A Political Map of Washington Think Tanks

Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

I spend a lot of time advising grad students, former students, and early-career folks with ambitions of being involved in some way with foreign policy.

A recent former student reached out asking about internships after their master’s degree, and had already been in touch with a few think tanks in Washington. This person was progressive in every identifiable way, but at least one of the places they applied to—innocently—was a center-right, militarist institution that relies almost entirely on funding from the defense industry and foreign governments. Seemed like a grand mismatch.

So I wrote back, sketching out which think tanks were pathways to the dark side, which were rebel-institutions, and which were in between. I’ve anonymized the letter, and taken out the social niceties, but otherwise this is as-written.

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