Foreign policy Kaplan is a member of the
Council on Foreign Relations. He belongs to the International Council of the
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at
Harvard University, where Kaplan, scholar
Graham Allison and American General
David Petraeus created the Recanati–Kaplan Foundation Fellows Program for intelligence officers from around the globe. A similar program was established in 2020 at the
Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, the Petraeus-Recanati-Kaplan Fellowship, which brings select special military operators to
Yale University for a one-year global affairs master's. In 2022, the Recanati-Kaplan Applied History Initiative was created at the Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum, a think-tank based at the
University of Cambridge, "to inform Middle East policy with deep historical insight". In 2018, along with French philosopher and activist
Bernard-Henri Lévy, Kaplan co-founded Justice for Kurds (JFK), a New York-based, not-for-profit advocacy group that seeks to educate and raise public awareness about the Kurdish cause in the U.S. and globally. Kaplan serves as chairman of the group. JFK's Advisory Council features policymakers, journalists, intellectuals, diplomats, military commanders, and artists. While an affirmed
“Persophile” who often and publicly recalls the merits of Iran's civilization, Kaplan is regularly targeted by official Iranian media for his opposition to the regime. Along with
Sheldon and
Miriam Adelson, Kaplan contributed three-quarters of the 1.7 million dollar revenue of
United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) in 2013. The following year, Kaplan was drawn into a defamation case in which UANI was sued by a Greek businessman whom the group claimed was doing business with Iran. The civil suit was later dismissed after the intervention of the Obama Administration which claimed “that the case could jeopardize U.S. national security by revealing state secrets.” In 2017 Kaplan gave a speech at a UANI conference in which he compared Iran's activities in Iraq to a
reticulated python devouring a goat as well as saying that the Iranian government because of their
Shiite Muslim beliefs "pursue a strategy of '
taqiyya', or religious dissimulation" to conceal its imperial aims. In response to the speech, in October 2017, the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation (PWHF), a conservation organization based in Iran, severed ties with the Kaplan-founded NGO, Panthera. In a letter to Panthera PWHF said, “His allegations about our country are absolutely baseless and his statements are insulting to our country and its people,” the letter continued. “We are very sorry to see personal politics have a negative impact on conservation, but these are unusual times.” The activists ended up getting arrested by the Iranian government under charges of treason, though they have maintained their innocence since.
Community, culture, and antiquities Kaplan served as president (2009–2012) and chairman of the board of directors (2012–2015) of the
92nd Street Y, a prominent Jewish community and cultural center in New York City. His wife Dafna and Robert Gilson conceived of the Recanati–Kaplan Program for Excellence in the Arts, which funds scholarships based on artistic merit for children and teens to study at the 92Y's School of the Arts. In Florida, where Kaplan grew up, he and his wife funded the Lillian Jean Kaplan Renal Transplantation Center at the University of Miami, as well as prizes and grants for renal science research focused on polycystic kidney disease (PKD). In 2022, Villa Albertine, a French government-sponsored residency program for artists and intellectuals in the U.S., launched the Recanati-Kaplan Prize to "support artistic and intellectual exchange between the United States, France, and the Arab world". The prize awards one recognized individual from the Arab world with a residency project in the U.S. In 2015, after the passing of his boyhood friend, Simon Marsh, Kaplan parted with the two
Spitfire Mark I fighter planes that he and Marsh had as partners restored with Historic Flying of Duxford, Cambridgeshire. The second of the planes, Spitfire N3200, was gifted in the presence of Prince William, the then Duke of Cambridge, to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford, where it had last flown as the personal aircraft of the Commander of 19 Squadron,
Geoffrey Dalton Stephenson, later personal pilot to King George VI. The first, Spitfire P9374, flown by Captain Peter Cazenove over Dunkirk, was sold at auction at
Christies London, where it achieved a record price for any Spitfire at auction, the proceeds of which were donated for the benefit of the RAF Benevolent Society, Panthera, Oxford's WildCRU and Stop Ivory. In 2017, Kaplan became the chairman of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH), a Geneva-based foundation dedicated to the implementation of preventive, emergency response, and restoration programs for cultural property in danger of destruction, damage or looting. A joint initiative of the governments of France and the United Arab Emirates, its board of directors includes representatives of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Morocco, China, international institutions, and private donors. On October 29, 2019, at a ceremony in New York in which
Princess Dana Firas of Jordan received the 2019 Watch Award, the
World Monuments Fund bestowed upon Kaplan the Hadrian Award, a recognition established in 1988 to honor international leaders who have advanced the preservation of world art and architecture.
Conservation Dubbed the “King of Cats,” by
Forbes Magazine, Kaplan was for 15 years the executive chairman of
Panthera Corporation, a charity which he and his wife co-founded with
Alan Rabinowitz in 2006. Panthera is devoted to preserving the big cats and their ecosystems and has been recognized as a leading force in felid conservation. The work of the organization has been called a "Manhattan Project" for big cats by reporter
Bob Simon of
60 Minutes. Conservationist
Doug Tompkins has referred to Panthera as "the foremost big cat conservation organization in the world," with
National Geographic saying Panthera "represents the most comprehensive effort of its kind in wildcat conservation." For his work as an environmentalist, Kaplan was the recipient of the "Hero of the Year Award" by the
IWFF in 2012. In an interview with
David Rubenstein, part of
Bloomberg's "Peer-to-Peer Conversations" series, Kaplan said, "If I have one passion, which is even greater than Rembrandt, it would be wildlife conservation..." In an interview with Sotheby's, Kaplan connected his two passions: "I see the common denominator between the power of a Rembrandt and the power of when you first encounter a tiger in the wild. It's beauty." Kaplan and his wife Dafna helped establish a felid conservation program at Oxford University in collaboration with
David MacDonald. In 2009, the couple endowed the Recanati-Kaplan Center at Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, the
WildCRU, and the university's Postgraduate Diploma in International Wildlife Conservation Practice, which offers young conservationists from developing countries access to training at Oxford. In February 2012, Oxford's WildCRU was awarded the
Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher Education in recognition of WildCRU's outstanding work in wildlife and environmental conservation. In July 2015, a
trophy hunter killed Cecil the lion, who was being studied by the WildCRU's Kaplan-funded Hwange Lion Research Project in Zimbabwe. The Kaplans also founded the Orianne Society, focused on the conservation of the
eastern indigo snake and its habitat, the last remaining long-leaf pine forests of the Southeastern United States. As part of this effort, the Kaplans created the Orianne Indigo Snake Preserve in Georgia through the purchase and donation of 2,500 acres of the snake's winter habitat. On November 12, 2018, at the inaugural
Paris Peace Forum, Kaplan launched the Indian Ocean Tortoise Alliance (IOTA), a
Seychelles-based initiative dedicated to the conservation of the
Aldabra tortoise and its
rewilding in the other countries where it previously existed. In 2020, Panthera launched a campaign called "Leopard Spotted" to encourage wearers of leopard print to promote awareness of the animal's plight on social media and donate to conservation efforts via a royalties system. Kaplan told
The New Yorker, "We're not interested in discouraging people from using leopard print. To the contrary, what we want to do is make people understand that, while celebrating the leopard, they can also give back. If royalties were paid for any fashion statement like this, there would be more than enough money to save the leopard." ==Distinctions==