CENTER OF THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT

History and Mission

Center of the American Experiment, one of the oldest (est. 1988), and most respected of the state-based think tanks, is a nonpartisan, tax-exempt, public policy and educational institution that brings conservative and free market ideas to bear on the hardest problems facing Minnesota and the nation.

Our vision is for a free and prosperous Minnesota whose cultural and intellectual center of gravity balances on the time-tested principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, and traditional American values. Through research, op-eds, public forums, legislative roundtables, and a stream of publications, we work to create a new Minnesota climate in which conservative ideas are better understood, appreciated, and applied.

Minnesota used to be one of the most liberal states in the nation. Credit for the fact that it isn’t any longer should be shared by many, but we’re proud of the unique and vital role American Experiment played in the transformation.

Over the course of two decades we have refuted politically correct nonsense in higher education, law enforcement, and health care; made the case that the breakdown of the family is the overwhelming social disaster of our time; and shown how lifting troubled lives almost always has more to do with personal responsibility and faith than with new governmental programs and higher taxes.

Major Accomplishments and Significant Publications

• Creation and development of IntellectualTakeout.org, an online community where students overwhelmed by liberal orthodoxy on campus can find a balanced presentation of conservative and free market ideas, and the support they need.

• Establishment of the Center for New Black Leadership, a research and advocacy organization devoted to promoting a market-oriented, community-based vision of public leadership for black communities in America.

• Center publications, op-eds, and testimony leads to replacement in 2003 of the “Profile in Learning,” the worst academic standards in the country, with rigorous, content rich benchmarks for Minnesota students and their schools.

• Center research and leadership led to passage in 1997 of the nation’s first statewide tax credit for educational expense borne by parents and a king-sized expansion of Minnesota's education tax deduction.

• Major Center publication exposes a self-defeating and wildly expensive school desegregation plan for the Twin Cities and leads to its defeat in 1995.

• The Fatherhood Movement: A Call to Action, edited by Wade F. Horn, David Blankenhorn, and Mitchell B. Pearlstein. The 1999 anthology of essays that grew out of a 199 conference hosted by the Center in which several dozen leaders of the then-nascent fatherhood movement from across the country met and debated for the first time.

• “Marriage and Children: A Symposium on Making Marriage More Child Centered,” guest edited by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe. A special 2001 issue of American Experiment Quarterly, featuring essays by 18 distinguished scholars and journalists, that helped define and propel what is now an up-and-running marriage movement in the United States.

• Center’s Minnesota Policy Blueprint (our comprehensive 400-page review of state government released in 1999) leads to permanent across-the-board tax relief for overtaxed Minnesota and other key government reforms, with our tax cut recommendations being enacted nearly to the percentage point.

Media Recognition of Effectiveness

Our hard and credible work has earned us a reputation that doesn’t come easily, and our effectiveness in promoting conservative ideas has been widely recognized:

Star Tribune

“Neither friend nor foe questions the Center’s effectiveness.”

“The leading conservative public policy group in the state.”

“One of the most influential forces in the state’s public policy world.”

“A prolific source of intellectual ammunition for the conservative cause.”

St. Paul Pioneer Press

Plays “an important part in setting the state’s political agenda by developing and marketing conservative policies.”

Minnesota Monthly

“It would be hard to overstate the role [American Experiment] played in bringing conservative ideas into the mainstream in the traditionally liberal bastion of Minnesota.”

Liberal Pulse Magazine

The Center’s “influence on the state over the past decade or so can hardly be overstated.”

Profs. Virginia Gray and Wy Spano

American Experiment has “with great skill, popularized the conservative agenda.”

Center Distinctiveness and Tone

Our tone and the mix of issues we address have been keys to our success, winning us a hearing, respect, influence, and friends across the political spectrum. While holding forth on conservative and free market ideas may yield some benefits, our mandate has never been merely to celebrate or play with them. Rather, it has always been to speed conservative and free market ideas forward, tangibly and measurably. Our main interest, dating from Day One, has been to bring the ideological word to skeptics and newcomers, not just to well-rehearsed members of the choir.

Therefore tone not only matters, it is vital. We have always been committed to pursuing our work with scholarly rigor, not superficiality or sham: with respect, not invective. Energetically questioning the never-ending flow of bad ideas that fill public arenas is fair and essential; rudely questioning the motives of those who advocate them, for example, rarely is.

As for the issues pursued by the Center over the years, we are distinguished by a profound interest in matters of both freedom and equality (of opportunity). This point is noteworthy given that conservative and free market organizations are regularly assumed to be more riveted on the former rather than the latter.

A quick review of our hundreds of publications issued since 1990, or the subjects of our forums and other public events; shows that we have been animated, not just by questions of governmental intrusions and girth, but also by matters of poverty, homelessness, child well-being, racial fairness, etc.

On school choice, for example, I have made very clear that what gets me out of bed in the morning is not just the belief that all families, regardless of economic circumstance, deserve more educational options as a matter of basic liberty, but trying to help a whole generation of kids who are doing just lousy right now and knowing that educational freedom holds critical promise for poor and minority children in particular.

Tackling the Toughest Issues

No Minnesota organization has been more effective in making the case that the breakdown of the family is the overwhelming social disaster of our time, and that all efforts to improve education, reduce crime, decrease drug use, etc., will remain compromised until many more boys and girls get to grow up with their mothers and fathers.

No organization has been more successful in arguing that reducing poverty and expanding equal opportunity are indeed conservative concerns; has spoken and written more boldly, yet graciously, about sensitive questions of race; or has been more pointed in ridiculing and refuting politically correct nostrums and nonsense in fields ranging from higher education to law enforcement to health care.

No organization has sought to make public squares more hospitable to religious expression with a more respectful ear for Minnesota’s many religious voices, and no organization has been more consistent in showing how lifting troubled lives almost always has more to do with faith and personal responsibility, than with new governmental programs and higher taxes.

Influential Publications and Forums

Our publications often make a significant impact. Last fall, for example, the Center issued a report recommending 15 reforms for Minnesota’s election system and already, through bipartisan effort, the Legislature has passed five of the recommendations into law.

Often we co-sponsor events with other Minnesota organizations and are proud to have taken the lead, for example, in bringing together some of Minnesota’s strangest bedfellows under the aegis of “Celebrating John Brandl and His Uncommon Quest for Common Ground,” an annual program involving not just American Experiment, but the likes of Growth & Justice, the Citizens League, the Caux Roundtable, and the Humphrey Institute. Other Center programs in recent years have been in collaboration with the Institute for Justice, the Federalist Society, and the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. A recent legislative roundtable this fall, featuring Prof. Paul Peterson of Harvard, will be jointly sponsored by American Experiment and Education Evolving.