Institute for Policy Studies - Programs
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Programs coordinated by the Institute for Policy Studies.
Local, National, Global influence
From the IPS website history page:[1]
- From the start, IPS has operated simultaneously at the local, national and global levels.
- Local: Since 1980, IPS has run an evening school for activists in Washington, DC. From the start, IPS has also worked with local officials and has brought groups of such officials to Washington to amplify their message.
- National: Much of IPS's policy work is aimed at the national level, and IPS has always worked closely with, and provided analysis and model pieces of legislation to, progressive members of Congress. Currently, IPS advises the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which, with more than 70 members, is the largest non-party Caucus.
- Global: IPS founded the Transnational Institute (TNI) in 1973 to bring together public scholars from around the world to tackle the growing divide between rich and poor nations and peoples around the world. Since then, IPS has been involved in international networks of researchers and activists to oppose corporate-led globalization (and U.S. intervention) and to propose citizen-based alternatives. Under the Bush Administration, IPS has helped catalyze the global peace movement, which theNew York Timesreferred to as the "second superpower."
- Building on Letelier’s work on a New International Economic Order, IPS has been a leader of economic justice movements around the world. Richard Barnet’s 1974 examination of the power of multinational corporations, Global Reach, is still required reading in many college courses, as is his follow-up book with IPS director John Cavanagh, Global Dreams (published in 1994). Cavanagh was a leader of the movement to cancel developing country debts in the 1980s, as well as the Alliance for Responsible Trade and the International Forum on Globalization in the 1990s. Through these and other networks, IPS has promoted just, sustainable trade and investment policies. Under the Bush administration, these networks have helped win important advances in debt cancellation and in scuttling plans for a hemispheric trade pact.
- In 2007, IPS developed a detailed "Just Security" agenda that proposes non-military solutions to the core challenges of climate chaos, global poverty, nuclear weapons, terrorism, and regional wars.
Anti-militarism
IPS has been a leading organizer and inspirer of opposition to U.S. military action from Vietnam to Afghanistan-earning the organization the attention of the authorities.
From the IPS website history page:[1]
- As soon as IPS opened its doors in 1963, it plunged into the anti-Vietnam War movement. In 1965, Raskin and Associate Fellow Bernard Fall edited The Vietnam Reader, which became a textbook for teach-ins across the country. In 1967, Raskin and IPS Fellow Arthur Waskow penned "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority," a document signed by dozens of well-known scholars and religious leaders that helped launch the draft resistance movement. IPS also organized Congressional seminars and published numerous books that challenged the national security state, including Gar Alperovitz’s Atomic Diplomacy and Barnet’s Intervention and Revolution. The FBI responded by infiltrating IPS with more than 70 informants, wiretapping its phones, and searching through its garbage. The Nixon Administration placed Barnet and Raskin on its "enemies list."
Gulf War
From the IPS website history page:[1]
- In 1991, during the first U.S. military foray in Iraq, IPS produced the pamphlet Crisis in the Gulf, which was widely used by the peace movement. Fellow Gail Christian produced a weekly IPS radio program on the war that was broadcast by three dozen public radio stations across the country.
Central America
From the IPS website history page:[1]
- In the 1980s, IPS became heavily involved in supporting the movement against U.S. intervention in Central America. IPS Director Robert Borosage and other staff helped draft Changing Course: Blueprint for Peace in Central America and the Caribbean, which was used by hundreds of schools, labor unions, churches, and citizen organizations as a challenge to U.S. policy in the region. In 1983, PBS aired Saul Landau’s exposé of the CIA’s dirty war, "Target Nicaragua," and in 1985, several members of Congress joined an IPS press conference to release the report In Contempt of Congress: The Reagan Record of Deceit and Illegality on Central America, which documented 77 examples of false or misleading statements and violations of law by U.S. officials.
United for Peace and Justice
IPS was responsible for founding the nationwide umbrella group of "peace" organizations, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). It continues to influence the organization by ensuring the UFPJ steering committee always contains at least one amnd sometimes several, IPS activists.
From the IPS website history page:[1]
- In 2003, IPS convened the meeting that led to the formation of the country’s largest coalition against the Iraq War, United for Peace and Justice. IPS serves on the coalition steering committee and produces talking points, fact sheets, and policy documents for Congress and the peace movement on the costs of the war and how to end it justly.
Influence in the Civil Rights Movement
From the IPS website history page:[1]
- In 1964, several leading African-American activists joined the staff and turned IPS into a base of support for the civil rights movement in the nation’s capital. Fellow Bob Moses organized trainings for field organizers of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Council on the links between civil rights theory and practice, while Ivanhoe Donaldson initiated an assembly of African-American government officials.
Women's liberation movement
From the IPS website history page:[1]
- In these early years, IPS was also at the forefront of the feminist movement. Fellow Charlotte Bunch organized a historic women’s liberation conference in 1966 and later launched two feminist periodicals, Quest and Off Our Backs. Rita Mae Brown wrote and published her path-breaking lesbian coming-of-age novel Rubyfruit Jungle while on the staff in the 1970s.In the early 1980s, Barbara Ehrenreich, now renowned for Nickel and Dimed and other best-sellers, led the Institute’s Women in the Economy Project. Isabel Letelier brought three dozen Third World women to the United States for educational tours across the country.
Anti-Apartheid movent
From the IPS website history page:[1]
- IPS was also on the cutting edge of the anti-apartheid movement. In 1977, it began a South Africa project that produced a series of studies and books on the subject. In 1985, Fellow Roger Wilkins helped found the Free South Africa Movement, which organized a year-long series of demonstrations that led to the imposition of U.S. sanctions.
Economic inequality
From the IPS website history page:[1]
- On the domestic front, IPS began tackling the problem of economic injustice in the late 1960s. For example, through the Appalachia Project, IPS worked with mine workers on occupational safety and health and regional economic development. In 1975, IPS initiated the Conference on Alternative State and Local Public Policies, which brought together progressive legislators to develop more equitable legislation. This work is carried on today through IPS’s Cities for Progress project, which connects local officials pursuing innovative approaches. One such measure is a Chicago bill that would set a floor for big box retail wages.
- Since 1994, IPS has also published an annual report on the disparity between CEO and worker pay that has garnered widespread coverage in the mainstream media and helped put the issue of economic inequality at the center of the political debateEnvironment
Drug policy
IPS has always made drug liberalization a priority:[1]
- In the early 1990s, IPS began monitoring the environmental impacts of U.S. trade, investment, and drug policies. The Institute’s Sustainable Energy and Economy Network was the first to calculate the World Bank’s massive contributions to climate change through its support of oil, mining, and gas projects. Meanwhile the Global Economy Project has helped raise awareness of the environmental impacts of "free trade" through the popular book Field Guide to the Global Economy and other publications. The Drug Policy Project has helped bring activists and policymakers to Latin America to expose the environmental and human costs of the misguided "war on drugs."
Environment, climate change
IPS has played a major role in the environmental and "climate change" movements:[1]
- IPS became involved in environmental issues through the anti-nuclear movement, a natural extension of its long history of work on the “national security state.” In 1979, IPS Fellow Saul Landau won an Emmy for his documentary "Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang,” which tells the story of the cover-up by the U.S. nuclear program and of the hazards of radiation to American citizens. In 1985, Fellow William Arkin published Nuclear Battlefields: Global Links in the Arms Race, which helped galvanize anti-nuclear activism through its revelations of the impact of nuclear infrastructure on communities across America.
- IPS also began to grapple with environmental problems through its work on corporate-driven globalization. In the mid-1970s, Jim Ridgeway, now a renowned investigative reporter, published The Elements, a monthly IPS newsletter on ownership and control of the world’s natural resources. Through her path-breaking work on debt and hunger, TNI Fellow Susan George exposed the environmental devastation resulting from and contributing to extreme poverty.
- In recent years, the urgency of the climate crisis has led to an increased IPS focus on preventing environmental collapse. IPS is partnering with the International Forum on Globalization to critique false solutions to global warming and to promote transformational policies that emphasize sustainability, equity, and protecting the “commons.”