The IPS has come to be seen as an institutional outgrowth of the
New Left movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1981, political scholar
Joshua Muravchik wrote that its "genius" lay in how it acted "as a bridge between radicalism and the liberal establishment." According to
Emory University historian
Harvey Klehr, writing in 1988, the IPS served "as an intellectual nerve center for the radical movement." A 2022 report by the
Capital Research Center, "Institute for Policy Studies: The Left's Original Think Tank", stated that the IPS at present "probably doesn't make the shortlist of finalists for most influential left-of-center think tank in the country", compared to the
Center for American Progress, the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, or the
Urban Institute, but "if one stretches the timeline back far enough", the IPS can be seen as a member of that group.
1960s The IPS was founded in 1963 by Raskin and
Richard Barnet as the think tank for "the most powerful of the powerless". The founders were officials in the
John F. Kennedy administration – Raskin, then in his twenties, was working as a White House aide for
McGeorge Bundy, and Barnet served in a similar role to
John J. McCloy. They had become disillusioned by priorities based on politics rather than moral issues. Members of these movements came to IPS headquarters in
Washington, D.C.'s
Dupont Circle. In a 2009 interview, Raskin said, "Very quickly, with the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the institute became a place where different people from the movements came. People came in from demonstrations [and] camped out in the offices." According to Raskin, "Early on [the IPS] had predicted that Vietnam would be a disaster." During the presidency of
Lyndon Johnson, Raskin was indicted by the federal government for the 1965 publication of "tens of thousands of copies of an IPS anti-war Vietnam Reader"—a kind of textbook for anti-war teach-ins. He was charged with encouraging people to
resist the draft. In 1967, Raskin and IPS Fellow
Arthur Waskow penned "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority", a document signed by dozens of scholars and religious leaders which helped to launch the draft resistance movement. In 1964, several leading black activists joined the institute's staff and made IPS into a base for supporting the
civil rights movement. Fellow
Bob Moses organized trainings for field organizers of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on the links between civil rights theory and practice, while
Ivanhoe Donaldson initiated an assembly of black government officials. Co-writer of the
Port Huron Statement at
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and civil rights veteran, IPS Fellow
Robb Burlage launched the critical health care justice movement in 1967 with his "Burlage Report". The next year, Burlage founded the
Health Policy Advisory Center, which began publishing the
Health/Pac Bulletin. The
Bulletin's broad audience included "radicalized medical students and physicians and neighborhood activists" and "nervous health administrators at powerful medical centers pilloried in each issue"; it became a bimonthly until its closure in 1994. The IPS was also at the forefront of the
feminist movement. Fellow
Charlotte Bunch organized a significant women's liberation conference in 1966 and later launched
Quest: A Feminist Quarterly, a feminist journal.
Rita Mae Brown wrote and published her notable lesbian
coming-of-age novel,
Rubyfruit Jungle, while on the staff in the 1970s. 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. IPS was the object of repeated
FBI and
Internal Revenue Service probes.
1970s In 1971, Raskin received "a mountain of paper" from a source that was later identified as
Daniel Ellsberg. These became known as the
Pentagon Papers. Raskin played his "customary catalytic role" by putting Ellsberg in touch with
New York Times reporter
Neil Sheehan. In 1974, the institute created an Organizing Committee for the Fifth Estate as part of its Center for National Security Studies which published the magazine
CounterSpy until 1984. That year, the
Transnational Institute (TNI), a progressive think tank based in
Amsterdam, was established as the IPS's international program, later becoming an independent non-profit. In 1976, agents of Chilean dictator
Augusto Pinochet assassinated two IPS staff members on Washington's
Embassy Row. The target of the
car bomb attack was
Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean government minister and ambassador to the United States, one of Pinochet's most outspoken critics and the head of the Transnational Institute.
Ronni Karpen Moffitt, a 25-year-old IPS development associate, was also killed. The IPS hosts an annual human rights award in the names of Letelier and Moffitt to honor them while celebrating new heroes of the human rights movement from the US and elsewhere in the Americas. The award recipients receive the
Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award. According to GAP, it was formed "in response to several whistleblowers, such as Daniel Ellsberg, who came to IPS about White House, FBI and Pentagon scandals". In its attention to the role of
multinational corporations, the IPS was an early critic of what has come to be called
globalization. Barnet's 1974 examination of the power of
multinational corporations,
Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations (co-written with Ronald E. Muller), appeared even as the concept of multinationals was being academically defined. which organized a year-long series of demonstrations that led to the imposition of US sanctions. In 1987, S. Steven Powell published his non-fiction
Covert Cadre: Inside the Institute for Policy Studies, in which he provided "by far the single most compendious collection of facts about IPS that anyone has yet compiled", according to a lengthy critical review by
Joshua Muravchik. In 1986, after six years of the
Reagan administration,
Sidney Blumenthal noted, "Ironically, as IPS has declined in Washington influence, its stature has grown in conservative demonology. In the Reagan era, the institute has loomed as a right-wing obsession and received most of its publicity by serving as a target."
Conservative think tanks
American Enterprise Institute and
The Heritage Foundation described the IPS as the "far left" or "radical left" of the late 1980s, In a mid-80s essay in the journal
World Affairs, author Joshua Muravchik coined "communophilism" – an "eclectic and undisciplined" sympathy to communist movements and governments, "virulently anti capitalist and virulently critical of the capitalist democracies of the West" – to describe the IPS. In his 1988 book
Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today, historian Klehr wrote: "[it provides] sustenance and support for a variety of causes, ranging from
nuclear and anti-intervention issues to support for Marxist insurgencies. IPS brings together activists and academics and provides a place where they can mingle with congressmen and other policymakers and public figures". In 1994, it published the first annual "Executive Excess" report, examining compensation for top level executives and its impacts. == Current projects ==