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The Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress is the only organization that systematically examines past successes and failures of the Presidency and relates its findings to present challenges and opportunities. Lessons learned from past American experiences offer insights on how to deal with these challenges.
Strengthening America's Future Initiative (SAFI) and Agenda 2008
Executive-Legislative Relations
Presidential Leadership
Organizing for Leadership
Inspiring Future Leaders
Lessons from History
1965The Library of Presidential Papers is incorporated under the Education Law of the State of New York by entrepreneur Henry O. Dormann and several New York business leaders “to house originals or copies of Presidential Papers of all the Presidents of the United States and of such other papers of historical interest as may deem advisable.” |
1969
The Library is reincorporated as the Center for the Study of the Presidency by Dr. R. Gordon Hoxie, a historian and Chancellor of Long Island University, who became the first President of the Center, and Arthur T. Roth, Board Vice Chair at Long Island University, who became the first Chairman of the Center's Board of Trustees. Inspired by Dwight Eisenhower's call for programs on the American Presidency for "students old and young…characterized by accuracy, objectivity and perspective," the Center began educating young leaders and examining public policy issues that required Presidential consideration and action. Dr. Hoxie organizes the first Annual Student Symposium, held in Washington, to educate college students on the American Presidency. In time, the symposia would grow to three days of panel presentations and discussions on various facets of the American Presidency. |
1970
Following the tragic shootings at Jackson State and Kent State, the Center founds its unique Center Fellows Program. In following decades, the number of Fellows grows from 20 to 85, and each Fellow is required to research, write and deliver an original paper on the modern Presidency. |
1970The Center publishes the first issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly, the only scholarly journal that focuses on the President of the United States. PSQ features peer-reviewed articles, special features, review essays, and book reviews covering Presidential decision making; the operations of the White House; Presidential relations with Congress, the courts, the bureaucracy, the public, and the press; and the President's involvement in public policy issues in both the domestic and international arenas. |
1970
The Center bestows the first Distinguished Public Service Medal — later, the Publius Award — among future recipients were President Gerald R. Ford; Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., and Richard Cheney; Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor; Chiefs of Staff Howard Baker, Leon Panetta, Donald Regan, and Thomas ‘Mack’ McLarty; Senate Leader Bill Frist; Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan, George Mitchell, Sam Nunn, Nancy Kassebaum, John Breaux, Richard Lugar, Charles Robb, John McCain, Chuck Hagel, John D. Rockefeller IV, Robert Dole and Elizabeth Dole; Federal Reserve Chairmen Arthur Burns and Alan Greenspan; Secretaries Colin Powell, Caspar Weinberger, Alexis Herman, Tom Ridge, Cyrus Vance, Ronald Brown; and Presidential advisor David Gergen. |
1971The Center publishes The White House: Organization and Operation, based on the 1970 Montauk Symposium, whose participants included Thomas G. Corcoran, Gordon Gray, Francis Horn, Peter Lisagor, William Casey, Louis W. Koenig and Robert Semple, Jr. A second volume, The Presidency of the 1970s, presented the views of Presidential scholars, historians and practitioners on the cease-fire agreement for Vietnam, Nixon’s visit to China and the perilous state of the American economy. |
1977The Center publishes R. Gordon Hoxie’s Command Decisions and the Presidency, with a foreword by President Gerald R. Ford on national security policy and organization. |
1980sThe Center invites White House Interns to participate with its Fellows in the Spring Symposium, which attracts as many as 500 students from across the country. White House Interns offer insight into day-to-day operations, while the Center Fellows present their research on the modern Presidency. |
1984The Center publishes The Presidency and National Security Policy, a collection of essays edited by R.Gordon Hoxie that includes such authors as George Shultz, Caspar W. Weinberger, Robert C. McFarlane, M. Peter McPherson, Henry Rowen, Brent Scowcroft and John W. Vessey, Jr. |
1989The Center publishes The Presidency in Transition, edited by R. Gordon Hoxie, with articles by Frank Carlucci, Kenneth Duberstein, C. Boyen Gray, Stephen Hess, Edwin Meese III, Walter F. Mondale, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Charles Wick. |
1993The Center launches a White House Lecture Series featuring Presidential scholars who discuss the evolution of the Presidency and compare and contrast leadership styles. Speakers include David Gergen, former Counselor to the President; Alexis Herman, Assistant to the President and Director, Office of Public Liaison; and James Lee Witt, Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among others. |
1999
The Center moves to Washington, D.C., and soon adds Dr. David M. Abshire, former U. S. Ambassador to NATO and Special Counselor to President Reagan, as its president. Under Dr. Abshire, the Center seeks to study, inform, and advise the federal government in addition to educating young leaders. |
2000The section of the first one-hundred days of the Presidents from FDR to George H.W. Bush, which appeared in the Center’s Triumphs and Tragedies of the Modern Presidency: Seventy-Six Case Studies in Presidential Leadership, is released to candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush in a tightly fought election that required a decision by the Supreme Court. Companion volumes such as Advancing Innovation and In Harms Way: Intervention and Prevention examine, respectively, science policy and military interventions and nation building. |
2001Already at the press on September 11th, the Center sharpens its warnings in the preface to Comprehensive Strategic Reform: A Panel Report to the President and Congress that national leaders must strategically rethink our national interests in the post-Cold War world. |
2002
CSP expands Presidential Fellows program from 20 to 45 Fellows, while Donald Marron and James Moffett create awards for Presidential Fellows who excel, respectively, in historical analyses and the modern Presidency. Future Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge reads CSP material and agrees to a CSP proposal to reach out to think tanks, universities, and security experts. A series of roundtables are conducted in the following months in the CSP boardroom and a database of articles related to homeland security is created with the help of Oracle. |
2003The Center holds a national conference on U.S.-Muslim relations, publishing the proceedings as An Initiative: Strengthening U.S-Muslim Communications. The Center also launches its Presidential Fellowships, which encourage individuals and corporations to sponsor a Fellow from one of the 100 universities and colleges now participating in the program. |
2004The Center drafts and circulates its Declaration for Civility and Inclusive Leadership, which more than 185 national leaders sign. Succeeding editions of the Declaration are published in 2006 and 2008. Also, Congress mandates that the Center develop a business plan for a Foundation for International Understanding, which, once operational, will fund video, television, Internet and other media projects aimed at presenting more accurately America’s culture, history and institutions, while opening the door to greater U.S. understanding of other cultures. |
2005The Vice President encourages the Center to continue its efforts to better organize research to detect smuggled nuclear weapons. The Secretary of State cites the Center’s President, Dr. Abshire, as a source of guidance on public diplomacy. |
2006
At the request of Congressman Frank Wolf, the Center works with three other think tanks to establish and staff the Iraq Study Group (ISG). A bipartisan commission chaired by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former 9/11 Commission Co-Chair and retired Congressman Lee Hamilton, the ISG members conducted extensive, confidential interviews with current and former government officials, military leaders, diplomats from several nations, and regional experts and traveled to Iraq in preparation to make final recommendations to Congress and the White House. |
2007The Center launches Agenda 2008 to help prepare the next President to confront ten domestic and international issues facing the country. Key components include David Abshire's A Call to Greatness: Challenging Our Next President and a series of roundtable discussions on issues climate change and energy policy, Presidential science and technology assets and geopolitical relations. The Center sponsors the Project on National Security Reform's (PNSR), which is analyzing the national security process in the wake of the September 11th attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the invasion of Iraq. CSPC initiates a Nuclear Defense Working Group to consider U.S. efforts to prevent and/or defend against clandestine nuclear attack, as well as a high-level Afghanistan Study Group to examine the diverse options facing the U.S. and its allies in the region. With an eye to finding solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Center co-sponsors a forum on the topic and receives a $1 million grant from U.S. AID to foster reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinian territories through social and economic development and interfaith dialogue. |
2008In advance of the new President coming into office, the Center launches a number of initiatives aimed both at renewing our sense of national purpose and at helping policymakers develop practical, concrete solutions to national crises. An initial step is changing the name of the Center to the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, which reflects the organization's extensive work both on and with Capitol Hill. Agenda 2008 working groups continue to develop strategic recommendations on critical national challenges, and breakthrough policy ideas are shared with the President-elect, his transition team and Congressional leaders. In September, CSPC launches the Strengthening America's Future Initiative (SAFI), which calls for the next President to complete a comprehensive net assessment of national challenges, resources and priorities. David Walker, Norman Augustine, and Roy Romer are leading SAFI's bipartisan Steering Committee of high-ranking former government officials and advisors. The European Exchange Program brings 17 rising European leaders to Washington to discuss the Presidential transition and issues of concern to the new Administration and the transatlantic alliance. The Center joins with the Meridian International Center to continue laying the groundwork for a Foundation for International Understanding. |
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