HISTORY

Ideas are powerful, but they’re also perishable. While they can change lives, they need to be defended and passed on to each new generation. The Fund for American Studies champions a core set of principles – freedom, individual responsibility and free markets – which we believe define the essence of the American political tradition. True to our mission of 40 years, we strive to have a profound effect on the lives of our students by passing on the ideas that offer the greatest opportunity for personal fulfillment and human accomplishment.

TFAS was established in response to the political and social upheaval of the 1960s. As that decade was drawing to a close, there were widespread protests of government policy, and confidence in the American system of government was eroding. This was especially true for college students of the time. The counterculture and many of the youth movements of the 1960s not only rejected the American political tradition, but also actively worked to undermine and subvert the ideas and principles on which America was built.

Surveying this political and social landscape, Charles Edison, former governor of New Jersey, secretary of the Navy and son of the inventor Thomas Alva Edison, recognized that college students needed a balanced perspective on political and economic institutions. And in 1967, he took the first steps towards establishing the institution that is today known as The Fund for American Studies.

Edison recruited Dr. Walter H. Judd, David R. Jones, Marvin Liebman and William F. Buckley, Jr., all of whom shared his concerns. And, on February 6, 1967, the group incorporated the Charles Edison Youth Fund. But, in 1969, as they were discussing how to best reach the young people of that era, Governor Edison died suddenly. To honor him and carry on his mission, the organization was renamed the Charles Edison Memorial Youth Fund. In the summer of 1970, the Youth Fund partnered with Georgetown University to organize the inaugural Institute on Comparative Political and Economic Systems. Fifty-seven students attended.

The Fund’s partnership with Georgetown University is based on a shared commitment to academic integrity and a belief in the power of ideas. The relationship was established through the diligent efforts of Professor Lev Dobriansky and a student named Robert Schadler. Other key players were Professors George Viksnins, George Carey, Jan Karski and Anthony Bouscaren. Mike Thompson and Kathy Rothschild served in management positions under The Fund’s first two presidents, David R. Jones and George H.C. Lawrence.

TFAS has been successful because its programs are based upon a solid academic foundation. Its summer programs offer eight weeks of classes for academic credit, evening guest lectures by renowned speakers and site briefings at key government institutions. Students are assigned to internships at some of Washington’s most important institutions. Semester-long programs offer the chance for students to come to Washington during the academic year and continue their education while they intern. The Fund’s international programs introduce promising foreign students to the ideas of liberty and civil society.

Despite early support from John M. Olin, DeWitt Wallace, F. M. Kirby and others, budgets were extremely tight in the early years. The organization was often forced to turn away students seeking scholarships until Sen. Barry M. Goldwater agreed to the establishment of the Goldwater Scholarship Fund and a biennial dinner in his honor. This program helped hundreds of students attend Fund programs.

In 1985, the Institute on Political Journalism was created in response to a declining confidence in the media. Dr. Lee Edwards, serving as the founding director, developed IPJ on the foundation of the successful conferences that Trustee Arnold Steinberg and others had organized in the 1970s and 1980s. Those conferences, which discussed free enterprise and responsible journalism, were held at Vanderbilt, Rice, Pepperdine, Washington University and other top tier schools. They featured luminaries such as Frank Shakespeare, Jack Kemp, Robert Bartley, David Broder, Alan Meltzer, Al Neuharth and Art Laffer.

Renowned investigative journalist Clark Mollenhoff succeeded Edwards, lending his reputation for hard-nosed investigative journalism until his untimely death in 1991. Thanks to the leadership and support of Thomas Phillips and the active involvement of Fred Barnes, IPJ now enrolls close to 100 students each summer, sponsors campus journalism conferences throughout the country and has three major journalism award programs. Fall and spring semester components have now been added.

The Charles Edison Memorial Youth Fund grew and matured, and in 1987, to honor Edison’s request that his name be used in association with the organization for only 20 years, the organization was renamed The Fund for American Studies.  Shortly thereafter, in 1990, TFAS gained financial stability when it received a large bequest from the estate of John and Virginia Engalitcheff. With this bequest, the Board of Trustees established a permanent endowment, purchased a headquarters building and began launching new programs.

Government regulation of business grew sharply in the 1960s and 1970s and, as a result, nearly every major corporation has now established offices in Washington, D.C. to represent their interests. Recognizing the important interplay between business and government, Trustee Don Cogman led a task force that developed the Institute on Business and Government Affairs in 1990. Originally named in honor of pioneering corporate representative Bryce Harlow, this program introduces students to the processes business uses to influence legislation and regulatory policy and emphasizes the importance of honesty and integrity in all aspects of professional life.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, TFAS turned its attention overseas. In 1992,  Trustees Randal C. Teague and William Tucker, Dean Michael Collins and Fund Executive Vice President Roger Ream visited Central and Eastern Europe. They returned with a recommendation that a new program be developed in partnership with Charles University in Prague. The American Institute on Political and Economic Systems was established in 1993, reaching more than 100 students each summer from all the countries of the former Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union. The faculty in Prague has been led from the inception of the program by Georgetown Professor Jim Lengle, and has included such outstanding scholars as Walter Berns and the late Don Lavoie. Each summer a head of state addresses students at the closing ceremony, through the support of the Vaek and Anna Maria Polák Foundation.

In the mid-1990s, TFAS was among the first organizations of its kind to recognize the need to engage students from the Eastern Mediterranean in an intellectual discussion of the ideas of democracy and market economies. A partnership was formed with the Greek Association for Atlantic and European Cooperation, led by Theodossis Georgiou and Aliki Mitsakos-Georgiou. Teague offered the vision for the International Institute for Political and Economic Studies by drawing from the democratic traditions of ancient Athens and spirit of peaceful interaction characteristic of the ancient Olympics. Now held on the island of Crete, the program includes a workshop on conflict management and discussions on how democratic and market institutions foster peaceful cooperation and prosperity.

Recognizing the strategic importance and rapid economic development of China and many of its Asian neighbors, TFAS established the Asia Institute for Political Economy in 2002. Trustee T. Timothy Ryan of J.P. Morgan Chase took the initiative in proposing the program. Held in partnership with the University of Hong Kong, the program brings together young leaders from throughout Asia and the U.S. for study and discussion of the American political system and a market economy.

Following the untimely death of David R. Jones in 1998, the Board of Trustees chose long-time member and general counsel Randal C. Teague to serve as its chairman. Roger Ream was elevated from executive vice president to president.  A generous gift in memory of Jones from Trustee Thomas L. Phillips enabled TFAS to purchase its current headquarters building on New Hampshire Avenue.

The Board recognized Jones’ three decades of service to TFAS by creating the David R. Jones Center for Leadership in Philanthropy. The initial program of the Center was the Institute on Philanthropy and Voluntary Service, developed through the initiative of Trustee Neal B. Freeman. Working in partnership with Les Lenkowsky and his colleagues at Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy, the Institute was created to prepare college students for careers in the nonprofit sector by grounding them in the traditions of American philanthropy, from the observations of Alexis de Tocqueville to the generous giving of Andrew Carnegie and his contemporaries.

In 2003, TFAS expanded beyond its summer Institute model and developed Capital Semester, offering fall and spring semester programs for college students. Students have the opportunity to spend a semester away from their home campuses, studying the ideas of the American political tradition and free-market economics under The Fund’s outstanding faculty.

In recent years, journalism programs have been added in Prague and Greece, extending The Fund’s reach as it seeks to improve economic literacy and responsible journalism in Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. The European Journalism Institute was started in Prague in 2004 and the Euro-Med Journalism Institute was inaugurated in Athens, Greece in 2006.

While this is the story of The Fund’s institutional growth, its real successes come at the individual level. Its accomplishments are best measured by how well it conveys to its students the importance and substance of the ideas of liberty.

It is impossible to say how the life and career of an alumnus - and the lives each of them touch - would have been different without TFAS. Thankfully, because of The Fund’s commitment, thousands of students have had the opportunity to learn about the principles of freedom and the power of ideas.

Once students recognize how the ideas of limited government, personal responsibility and a free-market economy relate to a given policy question, they can apply these principles again and again through their careers and lives. This truly does change lives. It allows them to draw connections to the historical debates that have shaped America, and become better, more reflective citizens.

Governor Edison, David R. Jones, and others who have been leaders in The Fund’s growth would be very satisfied to know that the organization created by their foresight and commitment has had a profound impact on more that 9,000 young people in the last four decades. 

As Jones wrote at the conclusion of The Fund’s first decade, “an anniversary celebration does not mark a curtain being drawn, but rather one opened up to greater accomplishments in the years to come.”

With a renewed commitment to its mission, continued support from thousands of generous donors, wise leadership from the Board, strong management and dedicated alumni, TFAS has all the ingredients for continued success for decades to come.

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