The story
Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1910.1
Establishment
Andrew Carnegie, like other leading internationalists of his day, believed that war could be eliminated by stronger international laws and organizations. "I am drawn more to this cause than to any," he wrote in 1907. Carnegie's single largest commitment in this field was his creation of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
On his seventy-fifth birthday, November 25, 1910, Andrew Carnegie announced the establishment of the Endowment with a gift of $10 million worth of first mortgage bonds, paying a 5% rate of interest. The interest income generated from these bonds was to be used to fund a new think tank dedicated to advancing the cause of world peace. In his deed of gift, presented in Washington on December 14, 1910, Carnegie charged trustees to use the fund to "hasten the abolition of international war, the foulest blot upon our civilization", and he gave his trustees "the widest discretion as to the measures and policy they shall from time to time adopt" in carrying out the purpose of the fund.
Carnegie chose longtime adviser Elihu Root, senator from New York and former Secretary of War and of State, to be the Endowment's first president. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912, Root served until 1925. Founder trustees included Harvard University president Charles William Eliot, philanthropist Robert S. Brookings, former US Ambassador to Great Britain Joseph Hodges Choate, former secretary of state John W. Foster, and Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching president Henry Smith Pritchett.
The first fifty years: 1910–1960
At the outset of America's involvement in World War I in 1917, the Carnegie Endowment trustees unanimously declared, "the most effective means of promoting durable international peace is to prosecute the war against the Imperial Government of Germany to final victory for democracy." In December 1918, Carnegie Endowment Secretary James Brown Scott and four other Endowment personnel, including James T. Shotwell, sailed with President Woodrow Wilson on the USS George Washington to join the peace talks in France.
Carnegie is often remembered for having built Carnegie libraries. They were funded by other Carnegie trusts. However, the Endowment built libraries in Belgium, France, and Serbia in three cities which had been badly damaged in the war. In addition, in 1918, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) began to support library special collections on international issues through its International Mind Alcove program, which aimed to foster a more global perspective among the public in the United States and other countries. The Endowment concluded its support for this program in 1958.
On July 14, 1923, the Hague Academy of International Law, an initiative of the Endowment, was formally opened in the Peace Palace at The Hague. The Peace Palace had been built by the Carnegie Foundation (Netherlands) in 1913 to house the Permanent Court of Arbitration and a library of international law.
In 1925, Nicholas Murray Butler succeeded Elihu Root as president of the Endowment. In December of the same year, the endowment's Board approved a proposal by President Butler to offer aid in modernizing the Vatican Library. From 1926 to 1939, the Carnegie Endowment expended some $200,000 on the endeavor. For his work, including his involvement with the Kellogg–Briand Pact, Butler was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.
In November 1944, the Carnegie Endowment published Raphael Lemkin's Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation – Analysis of Government – Proposals for Redress. The work was the first to bring the word genocide into the global lexicon. In April 1945, James T. Shotwell, director of the Carnegie Endowment's Division of Economics and History, served as chairman of the semiofficial consultants to the US delegation at the San Francisco conference to draw up the United Nations Charter. As chairman, Shotwell pushed for an amendment to establish a permanent United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which exists to this day.
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In December 1945, Butler stepped down after twenty years as president and chairman of the board of trustees. Butler was the last living member of the original board selected by Andrew Carnegie in 1910. John Foster Dulles was elected to succeed Butler as chairman of the board of trustees, where he served until fellow board member Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president of the US in 1952 and appointed Dulles Secretary of State.
In 1946, Alger Hiss succeeded Butler as president of the Endowment but resigned in 1949 after being denounced as a spy for the Soviet Union by Whittaker Chambers. Hiss was replaced in the interim by James T. Shotwell.
In 1947, the Carnegie Endowment's headquarters were moved closer to the United Nations in New York City, while the Washington office at Peter Parker House (700 Jackson Pl., NW) became a subsidiary branch.
In 1950, the Endowment board of trustees appointed Joseph E. Johnson, a historian and former State Department official, to take the helm.
The Cold War years: 1960–1990
In 1963, the Carnegie Endowment reconstituted its International Law Program in order to address several emerging international issues: the increase in significance and impact of international organizations; the technological revolution that facilitated the production of new military weaponry; the spread of Communism; the surge in newly independent states; and the challenges of new forms of economic activity, including global corporations and intergovernmental associations. The program resulted in the New York-based Study Group on the United Nations and the International Organization Study Group at the European center in Geneva.
In 1970, Thomas L. Hughes became the sixth president of the Carnegie Endowment. Hughes moved the Endowment's headquarters from New York to Washington, D.C., and closed the Endowment's European center in Geneva.
The Carnegie Endowment acquired full ownership of Foreign Policy magazine in the spring of 1978. The Endowment published Foreign Policy for 30 years, moving it from a quarterly academic journal to a bi-monthly glossy covering the nexus of globalization and international policy. The magazine was sold to The Washington Post in 2008.
In 1981, Carnegie Endowment Associate Fred Bergsten co-founded the Institute for International Economics—today known as the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Citing the growing danger of a nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan, Thomas L. Hughes formed an eighteen-member Task Force on Non-Proliferation and South Asian Security to propose methods for reducing the growing nuclear tensions on the subcontinent.
In 1989, two former Carnegie associates, Barry Blechman and Michael Krepon, founded the Henry L. Stimson Center.
After the Cold War: 1990–2000
In 1991, Morton Abramowitz was named the seventh president of the Endowment. Abramowitz, previously a State Department official, focused the Endowment's attention on Russia in the post-Soviet era. In this spirit, the Carnegie Endowment opened the Carnegie Moscow Center in 1994 as a home of Russian scholar-commentators.
Jessica Mathews joined the Carnegie Endowment as its eighth president in May 1997. Under her leadership, Carnegie's goal was to become the first multinational/global think tank.
In 2000, Mathews announced the creation of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) headed by Demetrios Papademetriou which became the first stand-alone think tank concerned with international migration.
Additionally, from 1993 to present, the Endowment publishes books, papers, e-newsletters, and policy briefs each year.
The Global Think Tank: 2000 – present
As first laid out with the Global Vision in 2007, the Carnegie Endowment aspired to be the first global think tank. During Mathews' tenure as president, the Carnegie Endowment launched the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut (2006), Carnegie Europe in Brussels (2007), and the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center at the Tsinghua University in Beijing (2010). Additionally, in partnership with the al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Carnegie established the Al-Farabi Carnegie Program on Central Asia in Kazakhstan in late 2011.
In April 2016, the sixth international Center, Carnegie India, opened in New Delhi.
In February 2015, Mathews stepped down as president after 18 years. William J. Burns, former US Deputy Secretary of State, became Carnegie's ninth president. After Burns' nomination and confirmation as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, then-California Supreme Court Justice and Stanford professor Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar became President of the Carnegie Endowment on November 1, 2021.
In April 2022, the Carnegie Endowment was compelled to close its Moscow center at the direction of the Russian government.
In April 2023 Russia's Ministry of Justice added the center to the so-called list of "foreign agents", and in July 2024 it designated the organization as "undesirable".
The James C. Gaither Junior Fellows Program: 1910 – present
The James C. Gaither Junior Fellows Program (formerly known as the Carnegie Junior Fellows Program and later renamed in honor of former Carnegie Board of Trustees Chair James C. Gaither) is a one-year research fellowship hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.
The endowment offers approximately 12 to 15 full-time, salaried positions annually to graduating seniors and recent graduates who have not yet begun graduate study. Designed for individuals with a strong career interest in international affairs, fellows are selected through a university-endorsement process from a pool of nominees submitted by 400 participating institutions. Once appointed, Junior Fellows serve as full-time research assistants to Carnegie senior scholars across key program areas including nuclear policy, technology and international affairs, democracy and governance, geoeconomics, and regional studies. The Fellows contribute to policy briefs, books, and op-eds, assist with data collection and editing, help prepare congressional testimony, and organize briefings for journalists, government officials, and foreign diplomats.
Notable alumni of the program include high-ranking government officials and diplomats such as former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, Senator Jeff Merkley, former National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, and former Presidential Senior Adviser turned ABC news anchor George Stephanopoulos. Other distinguished former fellows hold prominent leadership roles across foreign policy, finance, philanthropy, and advocacy, including Eurasia Group Managing Director Evan Medeiros, Arctic Institute President Victoria Herrmann, and Ford Foundation Senior Adviser Kavita Ramdas.
Board of trustees
Jane Hartley, Chair. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom and to France.
Steven A. Denning, Vice Chair. Chairman Emeritus, General Atlantic.
Ayman Asfari, Executive Chairman, Venterra Group; Co-founder, The Asfari Foundation.
Jim Balsillie, Founder and Chair, Centre for International Governance Innovation; Co-founder, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
C. K. Birla, Chairman, CK Birla Group.
Bill Bradley, Managing director, Allen & Company.
David Burke, Co-founder, CEO, and managing director, Makena Capital Management.
Mariano-Florentino "Tino" Cuéllar, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Henri de Castries, Chairman, Institut Montaigne; Chairman, Europe General Atlantic; Vice Chairman, Nestlé.
Eileen Donahoe, Executive Director, Global Digital Policy Incubator, Stanford University.
Anne Finucane, Chairman of the Board, Bank of America Europe.
Patricia House, Vice Chairman of the Board, C3.ai.
Maha Ibrahim, General Partners, Canaan Partners.
Walter B. Kielholz, Honorary Chairman, Swiss Re Ltd.
Boon Hwee Koh, Chairman, Altara Ventures Pte Ltd.
Susan Liautaud, Susan Liautaud & Associates Ltd.
Scott D. Malkin, Chairman, Value Retail PLC.
Adebayo Ogunlesi, Chairman and Managing Partner, Global Infrastructure Partners.
Kenneth E. Olivier, Past Chairman and CEO, Dodge & Cox.
Jonathan Oppenheimer, Director, Oppenheimer Generations.
Catherine James Paglia, Director, Enterprise Asset Management.
Deven J. Parekh, Managing Director, Insight Partners.
Victoria Ransom, Founder & CEO, Prisma; Former CEO, Wildfire & Director of Product, Google.
L. Rafael Reif, President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
George Siguler, Founding Partner and Managing Director, Siguler Guff and Company.
Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Trust.
Rohan S. Weerasinghe, General Counsel, Citigroup Inc.
Yichen Zhang, Chairman and CEO, CITIC Capital
Robert Zoellick, Senior Counselor, Brunswick Group.
From Wikipedia’s article on Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4