Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions
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The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California was an important liberal think tank from 1959 to 1969, declining in influence thereafter. It was considered to be part of the New Left.[citation needed]
It was founded in 1959 by Robert M. Hutchins.
Fellows of the Center included: Stringfellow Barr, from 1959 to 1969; education philosopher Frederick Mayer ("History of the Educational Thought"); Linus Pauling, from 1963 to 1967; Bishop James A. Pike, from 1966 to 1969; Robert Kurt Woetzel; and Harvey Wheeler.
In 1969 Hutchins reorganized the Center. Many associates departed. New appointees included, among others, Alexander Comfort, later to attain fame as the author of The Joy of Sex; Bertrand de Jouvenel; and Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb.
Harry Ashmore was its president from 1969 to 1974.
After Hutchins' death in 1977, the Center found it difficult to raise funds. It became affiliated with the University of California at Santa Barbara, which sold its real estate. The Center absorbed the Fund for the Republic, a civil rights and civil liberties foundation, in 1979.
The Center closed in 1987.
[edit] References
- Kelly, Frank K. Court of Reason: Robert Hutchins and the Fund for the Republic. New York: The Free Press, 1981. ISBN 0029180309
- Reeves, Thomas C. Freedom and the Foundation: The Fund for the Republic in the Era of McCarthyism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.
