Government service Raskin moved to Washington, D.C. in 1958, where he became a legislative counsel to a group of liberal congressmen, including Democrats
Robert Kastenmeier from Wisconsin and
James Roosevelt from California, the oldest son of
Franklin D. Roosevelt. Raskin soon became the secretary for the
Liberal Project, a group of House liberals, organized by Kastenmeier and Roosevelt into a liberal leadership group. As the secretary, Raskin linked the House members with notable intellectuals, including sociologist
David Riesman, historian
H. Stuart Hughes, and former finance advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt,
James Warburg. In 1961, Raskin became
McGeorge Bundy's assistant on
national security affairs and disarmament as a member of the Special Staff of the
National Security Council. In 1962, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to an 18-nation disarmament conference in Geneva. Tensions with Bundy led to Raskin's reassignment in the Bureau of the Budget (now the
Office of Management and Budget), where he continued his service on the Presidential Panel on Education. On the panel, Raskin wrote papers on the consequences of technology and the need for democratic education and scientific research.
The Institute for Policy Studies In 1963, Raskin left government service, and with
Richard Barnet, a State Department official in the
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, created an independent institution, outside of government, to critique official policy. Much of Raskin's initial work with IPS focused on opposing the Vietnam War. He co-authored the
Vietnam Reader with
Bernard Fall in 1965, which was used in
teach-ins across the country. In 1967, he co-authored with
Arthur Waskow, a colleague at the institute, "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority", which urged support for those who resisted the draft and the Vietnam War. The "Call to Resist" was signed by thousands of people, and because of it, Raskin and Waskow took part in turning in a thousand draft cards to the Department of Justice. In 1968, Raskin was indicted -— along with
William Sloane Coffin,
Dr. Benjamin Spock,
Michael Ferber, and
Mitchell Goodman—for conspiracy to aid resistance to the draft. The group became known as the "
Boston Five". In the case,
Telford Taylor, prosecutor at the
Nuremberg Trials, served as the defense attorney for Raskin. Not long after his acquittal, Raskin published the book
Washington Plans an Aggressive War with Barnet and Ralph Stavins. These two books would begin Raskin's critique of the "national security state", a term he coined that he would continue to assess in future works. With the publication of his book
Being & Doing in 1971, Raskin advocated the theory of "social reconstruction." Raskin's thinking was largely influenced by the work of American pragmatist
John Dewey, French existentialist
Jean-Paul Sartre, and the politics of the
New Left. According to
Library Journal, Raskin "foresees a peaceful process of non-Marxist reconstruction that will replace authoritarianism and the status quo with politics of the people and a redefined social ethic." In 1971, Raskin received from
Daniel Ellsberg, documents that became known as the
Pentagon Papers. In 1977, after conducting a first study of the budget and its spending priorities, 56 members of Congress, led by Congressional Black Caucus Dean
John Conyers, requested that IPS undertake a deeper analysis of the federal budget. Raskin directed the project, which led to the publication of the 1978 book
The Federal Budget and Social Reconstruction. In the 1980s, Raskin became a leader in the anti-nuclear movement as the Chair of the
SANE / Freeze campaign. He also worked with labor leaders to organize the Progressive Alliance, a coalition of 16 labor unions and 100 public interest groups that laid out a progressive alternative political agenda. Raskin served as a Distinguished Fellow of the
Institute for Policy Studies, in addition to teaching at
George Washington University's School of Public Policy and Public Administration and serving on the editorial board of
The Nation magazine. He also advised the Congressional Progressive Caucus and conceptualized the network of local elected officials that evolved into the Institute for Policy Studies' Cities for Peace project, which has coordinated hundreds of city council resolutions against the Iraq War. Raskin's most recent scholarship included serving as the editor of a series of books laying out how to achieve peace and justice for the think tank's Paths for the 21st Century. This project aimed to generate ideas and proposals, across disciplinary lines and founded upon Raskin's notion of "reconstructive knowledge", which catalyze citizen action and help other scholars and activists pursue a progressive basis for a new society. == Personal life ==