The Roosevelt Institution’s liberal foundation

Will Berkeley build upon it?

By Andrew R Quinio and Patrick Humphreys
From the October 2005 Print Edition

What do the following people have in common: a leader of a small insurgent army, a man who has been arrested eighteen times, and a former Clinton Whitehouse official? The answer is that they were all speakers at the launch of the Berkeley chapter of the Roosevelt Institution, a national collection of student-run “progressive” policy think tanks. The launch was held in the Lipman Room of Barrows Hall on September 7th before a crowd of about one hundred students and local area residents.

The think tank is officially non-partisan, stressing in its vision statement that its student researchers are not burdened with “ideological or political debts” and that this generation of students “has been depoliticized.” However, the Roosevelt Institution frequently uses the word progressive to describe its outlook. The think tank boasts that it is non-ideological, but the speakers at the launch and the Institution’s background seem to undermine this professed objectivity.

Matt Gonzalez, the Green Party candidate and political rival of Gavin Newsom in the 2003 San Francisco mayoral race, was the first speaker of the event. In 2000, Gonzalez became the first Green Party member ever elected to office in San Francisco when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He related how he organized “a little insurgent army” of political activists and coordinated “radical change” through elected office and ballot measures. An admitted reader and admirer of Marx, Gonzalez is currently practicing law after not seeking another term on the Board of Supervisors.

Randy Hayes, founder of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and a self proclaimed “Radical,” was the second speaker of the evening. Labeled an “environmental pit bull” by the Wall Street journal, Hayes is currently Director of Sustainability in the office of Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown. Hayes said at the event that his work with RAN has “cost [him] about eighteen arrests and [he’s] not done there yet.” RAN has worked on several pressure campaigns against major corporations including J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank, Burger King and Home Depot. Most notably, RAN encouraged the theft of wood from Home Depot when the group was protesting the company’s use of lumber from old growth forests.

Thomas Kalil, the Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Science and Technology at UC Berkeley was the final speaker of the event. He was less philosophical than the other two speakers in his remarks, giving practical advice to the group and offering to help them navigate through the “Berkeley bureaucracy.” During the Clinton administration, Kalil served as the Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Technology and Economic Policy, and the Deputy Director of the White House National Economic Council.

The think tank, however, is completely student run; the students, and not their invited guest speakers, will be shaping and analyzing policy. But if Berkeley follows the examples set by Roosevelt Institutions of other colleges, Cal students can expect to welcome yet another liberal organization on Sproul Plaza.

Stanford University’s RI has essentially become a duplicate of other left-leaning groups on campus. According to a March 9, 2005 article in the Stanford Daily, “Some students have complained that the organization lacks a bi-partisan feel and is simply an extension of the Stanford Democrats.”

At Yale University, undergraduates have explicitly used the think-tank as a means to combat what they see as “conservative dominance” on campus. According to a February 4, 2005 article in the Yale Herald, undergrad Andy Kohler posed this question at one of the meetings: “What are the pro-life arguments, and how can we defend against them?” The Yale Herald also reported that the RI at Yale was formed in response to the Republican victory in the 2004 election.

Meanwhile, the Texas A&M chapter admittedly serves to challenge right-leaning attitudes on campus. On the Roosevelt Institution Texas A&M chapter website, student leaders make clear that they “intend to present progressive policy ideas as an alternative to the conservative status quo in Texas and our university.”

For resources and information, Wheaton College’s RI depends on a coalition of left-leaning progressive groups. According to their website, this “Activist Coalition” consists of groups such as the College Democrats, Eco Club, I Say No to War, Wheaton Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and the Feminist Perspective House.

How does the RI’s prevailing liberal bias translate into policy? In the summer of 2005, the Roosevelt Institution published a policy review that tackles several issues, from solar energy to corporate social responsibility. The views and policy suggestions, however, are fairly left of center.

One example comes from Stanford’s Amelia Hausauer, Jermaine Archie, Craig Boge, Anthony Ortega, and Sarah Pratt. They analyzed national healthcare in their report, “Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and the Future of America: New Strategies for Improving Access to Health Insurance for America’s 8.5 Million Uninsured Children.” Their solution to the health care crisis: major government intervention and a redistribution of wealth. They write, “[O]ur proposal would transfer money from an affluent population that can afford first-rate services to needy children.”

Since the Berkeley chapter of the Roosevelt Institution launched just last month, it will be some time before the views of the group can be fully understood. For now, the agendas of existing Institutions and the views of Berkeley’s launch party speakers may provide a clearer insight into the future policies that this think tank will support.

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