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The Roosevelt Institution is a student think tank, the first of its kind. It has two missions: to act as a conduit for students' ideas to reach the policy discourse, and to train students on public policy and leadership and inspire them to believe their ideas are relevant.
Goals
According to the group website, "our intellectual capital is an underutilized asset -- we don’t have access to the policy process. The Roosevelt Institution is a national network of student think tanks that provide the organizational infrastructure to get student ideas into the public discourse. We have standing relationships with politicians and policymakers, media outlets, foundations, and other think tanks, and are building more by the day."
The idea behind the Roosevelt Institution is that students learn about the world through seminars, activities, outside research, and presence in the university environment -- the same activities as the fellows of a conventional think tank fellow. However, unlike a conventional think tank fellow, students do not have access to a P.R. department to get their ideas out into the world. The Roosevelt Institution claims to be the P.R. department for progressive college students.
Structure
The Roosevelt Institution is a chapter-based organization with groups active on a number of college campuses in the United States and a few organizing abroad. Each chapter consists of a number of policy centers, in which students interested in a given topic can join together and share research, ideas, and resources. Policy centers at each chapter are assisted by an administrative organization, including perhaps an events committee, a publications committee, a development committee, a media committee, etc. The chapters are assisted by a small national staff which coordinates their activities and promotes them to the larger world.
The organization was founded simultaneously on a number of different college campuses immediately after the 2004 election.
Inspiration and Ideology
The Roosevelt Instition is a nonpartisan not-for-profit organization with no partisan affiliation. It draws its inspiration from Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who, it argues, embody America's bipartisan progressive tradition.
The students define their generation's progressivism as based on pragmatic problem-solving -- the solution is not creating bigger government or smaller government, but using government to tackle the issues of the day.
In addition to an openess to new solutions, the Roosevelt Institution's notion of progressivism includes rejecting the cronyism and special interest that determines so much of national policy, while focusing on policy issues of fundamental importance such as healthcare, education and national security.
Controversy
The Roosevelt Institution has been lambasted by conservative campus groups due to its leftist ideals in most campuses, despite its stated nonpartisan nature. It should be noted, however, that many think tanks often associated with conservative or libertarian ideas also maintain that they are "nonpartisan" (e.g. the Discovery Institute). 1
Official Website
The Roosevelt Review Summer 2005 Issue is available here:
Press coverage of the Roosevelt Institution can be found here:
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"Roosevelt Institution"