The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in

Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara ( es, Santa Bárbara, meaning " Saint Barbara") is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West ...

was an influential

think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-govern ...

from 1959 to 1977. Its influence waned thereafter and it closed in 1987. It held discussions on subjects it hoped would influence public deliberation. It attained some controversy with its conference of student radical leaders in 1967, and with a suggested new U.S. Constitution proposed by Fellow Rexford G. Tugwell.

History

It was founded in 1959 by Robert M. Hutchins. The center was an offshoot of the Fund for the Republic, which had been established with a $15 million grant from the

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

. In its later years, its greatest source of support was

Chester Carlson Chester Floyd Carlson (February 8, 1906 – September 19, 1968) was an American physicist, inventor, and patent attorney born in Seattle, Washington. Carlson invented electrophotography, the process used by millions of photocopiers worldwide. C ...

, the inventor of the

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (having moved from St ...

process. For a time, Associate Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was Chairman of the center's board of directors. In 1969 Hutchins reorganized the center, after which many associates departed. Harry Ashmore served as president from 1969 to 1974. After Hutchins' death in 1977, the Center found it difficult to raise funds. It became affiliated with the University of California at Santa Barbara, which sold its real estate. The Center absorbed the Fund for the Republic, a civil rights and civil liberties foundation, in 1979. The Center closed in 1987; however it exists today as a part of Vanderbilt University.

Prominent fellows

Fellows of the Center included:

Stringfellow Barr Stringfellow Barr (January 15, 1897 in Suffolk, Virginia – February 3, 1982 in Alexandria, Virginia) was a historian, author, and former president of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he, together with Scott Buchanan, institute ...

, from 1959 to 1969; education philosopher Frederick Mayer ("A History of Educational Thought");

Linus Pauling Linus Carl Pauling (; February 28, 1901August 19, 1994) was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topi ...

, from 1963 to 1967; Bishop

James Pike James Albert Pike (February 14, 1913–) was an American Episcopal bishop, accused heretic, iconoclast, prolific writer, and one of the first mainline, charismatic religious figures to appear regularly on television. Pike's outspoken, and to so ...

, from 1966 to 1969; Robert Kurt Woetzel; Raghavan N. Iyer; and

Harvey Wheeler John Harvey Wheeler (October 17, 1918 – September 6, 2004) was an American author, political scientist, and scholar. He was best known as co-author with Eugene Burdick of '' Fail-Safe'' (1962), an early Cold War novel that depicted what coul ...

. New appointees following the 1969 reorganization included Jacque Fresco director of

The Venus Project The Venus Project is a nonprofit organization founded by a Florida-based, architect and social engineer Jacque Fresco. Fresco with his partner Roxanne Meadows founded this organization with a socioeconomic model to develop a resource-based econo ...

Alex Comfort Alexander Comfort (10 February 1920 – 26 March 2000) was a British scientist and physician known best for his nonfiction sex manual, '' The Joy of Sex'' (1972). He was an author of both fiction and nonfiction, as well as a gerontologis ...

of '' The Joy of Sex'' fame, Bertrand de Jouvenel, and

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. S ...

biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, author of '' The Population Bomb''.

References

*Didion, Joan. ''California Dreaming.'' In Joan Didion, ''

Slouching towards Bethlehem ''Slouching Towards Bethlehem'' is a 1968 collection of essays by Joan Didion that mainly describes her experiences in California during the 1960s. It takes its title from the poem " The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats. The contents of this ...

.'' New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968, pp. 73–78. *Kelly, Frank K. ''Court of Reason: Robert Hutchins and the Fund for the Republic.'' New York: The Free Press, 1981. *Reeves, Thomas C. ''Freedom and the Foundation: The Fund for the Republic in the Era of McCarthyism.'' New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.

External links

"Guide to the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions Collection." Online Archive of California.
Political and economic think tanks in the United States {{Liberal-stub