Carnegie
Corporation
of New York
Summer 2007
Low profile, high impact
One of the program’s true strengths highly praised by attendees is that discussion sessions are deliberately off the record. “Nothing is reported, nothing is written about the meeting. It really is a venue for them to have a discussion with no strings attached and without publicity,” says Deana Arsenian. For dissemination purposes, a published summary of the experts’ presentations is prepared following each meeting. For the Education Program, Carol Copple, publications editor for the National Association for the Education of Young Children serves as rapporteur. Carnegie staff set the meeting agenda and select the experts in consultation with Dick Clark. For the U.S.-Russia Program, Michael Mandelbaum, Christian A. Herter Professor of American Foreign Policy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. and associate director of the Aspen Institute Congressional Project on American Relations with the Former Communist World helps set the meeting agenda and acts as rapporteur.
“We are not making speeches to our special interest constituents or to a CSPAN audience or individual lobbyist…hanging on every word,” explains Representative Waxman. “It’s an off-the-record discussion and it’s much more collegial.” As a result, surprising views surface in private sessions. Behind closed doors, people frequently take counter-intuitive positions, according to observers. A Midwestern Republican speaks up for bi-lingual education. Or a Republican from a conservative area of New England discourses on the importance of affirmative action—something they’d be very unlikely to do for the record.
Given the free exchange of ideas the Congressional Program generates, its impact is not unexpected. Yet because of tax laws restricting the role of charitable foundations, the Aspen Institute is cautious when it comes to pointing to the legislative impact of the Congressional Program. “That leads to implications we’re expecting something, and we don’t want to be charged with that or seen as advocates,” says Bill Nell, a key senior staffer for the program. Still, he sees an undeniable connection between what takes place at the Congressional Program and the passing of legislation.
Members of Congress can be quite clear about the Program’s contributions to several pieces of landmark legislation in foreign policy and education. A prime example is the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Act — legislation designed to reduce dangers from Soviet-era weapons of mass destruction. The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program is one of the most, arguably, the most, important nuclear nonproliferation step taken by the world up to that point. According to the latest Nunn-Lugar Scorecard, since its 1991 inception the program has deactivated 6,760 nuclear warheads, destroyed 587 ballistic missiles, 483 ballistic missile silos, 150 bombers, 549 submarine-launched missiles, 789 nuclear air-to-surface missiles, 436 submarine missile launchers, and 28 strategic missile submarines. It has sealed 194 nuclear test tunnels and also helped more than 58,000 scientists formerly working on programs relating to weapons of mass destruction find employment in other fields.
These accomplishments have been achieved by establishing a cooperative presence in the former Soviet Union, where American firms carry out a large proportion of program-related work. A side benefit of the program has been the development of many and varied ties between Russian and U.S. military officials and government entities. “Much of the foundation work for the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Act occurred through Aspen Institute Congressional Programs,” Senator Richard Lugar (an author of the law) noted in a letter to congressional ethics regulators.
Lugar credits interaction with “Russian members of parliament…Russian exiles and scholars gifted in nuclear technology proliferation and methodology,” important contacts made at the conferences who offered “specific leadership entry to the most sensitive areas of former Soviet governance and the Russian successor state.” Nunn-Lugar’s impetus came straight from an Aspen Congressional Program meeting with former Russian Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev, according to Obey, who was there. Russian officials concerned “about loose nuclear material wondered if there wasn’t some way to help set up a system to help soak it up,” he recalls. “That conversation started the ball rolling.” Soon after the legislators returned home, they started the process of appropriating funds to contain the deadly materials.
The Aspen Institute Education Program has yielded similarly impressive results. One dramatic example is the landmark No Child Left Behind legislation, which developed its roots at the Aspen Congressional Program conferences. Representative George Miller says the “intellectual underpinnings” of No Child Left Behind came from the Congressional Program, which in his opinion also had a huge impact on legislative outcomes in other areas. Miller ticks off examples: the Higher Education act and Secondary Education act, along with congressional action on school equity, bilingual education and diversity. Fallon notes that at the 2001 conference, Promoting Educational Excellence in the New Economy, Representative John Boehner attended and paid close attention because he had just unexpectedly become chair of the House Education and Labor Committee. In informal conversations over meals with the representative George Miller, the two members of Congress from different ends of the political spectrum began to see a framework that could lead to bipartisan support for what became No Child Left Behind.
The Aspen-aided Obey-Porter bill is regarded in Congress as a major piece of school reform legislation. Obey also cites his Aspen Institute-formed relationship with Ralph Regula on the subject of school principals. Regula is a former school principal turned Congressman whose basic mantra is that good principals make good schools. The Aspen Institute Congressional Program not only has furthered his legislative efforts to support school principals, but also has affected his views on funding—particularly his oversight of a $60 billion budget for the Department of Education. He’d regularly bring back program papers for staff members. “You translate your ideas that you gain from these [Aspen Institute programs] into appropriations,” Regular explains, “which [are] translated in to policy.”