Carnegie Corporation and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Celebrate their Centennials with a panel discussion with top news editors and publishers addressing today’s thorniest global issues.
Carnegie Corporation of New York, one of the most enduring and iconic organizations in philanthropy and the largest institution established by the Scottish immigrant industrialist, today celebrates its sister organization the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
On Tuesday, an evening panel discussion at the Morgan Library in New York City called “Two Organizations, One Vision: Achieving Peace in the 21st Century,” featuring four of the country’s most respected newspaper editors and publishers, will engage in a moderated discussion on current topics in international affairs. A video of the panel discussions will be available later in the week on the Carnegie Corporation web site.
Panel
Lionel Barber, editor, Financial Times (moderator)
Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor, The Washington Post
Karen Elliott House, former publisher, The Wall Street Journal
Bill Keller, executive editor, The New York Times
Today’s event follows the Endowment’s Centennial event in Washington, DC on May 26 where a day-long series of panel discussions called “Peace and Power in the Twenty-First Century,” addressed topics including whether the U.S. can afford to lead the world; democracy in the Middle East; and the global middle class. The panel discussions, funded in part by Carnegie Corporation of New York, are part of the Corporation’s own centennial celebration that will focus attention on other organizations created by Andrew Carnegie, will include events at the Peace Palace in the Hague in 2012, a series of board of trustees events in South Africa this fall, the awarding of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy in October and a series of special publications and films.
According to Carnegie Corporation President Vartan Gregorian, “In Andrew Carnegie’s view, capitalism provided no moral justification for war. Reason was the source men and women should look to in order to find solutions for conflict, and competition was the best substitute for going to war. As a rationalist, he believed in these principles; as a philanthropist, he thought he could act on them.”
Gregorian continued, “In philanthropy, Carnegie saw a way to help create a world in which peace and stability were the bedrock values upon which all societies would be able to build bridges across the gulf that separates not only social and economic groups but also different states and nations from each other.”
Carnegie Corporation has provided grant support to the Endowment for nearly a century. In the past decade alone, the Corporation has awarded more than 40 grants in excess of $18 million. Recent grants include a $3 million award in 2008 to support the Endowment’s China Policy Research Program established to provide policymakers in both countries with a better understanding of the dynamics between the United States and China and within China itself. A series of grants have also supported the Carnegie Moscow Center and various initiatives to promote international strategies to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The Corporation has also supported the Endowment’s efforts to redefine its mission to become a truly global think tank.
According to Jessica T. Mathews, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is the oldest international affairs think tank in the United States. Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1910 with a gift of $10 million, its charter was to ‘hasten the abolition of war, the foulest blot upon our civilization.’ While that goals was always unattainable, throughout the intervening years the Carnegie Endowment has remained faithful not only to the mission of promoting peaceful engagement between the United States and other nations, but among all nations.”
Over the decades, the Endowment established offices in major diplomatic centers from Paris to Geneva and Washington to New York (following the establishment of the United Nations). Immediately following the end of the Cold War, the Endowment opened an office in Moscow. In 2007, anticipating profound changes across the spectrum of international affairs and building on the success of the Moscow Center, the Endowment announced its intention to become the world’s first global think tank with locally staffed offices and work produced and disseminated in local languages.
Today the Endowment has offices in Washington, Moscow, Beirut, Beijing and Brussels. These five locations include important national and regional centers of governance and the places whose political evolution and international policies will likely have a critical effect on the near-term possibilities for international peace and international economic progress.