Articles

A Different Kind of Think Tank
by Richard Farson

Ever wonder how lawmakers and others who set policy come to the decisions they make? We tend to think that it comes from their close contact with constituencies. Or from studying opinion polls or other methods of assessing public wants and needs. Or from a careful study of history and the deeper implications of the issue being considered. Or from deliberations among knowledgeable colleagues. But we’d probably be wrong.

Most observers of the policymaking process now point to the intensive work of an array of think tanks as the determining force. The most influential are those that promote a particular political ideology. Nine of the top ten are now conservative, and are credited with having moved both the policymakers and the general public in the dramatic shift from the political center to the right that has taken place in the past two decades. They accomplish this mainly through presenting their research and the ideas of their members in speeches, press conferences, interviews, on talk shows, writing opinion pieces for newspapers and magazines and in meetings with politicians.

Responsible policymakers, however, need help from a different kind of think tank, one that is not ideologically bound, and one that can mobilize the wisdom of experienced leaders unavailable to the existing institutes, some of whom represent fields of interest typically not considered by policymakers, but nevertheless bringing valuable insights.

To meet that need, La Jolla’s Western Behavioral Sciences Institute created such a special think tank, the International Leadership Forum. Capitalizing on technological advances, it is organized as a virtual community, linked by the Internet. The ILF is a global, non-partisan, Internet-based group composed of eighty highly influential leaders deliberating together on the great policy issues of our time. These diverse leaders include CEOs, scientists, diplomats, journalists, artists, writers, and academicians—all at the very top of their fields. Because they are extremely busy and live all over the world, it would be impossible to organize them in any other way. The Internet enables them to collaborate in generating the wisdom so necessary for policymakers.

The dozens of conferences conducted so far, most of which are available along with interviews and commentaries in our electronic magazine, the ILF Digest (www.wbsi.org/ilfdigest), always present ideas that challenge received wisdom and bring a fresh point of view.

A few examples: Berkeley criminologist Elliott Currie helped us to rethink and redesign criminal justice from top to bottom; education innovator Paul Houston, who heads the American Association of School Administrators, the organization of U. S. school superintendents, did the same for public education; youth rights advocate Mike Males put the lie to widespread negative ideas about teenagers; and with various leaders we have presented perspectives that challenge conventional wisdom with respect to terrorism, the war in Iraq and homeland security. 

With the guidance of Judge Norbert Ehrenfreund, who covered the Nazi war crimes trials in Nuremberg as a journalist, we developed, and forwarded to the International Criminal Court, an approach to counter the fundamental problem of the victor judging the vanquished.  In a conference examining the US relations with Israel and the Middle East, we surfaced aspects of those relations that have been undiscussable among politicians. Currently, Raymond Alden, former president of the telecommunications giant, Sprint, is leading a conference to examine the problems and possibilities of establishing criteria to judge nations in terms of their humane achievements along all social dimensions—politics, economics, justice, health and education.

An illustration of the ILF’s open-minded posture is reflected in its recently concluded conference of ILF Fellows led by Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor on the highly controversial subject of global warming. In addition to a former ambassador to NATO, a former president of the American Arbitration Association, a prominent psychoanalyst, a political scientist who is president of the World Academy of Art and Science and a dozen other outstanding leaders, the discussion included ILF Fellows who are scientific authorities able to represent both sides of this particular environmental dilemma.

Climatologist Taylor, the conference leader and a global warming skeptic, was joined in that view by Douglas Strain, founding chairman of Electro Scientific Industries, long an observer of environmental consequences of energy decisions, and science novelist Michael Crichton, whose new bestseller, State of Fear, also takes a skeptical view of the global warming scare.

Siding with the majority of scientists concerned about the human contribution to a potential disaster were Carl Hodges, Director Emeritus of the University of Arizona’s Environmental Research Laboratory and Jane Poynter, CEO of Paragon Space Development Corporation and a celebrated member of the team of Biospherians sealed for two years in the famous experiment for sustaining a livable environment called Biosphere II.

In addition to that conference being a dialogue rather than a polarizing argument (an important aspect of all ILF conferences) its truly unique feature was the contribution that noted British anthropologist Mary Douglas made. She helped all of us understand how this policy issue will be determined not only by the science, but also by the predictable behavior of the cultural groups to which the various players belong. We were able to bring the social sciences and humanities together with the physical sciences to gain a completely fresh perspective.

It is that ability to join the two cultures—science and the humanities—that would have pleased Jonas Salk, who was frustrated in his attempt to accomplish such a dialogue in his institute. With architect Louis Kahn, he designed the Salk Institute as two buildings, one to house biological scientists, the other leaders of the social sciences and humanities, with the open space in between meant for them to congregate, interact and influence each other—"an institute for the study of man" that he was ultimately unable to realize.

For society to be safe, compassionate and prosperous, we must have such a dialogue. Our future as a civilization is dependent upon our ability to address these issues with open minds, yet most of our society’s many think tanks and advocacy organizations cannot fill that need because they are politically partisan, ideologically narrow, caught in a social movement mentality or owned by special interests, often actually contributing to the widespread misunderstandings.

The great need is for a diverse community of leaders who through intense but civilized dialogue can make the invisible visible, get at the facts, offer wise judgments and formulate creative policy recommendations.

But they must be a special breed, capable of seeing the story behind the story because they have been there, lived it, and know the inner workings of corporations, professions and governments. They must be able to entertain and resolve big disagreements. They must find gratification in getting at the truth when it goes against conventional thinking, even when it counters their own previous thinking. Finally, they must be mobilized by an organization that is adventurous, independent, global, non-partisan, not ideologically bound, but steeped in a tradition of scientific research and dedicated to speaking truth to power.

As it happens, right here in San Diego we have such an organization and such a special group of leaders in WBSI’s International Leadership Forum.