Think tanks are policy-oriented research organizations that provide expertise to government. By the year 2000 there were an estimated 1,200 nongovernment think tanks of various descriptions, various focuses on social and economic issues, and various sources of funding, at work in the United States. Of the major think tanks, only the Brookings Institution (1916) and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1910) were founded before World War II. The American Enterprise Institute was founded during the war in 1943.
Although think tanks are ostensibly nonpartisan, in many instances they function as extensions of state power, coming into and falling out of influence with changes in governments, and shifts in the ideological climate of the country. In other cases, think tanks function more independently, questioning and monitoring state strategies and structures. (For example the Rand Corporation, founded in the aftermath of World War II, was created to monitor and evaluate air force programs, before it became an independent research organization in the 1950s.)
The course of the Brookings Institution reflects the kinds of changes that can occur in shifting ideological currents. In 1965 it represented mainstream Keynesian economic thinking, and its growing influence was reflected in renewed foundation support, especially from the Ford Foundation. Under its president, Kermit Gordon, Brookings’ reputation as a liberal Democratic think tank was well entrenched. Under Gordon, the Brookings Institution became a major center for policy innovation in welfare, health care, education, housing, and taxation policy.
In 1976 the board of trustees appointed Bruce MacLaury to head the institution. A former regional Federal Reserve banker and treasury official, MacLaury successfully courted business support, increased corporate representation on the board of trustees, and moved the institution toward a more moderate ideological stance. By the 1970s, the Brookings Institution confronted competition from other major policy research institutions, especially the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage
Foundation, both viewed as conservative research institutions close to the Republican Party.
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which was founded in 1943 as the American Enterprise Association (AEA), illustrates the experience of a conservatively oriented research institution that expressed deep ambivalence about the post-World War II policy consensus. The key figure behind the establishment of the AEA was Lewis Brown, chairman of Johns-Manville Corporation. From the start, the AEA reflected a conservative bias.
In 1954, a. D. Marshall, head of General Electric, assumed the institution’s presidency and immediately hired William Baroody, Sr., and W. Glenn Campbell, both staff economists at the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, to head the research program. Under their guidance, AEA was gradually built into a modern research institute under its new name, the American Enterprise Institute. Principal support came from the Lilly Endowment, the Scaife Fund, and the Earhard and Kresge Foundations, as well as major corporate sponsors. The institution’s reputation was enhanced when the Nixon administration called upon a number of AEI associates for government positions. The AEI also emerged as a successful proponent of economic deregulation.
In 1977 William Baroody, Sr., retired and his son, William Baroody, Jr., took over the presidency of the institution. To improve its standing in the academic community, the AEI assembled an impressive staff, including Melvin Laird, William Simon, Robert Bork, Michael Novak, and Herbert Stein. The tenure of William Baroody, Jr., however, ended abruptly in the summer of 1986, when an increasingly restive board of trustees forced his resignation because of cost overruns and declining revenues. Baroody’s successor, Christopher DeMuth, bolstered the conservative orientation of the institute by bringing on board several former Reagan administration officials with strong rightist reputations.
The founding of the Heritage Foundation in 1973 revealed a new ideological climate in the analysis of public knowledge. Founded by Edwin Feulner and Paul Weyrich to provide rapid and succinct legislative analysis on issues pending before Congress, the Heritage Foundation sought to promote conservative values and demonstrate the need for a free market and a strong defense. The Heritage Foundation’s articulation of conservative values in social policy, education, and government activities placed it at the forefront of New Right activity. The Heritage Foundation remained relatively small in its early years, but the election of Ronald W. Reagan to the presidency in 1980 enhanced the institution’s prestige. By the mid-1980s the Heritage Foundation had established a solid place in the Washington world of think tanks as a well-organized, efficient, and well-financed research organization that called for the turning over of many government tasks to private enterprise, a strong defense, and a cautious approach to the Soviet Union and China.
During these years, a myriad of other think tanks emerged in Washington representing a range of ideological positions and specialized policy interests, including the left-oriented Institute for Policy Studies (1963) and the libertarian-oriented Cato Institute (1977). Think tanks concerned with national security including the Center for Strategic and International Studies (1962) and the Center for National Security Studies (1962), affiliated with the American Civil Liberties Union. The Urban Institute (1968) focused on domestic social, welfare, and family policy, while the National Women’s Law Center (1972) worked on policies that affect women, especially reproductive rights, employment, and education. The Institute for International Economics (1981) became a major center for international economic and monetary policies, especially from a free-trade perspective. The traditionalist-oriented Ethics and Public Policy Center provided analysis of public policies related to religious issues.
Further reading: David Ricci, The Transformation of American Politics: The New Washington and the Rise of Think Tanks (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); James Allen Smith, The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the New Policy Elite (New York: Basic Books, 1991).
—Donald T. Critchlow
Thomas, Clarence (1948- ) associate justice of the Supreme Court
Appointed to the United States Supreme Court in 1991, Clarence Thomas became the second African American to serve on the Court. Born the son of a poor laborer in Pin Point, Georgia, on June 23, 1948, Thomas was abandoned by his father before the age of two. Thomas’s maternal grandparents then raised him and his brother. As a young man, Thomas considered becoming a Roman Catholic priest and entered Conception Seminary from 1967 to 1968, and then Holy Cross College, where he graduated in 1971. After abandoning his plans to become a priest, Thomas entered Yale Law School, graduating in 1974.
After law school, Thomas was hired as an assistant attorney general by Missouri’s Republican attorney general, John Danforth, later U. S. senator. Renowned for his personal probity (he was an ordained Episcopal minister as well as an attorney), Danforth motivated Thomas to become a Republican.
When Danforth was elected to the Senate in 1978, Thomas became his legislative assistant. In 1981 Thomas became assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education, and then chairman of the U. S. Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) from 1982 to 1990. In 1990 President George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas to the Federal Court of Appeals, D. C. Circuit. Eighteen months later, Bush nominated Thomas to fill the seat of Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court’s only African American, who had retired. Immediately, Thomas faced opposition from liberals in the Senate because of his well-known judicial conservatism. Further troubles arose when accusations were raised by a former colleague at the EEOC, Anita Faye Hill, who accused him of sexual harassment.
The Senate Judiciary Committee reconvened to hear testimony from Hill that Thomas had harassed her with verbal obscenities. Thomas replied by denying her accusations. He also denounced his opponents for conducting “a high-tech lynching” of an African-American man determined to think for himself on controversial issues. Distinguished witnesses testified for both sides. Public opinion polls sided two-thirds with Thomas’s version of events, since Professor Hill had apparently kept in close touch with her former boss long after the supposed sexual harassment occurred. Thomas was narrowly confirmed, 52-48, along partisan lines, with 11 Democratic senators supporting his confirmation. On October 23, 1991, Thomas joined the Court.
On the Court, he constructed a rigorous jurisprudence based on natural law, historical context, and a strict interpretation of the Constitution. Thomas often votes with Justice Antonin Scalia. Although Thomas has voted 90 percent of the time with Scalia, Thomas places more emphasis on historical analysis and national law, as seen in his extensive historical arguments in U. S. Term Limits v. Thornton (1995) and U. S. v. Lopez (1995). In Bush v. Gore (2000), Thomas voted with the five-justice majority. Unlike Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Kennedy, though, Thomas agreed with William H. Rehnquist and Sca-lia that Article II of the Constitution, not the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, should be the basis of the ruling on Florida’s ballots. Thomas consistently argues the Equal Protection Clause should only apply to racial discrimination.
Further reading: Scott Douglas Gerber, First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas (New York: New York University Press, 1999); Andrew Peyton Thomas, Clarence Thomas: A Biography (New York: Encounter Books, 2001).
—Christopher M. Gray
Thurmond, James Strom (1902-2003) U. S. senator Strom Thurmond, a U. S. senator from South Carolina, is best known for his strong support of state’s rights and
Adherence to strict constitutional principles. He is also the oldest person ever to serve in Congress, an achievement he reached on March 8, 1996, at the age of 93 years and 94 days. On May 25, 1997, he set the record for the longest service in the Senate—41 years, nine months, 30 days.
Thurmond was born in Edgefield, South Carolina, on December 5, 1902. He received his bachelor’s degree from Clemson University in 1923, became a state senator in 1933, and was elected governor of South Carolina in 1947. He was first elected to the U. S. Senate in 1954.
Thurmond’s early political career was defined by a strong support of racial segregation and a fear of federal intrusion into the duties of state government. In 1948 he withdrew from the Democratic Party because of its civil rights plank in the party platform and ran as president on the newly formed State’s Rights Party, nicknamed the “Dix-iecrats.” Although he received only 9 percent of the popular vote he had established himself as a leading proponent of state’s rights. In 1956 he drafted the “Southern Manifesto” against the 1954 Supreme Court school desegregation ruling, singed by 19 U. S. senators and 81 representatives. In 1956 Thurmond filibustered 24 hours and 18 minutes against the 1957 civil rights bill.
Yet, after passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Thurmond was the first southern senator to hire black staff members and appoint blacks to high positions. In 1964, Thurmond switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party to support Barry Goldwater in his unsuccessful bid for the presidency against Lyndon Johnson. He was also instrumental in shaping the “southern strategy” that helped capture the White House for Richard M. Nixon in 1968.
During Ronald W. Reagan’s administration, Thurmond served on the President’s Commission on Organized Crime and as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and was president pro tempore of the Senate from 1981 to 1987. He also became a member of the Labor and Human Resources Committee in 1984. In 1995 he was elected again as the president pro tempore of the Senate and today serves as the senior member of the Judiciary Committee and the Veterans Affairs Committee and is chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Thurmond is also the author of The Faith We Have Not Kept (1968). In 2002 he announced that he would retire from the Senate. Less than a year into his retirement, Senator Thurmond died at his retirement home on June 26, 2003.
Further reading: Nadine Cohodas, Strom Thurmond and the Politics of Southern Change (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991).
—William L. Glankler
World History
