Letter from the President
Welcome to The Century Foundation website. Whether you are a returning visitor or someone who is exploring this site for the first time, I hope that you will find something relevant and revelatory concerning the nation’s important policy debates.
If you’re new here, that makes two of us. I started work at the end of August 2011 as the sixth president of the ninety-two-year-old Century Foundation. I succeed Richard Leone, who served this institution long and well, and who has become a senior fellow.
Who are we? We’re a progressive think tank, founded in 1919 and funded by a man named Edward Filene. (You may associate his name with his store’s Basement, which was actually founded as a way to make goods affordable by working people.) At his death in 1937, he was a close associate of President Franklin Roosevelt, and one of the leading liberal businessmen in the country. Along the way he was a leading champion of fair workplaces and employee ownership strategies, all with an eye to ensuring that economic opportunity is available to all. He thought big and he acted big, beginning by using his business as a laboratory for his ideas and, later, influencing national policy and the New Deal.
When we were founded by Filene in 1919, and until the end of the last century, we were called the Twentieth Century Fund. You may have heard of us under that name, or remember us for our association with such progressive thought leaders as Theodore Sorensen, Arthur Schlesinger, John Kenneth Galbraith, Justice Robert Jackson, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and many more. (A list of Century’s past trustees can be found here, and is pretty impressive, I think you’ll agree.) And like Filene, who was a lifelong Republican, we embrace a progressive ideology, but are not partisan.
The Century Foundation has a strong legacy, which includes key roles in crafting the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the critical 1937 amendments to the Social Security Act, as well as Gunnar Myrdal’s work on Vietnam—each of which have important echoes in the debates of the present day. At the beginning of our current century, we cosponsored the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, led by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. The Commission’s final report greatly influenced what became the Help America Vote Act. And in the spring of 2011, a high-level international task force assembled by The Century Foundation called for a prompt start to talks to explore the possibilities for negotiations to end the Afghanistan conflict.
What are the qualities that produce such a track record? I see The Century Foundation as unusually well-positioned, from a number of perspectives. First is maintaining our principal location in New York City, the intellectual and media capital of the country, even as most think tanks are centered in Washington. While we may be at one remove from policymakers, we are closer to many of those best positioned to move them. Others recognize this advantage—you can see it in the numerous think tanks seeking to open outposts or otherwise expand their presence in our hometown.
Then there is our Board, led by one of the nation’s leading historians, Alan Brinkley, and including impressive scholars and practitioners from the public and private spheres. Each of them has a strong commitment to the effectiveness and growth of this institution.
Our endowment, while not large by the standards of philanthropy or the academy, is also a critical advantage—and remains one of the largest among progressive think tanks. This does, and must, enable us to do work that others cannot and will not do, to “see around corners” and to take intellectual risks.
Finally, there is our staff—a talented cadre of dedicated professionals. I have long admired their work from afar, and recently upon closer inspection. Working together, we issue analyses and convene the best thinkers on questions such as how the U.S. economy can provide both a stronger safety net as well as a trampoline for working Americans, what kinds of classrooms really work for kids, and how the United States can lead in a world of more diffuse power.
There are many ways to follow our work. In addition to this website and our papers, conferences, seminars, and books, there is also our Facebook page (you can become a fan by clicking here) and our Twitter feed (follow us here). You can also visit our channel on YouTube. I’d especially invite you to join our e-mail list, which will enable us to send you links to our most interesting work every week or so, perhaps more often as we go along. (Click here to sign up.)
However you choose to follow our work, we’re glad you’re here. Welcome to The Century Foundation.
Sincerely,
Janice Nittoli
President
The Century Foundation
