Center for Strategic and International Studies

• 1. Introduction

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  The Center for Strategic and International Studies opened its doors on the 4th of September 1962, just weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis gripped Washington. It began life chartered as a Georgetown University affiliate, carrying the university's name inside its own. It has since grown into a Washington think tank regularly consulted by lawmakers, the executive branch, and journalists covering foreign policy, defense, trade, and technology. How did an organization that started under a university's name end up completely cutting ties with that university? Who actually pays for research trusted enough to brief the White House on economic policy and cybersecurity? And how did this small Georgetown operation become a magnet for the country's most senior national security officials?

• 2. Founding Days

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  Arleigh Burke and David Manker Abshire founded the center in 1962, initially naming it the Center for Strategic and International Studies of Georgetown University. Its first office sat one block from Georgetown's campus, inside a small brick townhouse at 1316 36th Street. Richard V. Allen became the first professional staff member hired, and he later served in the Reagan administration. In January 1963, a conference in Georgetown's Hall of Nations produced the center's founding intellectual blueprint. The conference generated a book, National Security: Political, Military and Economic Strategies in the Decade Ahead, running more than one thousand pages. That book mapped out a framework for national security debate and marked where the Washington foreign policy community agreed and disagreed during the Cold War. It also argued for a strategic view of world affairs and staked out a distinct school of thought in international relations. Scholars trained in that school later rose to top policymaking posts, especially under the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations.

• 3. The Kissinger Effect

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  Henry Kissinger retired as U.S. Secretary of State in 1977, and Harvard University declined to offer him a professorship. He chose to teach part time at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service instead. Kissinger made the center his base for Washington operations, turning down offers from Yale, Penn, Columbia, and Oxford. His decision drew more public attention to the center than almost any event in its first fifteen years. James Schlesinger, Bill Brock, William J. Crowe, and Harold Brown, all former cabinet-level officials, joined the center in the late 1970s. Zbigniew Brzezinski joined in 1981 after the Carter administration ended, focusing his work on the Soviet Union and Poland's transition to a market economy. These arrangements let senior officials write, lecture, and consult with media and business firms after leaving government. Through the 1970s and 1980s, a wave of new think tanks formed or grew across Washington, spanning a range of ideologies and specialties.

• 4. Breaking With Georgetown

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  In 1986, several Georgetown University professors accused CSIS staff of offering academically unsupported opinions on foreign policy in public interviews. Donations to Georgetown fell as a result of the university's association with the center. A special committee investigated the dispute and reported that CSIS leaned more toward media attention than scholarly research. The committee recommended formally separating CSIS from Georgetown University. On the 17th of October 1986, Georgetown's board of directors voted to sever every tie with the center. The Center for Strategic and International Studies was incorporated in Washington, D.C. on the 29th of December 1986. The formal affiliation between Georgetown and CSIS ended on the 1st of July 1987, leaving the center to build its own institutional footing.

• 5. Turning Toward Economics

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  The Soviet Union collapsed in the 1980s, leaving CSIS trustees and counselors in a rare position. They helped define America's foreign policy as the world's only remaining superpower. The center had reorganized as an incorporated nonprofit to raise its own endowment and expand into emerging regions of the world. That marked an institutional maturity its founders had not envisioned when they started the project in the early 1960s. After the Cold War ended, a suspicion spread through Washington that the United States was not economically prepared to compete internationally. That concern pushed CSIS to launch a project in early 1990 that some viewed as far removed from its traditional strategic focus. The project grew into the Commission on the Strengthening of America, co-chaired by Senator Sam Nunn and Senator Pete Domenici. David Abshire saw the commission as a chance to overhaul economic policy. He concluded that the White House should create a National Economic Council modeled on the National Security Council. That shift pushed CSIS to research the North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. It also deepened research into global health and the effects of climate change. This new mission would soon call for a bigger, more modern home to match the center's expanding reach.

• 6. A New Address, New Leadership

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  In 2013, CSIS moved from its longtime K Street headquarters to a new building on Rhode Island Avenue in Washington's Dupont Circle neighborhood. The new building cost $100 million to construct and included a media studio along with space for conferences, events, and lectures. It went on to earn LEED Platinum certification. In 2015, senior vice president H. Andrew Schwartz described the organization's "number one goal" as "having impact on policy." CEO John Hamre defended CSIS in 2016 against claims that it had improperly lobbied on behalf of defense contractors. He said, "We strongly believe in our model of seeking solutions to some of our country's most difficult problems. We gather stakeholders, vet ideas, find areas of agreement and highlight areas of disagreement." In 2024, Russia designated the center an undesirable organization. On the 12th of March 2026, CSIS announced that retired General Joseph Francis Dunford would become its next chief executive officer. Dunford had served as the 19th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He succeeded John Hamre on the 7th of May 2026.

• 7. Funding The Mission

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  In fiscal year 2013, CSIS reported operating revenue of $32.3 million. Corporate donors supplied 32% of that revenue, foundations 29%, government sources 19%, individuals 9%, the endowment 5%, and other sources 6%. Operating expenses for that year totaled $32.2 million, split 78% for programs, 16% for administration, and 6% for development. In September 2014, The New York Times reported that the United Arab Emirates had donated more than $1 million to the organization. CSIS has also received undisclosed funding from Japan through the government-funded Japan External Trade Organization, and from Norway. After the Times contacted CSIS, the center released a list of 13 foreign government donors, including Germany and China. CSIS also lists funding from defense contractors Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon Company, and General Atomics. The United States, Japan, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates have been its most significant government funders.

• 8. Reach And Reputation

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  The Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group researches the defense industry on behalf of government and corporate clients. The Global Health Policy Center focuses on U.S. engagement with HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and polio, especially where those issues intersect with national security. In September 2019, former National Security Advisor John Bolton delivered his first speech since leaving office at CSIS. He used the platform to criticize U.S. policy toward North Korea. In 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a keynote address at CSIS on U.S. strategic engagement with North Africa. The address touched on embassy security after that year's Benghazi attack. CSIS hosts more than 350 students and professionals each year for seminars and programming. It also offers a master's program in international relations with Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

  Clark A. Murdock started the Project on Nuclear Issues, known as PONI. He founded it after recognizing that the nuclear community faced an impending crisis of retiring scientists and experts. PONI was created in 2003 with support from government agencies and private donations. It aims to build a networked community of young nuclear experts across the military, national laboratories, industry, academia, and the policy world. It also seeks to generate new ideas and debate on nuclear issues among its members and the public. Murdock's study Revitalizing the U.S. Nuclear Deterrent, co-authored with Michele Flournoy, documented these concerns in detail. PONI's public website calls the task of maintaining human infrastructure for the nuclear stockpile one of the most critical challenges since the Cold War ended. That stockpile was envisioned at 1700-2200 operational warheads.

  CSIS scholars have published op-eds in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and The Washington Post. Its experts have been quoted or cited thousands of times by print and online press. They appear frequently on wire services including the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France Presse, and Bloomberg News. They have also appeared in online outlets such as The Huffington Post, Summit News, and WSJ Live. CSIS experts were also regular guests on PBS NewsHour, NPR's Morning Edition, and CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront. CSIS also conveys research through original data and multimedia tools alongside traditional reports, earning a reputation as an industry leader in multimedia among policy organizations. It also runs its own YouTube channel, posting short videos and infographics about its work.

  Thomas Pritzker, also chairman and CEO of the Pritzker Organization, chairs the CSIS board of trustees. John J. Hamre, a former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, served as CSIS president and CEO from January 2000 until his retirement in May 2026, when he became CEO Emeritus. The board has also included former officials such as Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, William Cohen, George Argyros, and Brent Scowcroft. CSIS employs 275 full-time staff alongside a large network of affiliated scholars. In 2012 alone, it counted 63 program staffers, 73 scholars, 80 interns, 241 affiliate advisors, and 202 advisory board members and senior counselors. As part of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, the Department of Defense commissioned CSIS to independently assess U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific region. In May 2009, President Barack Obama thanked the CSIS bipartisan Commission on Cybersecurity for helping shape his administration's cyberwarfare policies. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said he asked his staff each Friday for a reading binder on national security issues. He added that "almost every week, there are products from CSIS." Within the intelligence community, John Brennan said CSIS has "some of the most insightful analysis and innovative ideas for strengthening our national security."

  CSIS is officially a bipartisan organization, inviting U.S. lawmakers and executive branch officials from both major political parties, along with foreign officials of varying backgrounds. John Kempthorne, however, wrote in Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting that CSIS was heavily funded by the US government, arms dealers, and oil companies. He called it "a consistently pro-war think tank." In its 2019 rankings, the most recent available, the University of Pennsylvania rated CSIS the number one think tank in the United States. It ranked fourth worldwide. Independent fact checkers have separately given CSIS's analysis favorable marks for lack of bias, factual reporting, and credibility. U.S. News & World Report, meanwhile, labels the organization broadly "centrist."