorologists whose work casts doubt on the influence of greenhouse gases on global temperature trends." AEI fellow James Glassman also disputes the prevailing scientific opinion on climate change, having written numerous articles criticizing the Kyoto accords and climate science more generally for Tech Central Station. He has supported the views of U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe, an outspoken skeptic of human-caused climate change, and, like Green, cites Michael Crichton's novel State of Fear which "casts serious doubt on global warming and extremists who espouse it." Joel Schwartz, an AEI Visiting Fellow, states: "The Earth has indeed warmed during the last few decades and may warm further in the future. But the pattern of climate change is not consistent with the greenhouse effect being the main cause."


References

  1. "AEI - About AEI", "The American Enterprise Institute", Retrieved April 8, 2007.
  2. "Conservative Anger Grows Over Bush's Foreign Policy", "Washington Post" , Retrieved April 9, 2006.
  3. George W. Bush, Speech to AEI, 26 Feb 2003
  4. "Scholars and Fellows by Name", American Enterprise Institute, retrieved July 5, 2007.
  5. An insider's guide to the upcoming week April 30, 2007
  6. Dana Milbank, “White House Hopes Gas Up A Think Tank: For Center-Right AEI, Bush Means Business,” Washington Post, December 8, 2000, p. A39
  7. "AEI-Brooking - About Us", "AEI-Brookings Joint Center", retrieved April 8, 2006.
  8. "AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project"
  9. Battle of the Washington think tanks 3 April, 2003
  10. American Enterprise Institute, "Arthur Brooks Selected to Be President of AEI," news release, July 14, 2008.
  11. American Enterprise Institute, "Officers, and Advisers," accessed May 31, 2008.
  12. Scholars and Fellows
  13. "The Believer: Paul Wolfowitz defends his war." Peter J. Boyer, The New Yorker November 1, 2004 retrieved 4 July 2004
  14. "Laura Rozen, "Michael Ledeen Leaves AEI," Mother Jones Blog, August 15, 2008.
  15. AEI - Short Publications - Climate Change Science
  16. AEI - Short Publications - Climate Change Policy after the G8 Summit
  17. Sample, Ian (2007-02-02). "Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study". The Guardian. Retrieved 2007-02-04. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  18. "AEI Critiques of Warming Questioned: Think Tank Defends Money Offers to Challenge Climate Report". The Washington Post.
  19. American Enterprise Institute. "Untitled letter" (PDF). ThinkProgress. Retrieved 2007-02-04.
  20. "Climate Controversy and AEI: Facts and Fictions", "American Enterprise Institute Online", Retrieved April 9, 2006
  21. "Global Warming Smear"
  22. Hayward, Steven F. & Kenneth P. Green (February 19, 2007). "Scenes from the Climate Inquisition: The chilling effect of the global warming consensus". The Weekly Standard. 012 (22). {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  23. AEI - Short Publications - Acclimatizing
  24. How to Think Sensibly, or Ridiculously, about Global Warming
  25. Kenneth Green on Global Warming on National Review Online
  26. The Kyoto Treaty Deserved to Die - Print Version
  27. "Meet the Press" by Nicholas Confessore
  28. Certainty of Catastrophic Global Warming is a Hoax by James K. Glassman - Capitalism Magazine
  29. AEI - Short Publications - Global Warming
  30. http://www.johnlocke.org/acrobat/policyReports/globalwarmingguide.pdf


External links

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