Past Grants

Clare Lockhart will lead an effort to develop more effective models to deliver assistance to strengthen fragile states. She will work with a small set of donor and recipient countries to design an assistance model to implement the so-called “New Deal for Fragile States,” which seeks to deliver assistance through national institutions to the greatest extent possible. The project’s findings will appear in a white paper.

Jacqueline Deal, Stephen Rosen, and Aaron Friedberg will lead a series of executive education seminars designed to develop a cadre of young analysts and policy thinkers with the skills to devise and implement long-term competitive strategies to advance U.S. objectives. They will also establish fellowships for some of the most promising participants in the program.

Daniel Goldhaber will direct the research and publications program of the National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER). He will work with CALDER affiliates in five states to answer questions in four broad education policy areas: what policies can best improve college and career readiness; what policies can promote the recruitment, advancement, and retention of high-quality teachers and principals; what policies can improve the poorest-performingschools; and what out-of-school factors most affect student achievement. The project’s findings will appear in a series of reports, papers, and policy briefings for state and district officials.

James Rosenbaum will examine how children from disadvantaged backgrounds who choose options other than college enrollment fare later in life. He will analyze data from the Education Longitudinal Study to explore how measures of student non-cognitive traits, such as persistence and self-control, as well as high school performance and post–high school education and training, relate to later life outcomes. He will also undertake research among high school guidance counselors to better understand whether and how they help high school students find non-college opportunities for training and employment. The project’s findings will appear in a series of articles.

Dan Blumenthal will examine strategies that the United States could employ to compete more effectively with China. He will identify a variety of competitive options that have been developed by China analysts and scholars and analyze which might be most effective.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies will host an annual lecture by a scholar or practitioner whose lifetime of work has addressed the challenges posed by the relationship between strategy and moral purpose in foreign policy. The individual will be awarded the Zbigniew Brzezinski Prize.

Peter Bergen, David Sterman, and Nate Rosenblatt will analyze the flow of Arab jihadists who are joining the Islamic State in order to develop an effective counter-radicalization or counterterrorism strategy. They will analyze recently acquired personnel records of nearly 2,000 Islamic State fighters from the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa in order to identify the sub-national variables at work in motivating jihadi recruits from those regions. The project’s findings will appear in a report.

Edmund Phelps will direct the research and publications program of the Center on Capitalism and Society. He and his colleagues will explore questions such as what has caused the decline in innovation in different sectors of the economy and how that decline may have contributed to the stagnation of wages for many individuals. The center’s findings will appear in a series of research papers, reports, and policy briefs.

William Fox, Celeste Carruthers, and Carolyn Heinrich will direct the research agenda of a policy lab designed to assess the impact of a statewide initiative to increase the levels of education and skills of Tennessee residents. They will monitor the implementation and analyze the effects of Tennessee’s “Drive to 55,” a state initiative to increase the percentage of Tennesseans with a post-secondary credential to 55 percent of the population. The project’s findings will appear in a series of reports, papers, and policy briefs.