Foundation Watch
The Ford Foundation’s International Agenda
Supports Palestinian, Feminist and Population Control Groups
(Foundation Watch, June 2004 PDF here)
Overseas NGOs look to the United States for help in building their war-torn and poverty-stricken societies. The Ford Foundation has made its reputation for generous and innovative non-governmental international giving. So where’s the money going?
Each year, the Ford Foundation receives about 40,000 grant applications from which it selects about 2500 grantees. Ford has always prided itself on being one of the most international-minded of foundations. A report published by the Foundation Center this past October, using 2001 grants for analysis, says that the Ford Foundation gives more internationally than any other American foundation. According to the center, Ford’s $616.4 million in international grants in 2001 was only matched by the Gates Foundation, which gave $528.1 million. Only one other American foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, gave over $100 million to overseas organizations in 2001.
It’s probable that a comparable analysis of 2002 figures will find the Gates Foundation in first place and Ford a distant second. The Ford Foundation’s endowment was dramatically affected by the 2001 recession, which caused Ford’s endowment to shrink by over a billion dollars. Ford only lists $211.5 million in international grants made in 2002. In 2002, the Ford Foundation reported total assets of $9,300,140,000 and total giving of $509,700,353. It’s likely that Ford’s overseas grants will have increased in 2003, but those cumulative figures are not yet available.
Despite the dramatic drop, Ford’s international programs are larger than the total grantmaking of most foundations. Ford has thirteen overseas offices, in Nairobi, Cairo, Johannesburg, Lagos, Beijing, New Delhi, Jakarta, Manila, Hanoi, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Santiago, Chile, and Moscow.
International Fellowships Fund:
Training a New Generation of Bureaucrats
Much of the Ford Foundation’s international giving consists of fellowships. Ford has had a long tradition of giving fellowships for study in America. The most illustrious alumnus of these fellowships is United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who won a Ford Foundation fellowship in 1959 to travel from Ghana to study at Macalester College, a Minnesota liberal arts school so international-minded that it once flew the United Nations flag.
Annan, reminiscing in a 2003 New Yorker profile, recalled that the Ford funds allowed him to travel America, where he occasionally experienced discrimination. (After Annan graduated from Macalester in 1961, he won a Carnegie Corporation fellowship, which enabled him to study economics in Switzerland and launch his career as an international bureaucrat.)
In 2000, the Ford Foundation dramatically increased its international fellowships program with a 10-year, $280 million grant to create the International Fellowships Fund, an organization that’s administered by the Institute for International Education. In 2003, this fund awarded 460 fellowships from a field of nearly 20,000 applicants. Ultimately the fund expects to award 3,000 fellowships during its ten-year life.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Ford is deliberately trying to reach out to “marginalized” Third World students. For instance, the residents of China’s five largest cities are barred from applying. Flyers for the program in Mexico say the program is for “indigenous groups.” Ford recruiters in Brazil deliberately stepped up their activities in areas with large concentrations of blacks.
It’s of course too early to tell whether anyone of this decade’s Ford Foundation International Fellows will be the Kofi Annan of his generation, but despite the emphasis on “marginalized” recruits, it’s clear that Ford expects to be in the business of picking winners. International Fellowships Program chairman Donald McHenry, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Carter Administration, was quoted in a Ford Foundation press release as saying that the program demonstrates “that leadership qualities can be identified and cultivated.”
No one can know how the Ford Foundation International Fellows will do in life, but the effect of Ford’s other international funding is apparent. Much of what Ford does overseas is give money to groups that champion ever-expanding government and attack capitalism and American foreign policy. Not all of Ford’s international funding goes to the left. In this century, Ford funds have gone to three center-right organizations:
— The Center for Strategic and International Studies received one grant for $100,000 in 2000 and two grants totaling $200,000 in 2001 for research into democratic political reform in Africa and in China.
— The Lexington Institute received one grant for $150,000 in 2000 and one grant for $175,000 in 2002 for research into promoting market-oriented reforms in Cuba.
— The Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation received grants for $235,000 in 2000, $175,000 in 2002, and $200,000 in 2004 for programs dealing with nuclear non-proliferation.
By contrast, six large conservative think tanks–the American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution, Hudson Institute, and Manhattan Institute–received no Ford funds in 2000–2004.
It’s impossible to cover in one article everything Ford does overseas. But here are two examples of Ford’s international activities that are emblematic of the foundation’s outlook. Ford’s massive amount of support for the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism led to revelations that Ford funding has gone to Palestinian terrorist organizations. Those disclosures now complicate Ford grantmaking to American universities. Second, Ford grants under program categories benignly entitled “Asset Building and Community Development” and “Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom” have gone to support controversial feminist and population control nonprofits.
The World Conference Against Racism
In April, the provosts of nine universities, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and MIT, complained about a new Ford Foundation regulation requiring them to certify that they will not use Ford grants to promote violence, terrorism, bigotry or the destruction of any nation-state. The provosts complained that they could not be expected to monitor how their grants are used and that signing such agreements could violate the principle of academic freedom.
Critics such as the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman are appalled that anyone would claim support for terrorism is a protected university freedom. But the Ford requirement was only decided last November after Congress expressed outrage that Ford grants could be going to terror groups. How could this have occurred?
In 2000-2002 much of the Ford Foundation’s international funding went to support the “World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance,” which took place in Durban, South Africa in September 2001. The conference combined an official international conference with a parallel conference, which occurred simultaneously, of representatives from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). For all practical purposes, the meetings should be regarded as parts of one conference.
The Ford Foundation tirelessly promoted the World Conference Against Racism. An article by Bharati Sadasivam in the Spring 2001 Ford Foundation Report described some of the elaborate preparations. In one regional conference in Santiago, Chile, delegates debated whether “indigenous people” or “indigenous peoples” was the politically correct term. (A “people,” the conference concluded, could be treated as a captive nation, which could secede, while “peoples” were ethnic groups without a national identity.) At another regional meeting in Dakar, Senegal participants discussed whether or not they could seek reparations from the West for the slave trade. Indians discussed whether or not to give more rights to Dalits, the caste commonly known as “untouchables.”
U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson, secretary-general of the conference, told the Ford Foundation Report that the World Conference Against Racism “is a victims’ conference. It has to speak for and listen to the voices of those who are marginalized, excluded, discriminated against and put down because of their color or their background.”
In a pre-conference statement, Bradford K. Smith, Ford’s vice-president for Peace and Social Justice, said the conference goals of preventing racism and racial discrimination were ideals that “have been at the core of the Ford Foundation’s mission since its conception.” He predicted the conference would significantly redefine “the relationship between governments and citizens’ groups on seemingly intractable issues of human rights and social justice.” Smith claimed Ford would spend $10 million on the World Conference Against Racism. However, Ford’s database of grants shows that it spent at least $15 million–and that only counts grants officially identified as connected to the conference in some way.
The actual total amount of Ford spending on the conference is likely to be far higher. For example, the National Congress of American Indians has received $366,400 from Ford since 2000, none of it specifically for the World Conference. But a November 2000 statement from the organization still posted on its website (ncai.org) says “assistance was provided to NCAI and NARF (the Native American Rights Fund) by the Ford Foundation” to participate in the conference. The statement also invited delegates to the group’s annual convention to spend the afternoon of November 14, 2000 at “an international breakout session where tribal leaders will be asked what are Indian Country’s most important issues in regards to racism. This is a significant opportunity for Indian Country to voice their concerns regarding racism in both the federal and state criminal justice system, in obtaining adequate housing, employment and health care, and in obtaining equal education. Moreover, it will provide tribal leaders the opportunity to discuss the failure of the United States to recognize the right of self-determination and the racist legal doctrines this country relies on to deny tribes this right.”
Even groups not known to receive Ford funding noticed the extensive Ford presence in Durban. The Northwest Labor & Employment Law Office (LELO) is not in the Ford grants database. Yet its delegate to the conference, Garry Owens, noted in his conference report (posted at lelo.org) that at his hotel, “most of the hotel guests connected to the UN Conference were US citizens involved in the environmental racism struggle. The Ford Foundation had subsidized their work and they were onsite also.”
Ford funding was present in every aspect of the conference:
— Two grants totaling $1 million went to two South African nonprofits to organize the non-governmental part of the World Conference Against Racism.
— The Institute of International Education (which administers Ford’s international fellowships) received $1.5 million to pay for travel expenses for the non-governmental delegates.
— The Earth Times Foundation received $125,000 to print a daily conference newspaper and update the conference’s web site.
— Firelight Media received $450,000 to create a documentary about the conference.
— The Office of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights received $500,000 to promote the conference’s findings.
What did the Ford Foundation get for its money? Unfortunately, the World Conference Against Racism swiftly degenerated into a conference of anti-American and anti-Semitic hostility. Delegates alternated between hating America and hating Israel. The U.S. deliberately sent a low-level delegation to the governmental side of the conference (Secretary of State Colin Powell refused to attend). American and Israeli delegates walked out of the conference early, protesting a clause in a draft that recognized with “deep concern the increase of racist practices of Zionism” and claimed that Zionism “was based on racial superiority.” Delegates from European governments nearly walked over out over a clause that called the slave trade a “crime against humanity”–a legal definition that could leave governments and corporations open to massive lawsuits from groups demanding reparations. Ultimately the conference expressed “concern about the rights of Palestinians under foreign occupation” without mentioning Israel by name, and it denounced the slave trade in a way that did not hold Europeans legally liable for reparations.
The NGO part of the World Conference Against Racism took a far harder line. R.W. Johnson, reporting for the Sunday Times of London, noted “this was a conference rich in posturing and rhetoric but woefully short on realism.” The NGO conference delegates, Johnson reported, produced a declaration that was strongly anti-American and took the hardest of hard lines on every issue. Israel was repeatedly branded as an apartheid state guilty of ethnic cleansing and genocide, and both Israeli and Jewish delegates were subjected to racial abuse and physical harassment.”
In the U.S., there was bipartisan condemnation of the conference. George Will wrote a column denouncing it as “a United Nations orgy of hate directed at Israel and the United States.” In a letter to the Washington Post Rep. Tom Lantos (D–California), a U.S. government delegate to the conference, said “Will’s characterization was right on target.” Lantos charged that the parallel NGO conference “was stacked with anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic activists. The official NGO document they produced debases such critical human rights concerns as ‘genocide,’ ‘ethnic cleansing,’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ by using them to describe Israel’s policies in the occupied territories. The same activists who polluted the NGO forum organized daily anti-Semitic rallies around the conference, attracting thousands of demonstrators.”
The Palestinian Connection
Ordinarily, the World Conference Against Racism’s official findings would be placed on the same dusty shelf where most United Nations reports go. But investigative journalist Edwin Black has showed that Palestinian groups undertook much of the anti-Israeli agitation at Durban, and these groups were heavily subsidized by the Ford Foundation. Black’s reporting, which was presented in a four-part series for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, subsequently appeared last October in many newspapers, including the New York Sun and Forward.
Black’s investigation focused on two Palestinian nonprofits: the Palestinian Committee for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment (commonly known as LAW), and the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), a coalition of 90 Palestinian nonprofits. According to Black, LAW received grants of $1.1 million from Ford since 1997 and “took leadership positions on the Durban conference steering committees, conducted workshops and even sponsored a pre-conference mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip for South African delegates, to convince them that Israel was an apartheid state.”
As for PNGO, Black found that it received $1.7 million from Ford from 1999 to 2002 and $350,000 in 2003. In addition, the Washington-based Advocacy Institute received $180,000 in 2000 to bring PNGO members to Washington. According to the Advocacy Institute web site, this money was used “to strengthen PNGO’s advocacy capacity” through “message development, coalition building, media” and “access and persuasion of decision makers.”
Renad Qubaj, PNGO’s program coordinator, told Black that “In Durban, for sure we published posters saying, ‘End the occupation,’ things like that, and we published a study, had a press conference, organized our partners and protest marches.”
“Of course our biggest donations come from Ford,” added PNGO steering committee member Allam Jarrar. “We have been in partnership with Ford for a long time–a real partnership, a real understanding of our needs.”
All in all, Black calculated that $35 million in Ford funds went to “Arab and pro-Palestinian groups” in 2000-2001. Black noted that several million dollars also went to American and Israeli groups promoting peace. Ford also has a five-year, $20 million grant to the New Israel Fund, an Israeli charity that acts as a subcontractor disbursing Ford grants to other Israeli nonprofits.
Since 2002 the U.S. Agency for International Development has required that any American charity that disburses funds in Palestine must require its grantees to submit a “Certification Regarding Terrorist Financing,” which states that none of the grant money will be used to “advocate or support terrorist activities.” Unfortunately, Ford seals all records of the grants it makes until ten years after the grant ends. That means any evidence that Ford funds are being used for terror is locked in Ford’s file cabinets.
Several recipients of Ford money, including the Palestinian NGO Network and the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, have loudly protested the U.S. government’s anti-terror requirement. PNGO said the Agency for International Development was imposing “unacceptable conditions” on charitable grants. “Who defines what is terror?” Renad Qubaj said. “All funds received by the NGOs should be unconditioned–no political conditions.” Allam Jarrar added that “Ford does not make us sign this agreement” about terrorism.
Black also reported that LAW was under investigation for corruption. Late in 2002, a group of LAW’s donors, including Ford, the Dutch charity Cortaid, the Swedish branch of Save the Children, and the governments of Canada and Luxembourg, were concerned that LAW was squandering their contributions. According to Black, these organizations spent $100,000 ($80,000 from Ford) to hire Ernst and Young to audit LAW’s books. The accounting firm found that nearly 40 percent of the $9.6 million they gave LAW over a five-year period was “either ineligible, unsupported, misappropriated, or never spent on programs.”
Ernst & Young further found that $2.3 million of the money was “retained” by LAW, which Black reports turned “LAW into a sort of bank under the nominal control of its then-executive director, Khader Shkirat.” (Shkirat personally received $60,000 from Ford to study English at Boston University and human rights at Harvard.) The accountants found $75,000 in charitable funds was used by LAW for first-class or business-class international airline tickets, $100,000 went for “lavish hospitality,” and $490,000 was loaned to LAW board members. An Ernst & Young official described Ford’s funding arrangements as “goulash,” Black wrote. “Everything goes into the pot, everything goes out of the pot. No one knows what is what ??not Ford, not any of them.”
Congress Pressures Ford to Change Policies
Black’s investigation prompted an outcry in Congress. In the House, twenty-one members, led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D–New York), called for an investigation of possible Ford grants to terrorist groups. Sen. Charles Grassley (R–Iowa) threatened an investigation by the Senate Finance Committee. He said “questions raised about the Ford Foundation and terrorist front organizations obviously must be answered.”
Ford made its response in a November 17, 2003 letter from Ford president Susan Berresford to Rep. Nadler. Berresford stated that “the Foundation has not and would never knowingly support racial, religious, ethnic, or other forms of bigotry. Nor have we or would we knowingly fund any group that advocates violence or denies the legitimacy of Israel’s existence.” But she did not deny any of Black’s findings.
Berresford also promoted a revisionist view of Ford funding for the World Conference Against Racism. “We now recognize that we did not have a complete picture of the activities, organizations, and people involved” in the Durban conference, Berresford wrote. “We deeply regret that Foundation grantees may have taken part in unacceptable behavior at Durban.”
Berresford also announced several changes Ford would make in its international grantmaking. Henceforth, the foundation would include in its grant agreement letter two clauses which grantees would have to sign, stating that the grantee “will not promote violence or terrorism,” and that the Ford-funded nonprofit would not practice bigotry or call “for the destruction of any state.” Moreover, Berresford said that every two weeks Ford would check the list of terrorist groups published by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. She promised that the foundation would defund any organization placed on the list. Ford also hired KPMG to produce a “risk matrix” of its grantees to determine which had the potential to become terrorist organizations. The policy changes instituted by Berresford appear to have pleased Congress, because there have been no further investigations.
But LAW continues to face international scrutiny. Ford defunded LAW and blocked payment of the last two years of its five-year, $750,000 grant. Ford, however, did not defund the Palestinian NGO Network or any other Palestinian grantee. Last December the governments of Norway, Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, and the European Union filed a formal complaint with the Palestinian Authority charging that LAW and Khader Shkirat had stolen more than $2 million of their contributions. In January, the Palestinian Authority froze the assets of several bank accounts where the money was allegedly placed, interrogated 26 people associated with the fraud, and arrested Khader Shkirat. The Jerusalem Post reported that no date for Shkirat’s trial has been set.
Ford Support for Feminist and Population Control Groups
Most Americans know the Ford Foundation no longer has a connection to the Ford Motor Company or the family of Henry Ford. They know it’s a major grantmaker and have heard that it is “liberal.” But do they have any idea what liberal philanthropy funds these days?
Many Ford Foundation grants go to organizations devoted to support for feminist organizing and for feminist activities variously called “gender equity,” “reproductive rights” or “reproductive health.” Ford-funded groups like Catholics for a Free Choice, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the International Women’s Health Coalition were co-sponsors of “March for Women’s Lives” which attracted thousands of protesters to Washington, DC on April 25. These groups have an international agenda. They use grants to lobby the United Nations and other international agencies for government mandates promoting abortion, population control and feminist approaches to public policy. Space does not permit a complete examination of these groups, but here’s a look at what Ford supports through its programs called “Asset Building and Community Development” and “Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom.”
Catholics for a Free Choice (cath4choice.org)
Ford funding: 2002–$1,200,000; 2000–$334,000
Writing in Insight in 2002, Joel Mowbray reported that the Ford Foundation had been this organization’s largest donor since 1997. The Washington, DC-based group continues to lobby for the Bush Administration to restore $34 million in funding to the United Nations Population Fund. The Administration has blocked funding the Population Fund because of its history of subsidizing abortions.
Catholics for a Free Choice (2002 revenue – $3.6 million) continues to engage in an international tug-of-war with the Vatican. As a recognized international NGO the group enjoys “special consultative status” with the UN Economic and Social Council. In 2002, the group demanded that because of the U.S. priest sex abuse scandals, the United Nations should launch an investigation of the Church as a violator of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. (The Vatican is a Permanent Observer to the UN). There has been no such investigation.
In November, the group’s European branch asked the European Union to repeal an exemption that permitted Catholic hospitals and schools to accept EU funds (which it has said amounts to 99 million euros from 1997 to 2002) without being required to practice EU non-discrimination employment mandates. The group says Catholic institutions accepting EU funds should be forced to hire gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and divorced people, as well as anyone who opposes Church teachings on abortion and other issues.
Catholics for the Right to Decide (cath4choice.org)
Ford funding: 2004–$120,000; 2003–$420,000; 2002–$100,000; 2000–$480,000;
This pro-abortion lobbying group says it is part of an “international network” with Catholics for a Free Choice and has branches in Mexico, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. A statement posted on the group’s website says that it “works democratically and jointly for a woman’s right to control her own body and for the full enjoyment of their sexuality without discrimination based on class, race, ethnicity, creed, age or sexual preference.” In October, the group’s Chilean branch marked a Latin America population conference with billboards urging condom use.
International Planned Parenthood Federation (ippf.org)
Ford grants: 2004–$100,000; 2003–$200,000; 2001–$150,000; 2000–$300,000
In 2001, the Bush Administration restored a policy, first implemented by the Reagan Administration but reversed by the Clinton Administration, that prohibits U.S. government funds from going to international organizations that fund abortions. This decision cut $20 million from the budget of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which the London-based organization has spent the past three years unsuccessfully trying to restore. IPPF director-general Steven Sinding has claimed the budget cut was part of a Bush Administration “war on women” and that President Bush “is single-handedly attempting to cut back commitments…and to ignore agreed-upon human rights and fundamental freedoms.” IPPF also charged that its loss of US government funding was part of a “stealth campaign” by the Bush Administration, which was “systematically working to undermine reproductive health around the world.”
The International Planned Parenthood Federation continues to advocate increases in condom use worldwide. In March, IPPF, working with Marie Stopes International, a British-based abortion advocacy group, announced the release of new condoms designed to appeal to Australian teenagers. The condoms bear the colors of the Australian aboriginal flag (red, yellow, and black) and come in strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate flavors.
Ford also gave IPPF’s American counterpart, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a $1 million grant in 2001 and a $550,000 grant in 2003.
Center for Gender in Organizations, Simmons College (simmons.edu/scm/cgo)
Ford grants: 2001–$875,000
Ford funds the Center’s work with the Collaborative of International Feminist Organizations to promote international feminist organizing. For instance, it supports research by Center senior fellow Carol Cohn on what’s called “gender mainstreaming in international security institutions.” In English, this means coming up with ways that the United Nations can support Resolution 1325, a non-binding resolution, passed by the U.N. Security Council in 2000, which calls on the UN “to adopt a gender perspective” in all its peacekeeping missions. It urges women to be consulted and women’s needs addressed in any UN mission that involves the use of force. Resolution 1325, Cohn writes, “is an important part of the struggle to end wars and build sustainable peace.”
Given the UN’s glacial speed, it will be years before it’s clear whether the resolution changes how the UN deploys troops. But feminists are using Resolution 1325 to advance their agenda in other areas. Both the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the United Nations branch of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom have created websites to promote the resolution and have organized workshops where activists discuss how to make Resolution 1325 part of their country’s policies.
Population Communications International (population.org)
Ford funding: 2003–$125,000; 2002–$505,000; 2000–$550,000;
Population Communications International (PCI), headquartered in New York City (2002 revenue – $4.7 million), tries to place population-limitation messages into popular culture around the world. It has held eight “Soap Summits,” where writers, producers, and actors associated with “General Hospital,” “As the World Turns,” and dozens of other soap operas discuss ways to introduce population-control messages.
For example, in India, PCI was a partner in creating the radio soap opera “Taru,” which addressed “early marriage, son preference, birth spacing, and other critical health and social issues.” The heroine of “Taru” works for a “reproductive health” clinic, and numerous commercials in the series urge women to use “reproductive health” clinics regularly.
At the most recent Soap Summit, held in Nairobi this past June, participants endorsed a 21-point agenda, including calling upon broadcasters to promote “issue-based entertainment” on their networks and requesting that donors “work as equal partners in generating an agenda for issue-based entertainment programs.”
International Women’s Health Coalition (iwhc.org)
Ford funding: 2002–$1,250,000
As with the IPPF, the IWHC has denounced Bush Administration cuts to groups that fund abortions. A 2002 article by IWHC vice-president Ellen Sweet in Ms. Magazine declared that President Bush’s cost-cutting measures “pander to a minority in the U.S. who cry abortion but actually seek to eliminate all contraception except abstinence and the rhythm method.”
The New York City-based IWHC (2002 revenues–$8.6 million) is a key player in another coalition, the International Sexual and Reproductive Rights Coalition of nineteen non-government organizations devoted to preserving unrestricted abortions. In an April 2002 address to the U.N. Commission on Population and Development, IWHC president Francoise Girard asked UN delegates to “reaffirm the commitments regarding adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights that they have already made,” including an assurance to “have access to high quality, user-friendly, confidential sexual and reproductive health services, without discrimination.”
An IWHC report published last year, “Bush’s Other War,” attacks the Bush Administration on a wide range of issues. The coalition calls on the Administration to restore budget cuts to the United Nations Population Fund and the World Heath Organization’s Human Reproduction Program, convince the Senate to pass the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (which was blocked by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2002 and has not been reconsidered), and restore $21.5 million in cuts to international family planning programs. IWHC also seeks funding increases in U.S. domestic programs such as Title X family planning programs, and it has called on Congress to reject twelve of President Bush’s judicial nominees (including Charles Pickering, Priscilla Owen, and Carolyn Kuhl), and nine other nominations.
The IWHC board is chaired by journalist Kati Marton, author of Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our Recent History. Marton is wife of former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and former wife of ABC news anchor Peter Jennings.
Martin Wooster is a Visiting Fellow at Capital Research Center