Hudson Institute

The Hudson Institute is a corporatist-leaning U.S. think tank, founded in 1961 in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, by the futurist Herman Kahn and other colleagues from the RAND Corporation. The Institute promotes public policy change in accordance with its stated values of a "commitment to free markets and individual responsibility, confidence in the power of technology to assist progress, respect for the importance of culture and religion in human affairs, and determination to preserve America's national security." It is the organization about which the phrase "think tank" was originally coined.

The institute moved to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1984, and in 2004 to Washington, DC. The current president is Herbert London.

The Institute is registered in the United States as a non-profit organization.^[1]

Policy positions

The Hudson Institute's experts try to work toward a broad view of society and change, looking for the interplay between culture, demography, technology, markets, and political leadership.

In the 1970s, Hudson’s scholars advocated a turn away from the "no-growth" policies of the Club of Rome; in the early 1990s, it advised the newly-liberated Baltic nations on becoming market economies; it assisted in drafting the Wisconsin welfare reform law that became the model for national welfare reform in the mid-1990s.

The Institute has taken positions critical of environmentalism. Dennis Avery, as Director of the Hudson's Center for Global Food Issues, has written in opposition to those who favor the adoption of organic agricultural methods.

The Hudson Institute is developing programs to propose the political and economic transformation of Muslim nations.

Funding

The Hudson Institute is supported by donations from companies and individuals. Corporate contributors include Eli Lilly and Company, Monsanto, DuPont, Dow-Elanco, Sandoz, Ciba-Geigy, ConAgra, Cargill, and Procter & Gamble.^[2]

Fundraising efforts use testimonials from what the Institute calls its "family of generous supporters and friends", among them, Henry Kissinger, who provides a testimonial:

"Hudson Institute is today one of America's foremost policy research centers, in the forefront of study and debate on important domestic and international policy issues, known and respected around the globe, a leader in innovative thinking and creative solutions to the challenges of the present and the future."^[3]

Some question the institute's position on many issues. An example is their view of food production and the large sums they receive from food companies.