Hudson Institute

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Hudson Institute, was founded in 1961, the Hudson Institute is a right wing think tank 'dedicated to thinking about the future from a contrarian point of view,' according to its literature. It has been funded by, amongst others: AgrEvo, Dow AgroSciences, Monsanto, Novartis Crop Protection, Zeneca, Du Pont, DowElanco, ConAgra, Cargill, Procter & Gamble.

The Hudson Institute has published books and reports on everything from military strategy and national security, to agriculture and the environment, to trade, labor, and economic development, to health care, welfare, and education, but the primary focus is on 'free trade' and competitive enterprise and a strong military. (Founder Herman Kahn was a physicist and military strategist who suggested that nuclear war was winnable).

'Hudson Scholars' who specialise in 'biotechnology' include Michael Fumento, a Senior Fellow, Dennis Avery, a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute; and Alex Avery, director of research and education at the Center for Global Food Issues. All have published numerous articles.

Funding

From 1987 – 2002, Hudson received $12,346,203 from 183 grants from only 8 right-wing foundations:

[2]

According to its 2001 Annual Report, the last available on its web-site, Hudson received some $7,108,000 in income. The following are members of the Hudson Trustees’ Circle having donated more than $25,000 – it is not the full list[3]:

AT&T Foundation

W.H. Brady Foundation

Capital Group Companies, Inc.

Castle Rock Foundation

Eli Lilly and Company

Enron Corporation

Estee Lauder Philanthropic Foundation

FMC Corporation

General Atomics

The German Marshall Fund of the United States

Indiana Chamber of Commerce

W.K. Kellogg Foundation

Lilly Endowment, Inc.

Microsoft Corporation

John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.

The Pew Charitable Trusts

Pfizer, Inc.

Sarah Scaife Foundation

Smith Richardson Foundation

The Starr Foundation

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

Walton Family Foundation, Inc.

HUDSON CHAIRMAN’S CIRCLE — ($10,000.00+)

American Farm Bureau Federation

Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation

David H. Koch Charitable Foundation

ExxonMobil Foundation

General Motors Corporation

IMC Global, Inc.

Inland Foundation, Inc.

Arthur Jordan Foundation

Mr. David H. Koch

Sunrise Assisted Living

Union Pacific Corporation

Westfield Corporation, Inc.


Other known funders have included:

Ag Processing Inc

American Cyanamid

Archer Daniels Midland

Cargill

Ciba-Geigy

ConAgra Foods

DowElanco

DuPont

J Heinz

McDonalds

Monsanto

National Agricultural Chemical Association

Novartis

Proctor & Gamble

Sunkist Growers

United Agri Products[4]

Links to the Bush Administration

Paula Dobriansky - the Under-secretary of State for Global Affairs –was an adjunct fellow

Mitchell E. Daniels Jr- the Director of the Office of Management and Budget was on the Hudson Board as well as the Board of the Capital Research Center.

Wade Horn - the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families was an adjunct fellow

John Weicher - the Assistant Secretary Commissioner, Federal Housing Authority in the Department of Housing and Urban Development was director of urban policy studies at the Institute.

Elliott Abrams - the Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations at the National Security Council was a Senior Fellow from 1989 to 1996.

  • Brunno V. Manno - the Chair of the Commission on Presidential Scholars, was a senior fellow[5].

Staff

  • Herbert I. London – President. In 1990, he was the Conservative Party candidate for Governor of New York, In 1994, he was Republican Party candidate for New York State Comptroller.

Kenneth R. Weinstein - Vice President and Chief Operating Officer - was managing director of the Shalem Center, with offices in Jerusalem and Washington, D.C.

Board of Trustees

  • Jeffrey T. Bergner – President of the PR firm Bergner, Bockorny, Castagnetti, Hawkins & Brain, Inc. Senate lobbying records show that their clients include Monsanto for which the firm was paid $100,000 in the first half of 2003. Issues the company worked on for Monsanto included “biotechnology acceptance” and the controversial growth hormone BST[6]. Other clients included Biogen, Inc, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glaxo Smith Kline, Petroleum Marketers Assn of America, Phrma and NewsCorp.[7]
  • Conrad Black - ex-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hollinger International Inc, ex-owner of the Daily Telegraph
  • Linden S. Blue - vice chairman of General Atomics, a diversified international high technology company with world leadership positions in fusion, fission, and training research and isotope nuclear reactors.
  • Rudy Boschwitz - Ex republican Senator and President Bush Senior emissary to Ethiopia in the spring of 1991.
  • Charles H. Brunie – Chairman Emeritus of Oppenheimer Capital
  • Joseph Epstein - lecturer at Northwestern University
  • Joseph M. Giglio - Chairman of President Reagan’s National Council on Public Works Improvement
  • Roy Innis - Roy Innis is national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) On the board of the National Rifle Association. In January 2004 CORE held a “Teach-In, Demand End to "Eco-Imperialism” along with Roger Bate under the guise of Africa Fighting Malaria (see AEI and IPN); Cyril Boynes, and Niger Innis from CORE, USA; Paul Driessen, from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation / CFACT/ CDFE / and ex-Greenpeace founder and industry hack Patrick Moore, as well as CS Prakash the biotech proponent (see CEI), amongst others. Niger Innes said: “We intend to stop this callous eco-manslaughter. The green movement imposes the views of mostly wealthy, comfortable Americans and Europeans on mostly poor, desperate Africans, Asians and Latin Americans. It violates their most basic human rights. CORE will lay down the gauntlet. Eco-imperialism may not be a household word yet, but it will be after this conference, the first one to address these issues” [8].

The next month in early February, the CDFE and CORE set up the Economic Human Rights Project, with Paul Driessen as its Director(See more on CORE with CDFE)[9]

Trustees emeriti also include:

  • Thomas J. Donohue - president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
  • James H. Dowling – from PR firm Burson-Marsteller
  • Alan Hubbard - From 1990 to 1992, he served as deputy chief of staff to the Vice President of the United States and executive director of the President’s Council on Competitiveness
  • Dan Quayle (honorary)– Republican Vice President under Bush Senior.

Research /Adjunct Fellows / Scholars of Interest

  • Dennis Avery - Center for Global Food Issues Senior Fellow – works on agriculture and biotechnology. Avery is also on the Advisory board of ACSH (see below)[10]
  • Alex Avery – Director of research and education with the Center for Global Food Issues at Hudson (see below).
  • Micheal Fumento – Senior Fellow – Has done the rounds of the right. Ex- American Enterprise Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Consumer Alert, and Reason magazine[11]. On the Science Advisory Board of the Wise Use Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow along with known climate sceptics and industry apologists Sallie Baliunas C. Balling, Bruce Ames, Roger Bate, Hugh Ellsaesser, Michael Fumento, Sherwood B. Idso, Patrick J. Michaels, A. Alan Moghissi, Frederic Seitz, Gerd-Rainer Weber, and Elizabeth Whelan.[12].

Author of Science Under Siege, Polluted Science, The Fat of the Land, and The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, the latter being widely criticised by Aids activists and public health officials[13]. Also been criticised for coining the term “tampon terrorism” to attack women's groups that have raised concern about dioxin in chlorine-bleached tampons[14]. In 2000, Fumento was one of the authors of “the Fears Profiteers” report on the nomorescares website of tobacco-hack and junkman Stephen Milloy (see above)[15]. A contributor to Tech Central Station.[16]

Dennis Avery - Director, Center for Global Food Issues, Senior Fellow

The main person behind many of the attacks on organic food is Dennis Avery, the author of the inspirationally-titled Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic: The Environmental Triumph of High-Yield Farming, Avery sees himself as a missionary, promoting the high-tech farming industries: pesticides, irradiation, factory farming, and the newcomer: biotechnology[17].

He is behind misleading claims that organic food is dangerous and is the originator of the 'E. Coli myth' – that people eating organic foods are at a significantly higher risk of food poisoning .[18] He calls organic food a “gigantic marketing lie. Avery believes that ‘Genetically modified foods are significantly safer than organic and natural foods. Over the last decade, consumers have eaten millions of pounds of genetically altered foods, and millions of tons of feed corn and soybean meal have been used to produce our meat and milk. So far, not even a skin rash has been linked to these new-tech foods’.[19].

Avery was also a contributor to the book called “Fearing Food - Risk, Health and Environment”, edited by Julian Morris and Roger Bate, at the time from the right-wing think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. Other contributors included Lynn Scarlett then from the Reason Foundation and Bruce Ames the controversial cancer scientist on the board of SEPP and a Director of the George C Marshall Institute and academic advisor to the Reason Foundation[20]. Although Avery’s focus is meant to be agriculture, he is also a signatory to many of the CEI letters on climate (see CEI).

Alex Avery - Director of Research and Education, CGFI – Dennis Avery’s son. According to GM Watch: “He is a co-author of, 'Organic Industry Groups Spread Fear for Profit' a report launched on September 21 2000. His co-authors included Graydon Forrer, Monsanto's former head of executive communications, although the report did not disclose that Forrer was a former Monsanto employee”. The report was launched via Steven Milloy’s NoMoreScares.com - website and is still available via StopLabelingLies.com[21].

He is a keen supporter and contributor to CS Prakash’s agbioview website and was instrumental in the biotech-counter attack against two scientists Chapela and Quist who published a paper in Nature that there was GM contamination of Mexican maize. Avery dismissed Quist and Chapela's peer-reviewed study as 'junkscience', and attacked a supporting statement of the scientists. ‘Has anyone else picked up on the “Joint Statement on the Mexican GM Maize Scandal” being whored around by the anti-biotech activists?’ asked Avery, who argued that the pro-GM lobby should organise their own statement. This was organised by Prakash, something that was instrumental in Nature eventually issuing a bodged retraction of the paper[22]. Avery sees the issue of GM contamination as a “needless roadblock of GM crops”[23]. Both Avery’s write for Tech Central Station.

Projects

The institute also runs a number of projects with specific focuses:

Principals and Board members

Affiliations

External Resources

Contact

References

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