Academy of Political Science

• 1. Introduction

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  The Academy of Political Science has been gathering presidents, diplomats, and scholars under one roof since 1880. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding stood before 1,400 men and women at a Hotel Astor luncheon and declared his intention for a drastic reorganization of government. Federal, state, and municipal governments had been, in his words, "spending without a thought of the morrow." That a sitting president chose this particular room to deliver that particular message is not accidental. For well over a century, the Academy has been one of the few institutions in American public life where power and scholarship regularly sit at the same table. What made it that place? And what does it mean to insist on non-partisan analysis at a moment when politics rarely tolerates it?

• 2. Columbia's Experiment

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  Columbia University founded the Academy of Political Science in 1880 with a specific, practical goal: to bridge its Law School and its Graduate School of Political Science. The two programs occupied different worlds, and the Academy was meant to force a conversation between them. Six years later, in 1886, the organization began publishing the Political Science Quarterly, which remains its flagship journal today. By 1910 the Academy had incorporated in New York State as a non-profit, opening its membership to anyone willing to pay dues. At that point, it was one of only a handful of organizations in the country claiming to produce genuinely non-partisan, analytical work. The Brookings Institution was another. Private foundation money helped sustain it through those early years, and that financial independence gave the Academy room to hold its ground when political pressures pushed in other directions.

• 3. Dinners That Shaped Debate

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  Walter Lippmann took the podium at an Academy dinner in 1932 to speak about liberalism at one of the country's darkest economic moments. "The great concern of the liberal spirit," he told the guests, "rests at last upon the conviction that at almost any cost men must keep open the channels of understanding and preserve unclouded, lucid and serene their perceptiveness of truth." That same year, a separate Academy conference pulled together economists, bankers, and industrialists to talk through "Steps Toward Recovery." The annual dinners attracted politicians, diplomats, scholars, and intellectuals as a matter of course. In 1940, then-Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson used one of those dinners to deliver a pro-preparedness speech in support of Britain, a genuinely consequential moment in the debate over American involvement in the war in Europe. Vice President Richard Nixon attended in 1959, extending the pattern of senior officials choosing this forum to speak directly to policy audiences.

• 4. Conferences as Policy Laboratories

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  In 1917, working alongside the American Society of International Law, the Academy organized a National Conference on the Foreign Relations of the United States. The New York Times described it as "the most notable unofficial gathering of authorities on international law and trade, diplomats, statesmen, journalists, publicists, and politicians ever held in this country." That kind of convening power reflects a distinct approach to political education: bring together the people who know a subject, include the public officials who actually deal with it, and hold the conversation in one place. More recently the Academy has co-sponsored conferences with institutions ranging from Homes for the Homeless and The Cooper Union to the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and the American Hellenic Institute Foundation. The range of partners signals that the Academy reads "political, social, and economic issues" broadly, following problems wherever they lead rather than staying inside a narrow disciplinary lane.

• 5. Mission and Membership

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  The Academy describes its purpose in three parts: supporting scholarly examination of political institutions and public policy; channeling social science research toward political leaders in an understandable form; and educating general audiences so they can participate more effectively in democratic life. Headquartered at The Interchurch Center in New York City, the organization is currently led by President Robert Y. Shapiro. Its board of directors draws from academic administration, law, business, and the non-profit sector, all tied to the Academy's educational mission. Among its honorary members are former President Jimmy Carter, former Secretaries of State George P. Shultz and Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. That roster reflects decades of relationships built through exactly the kind of conferences and dinners the Academy has run since the nineteenth century, and it points to the institution's ongoing role as a meeting ground for people who have held the levers of American power.