Aspen Institute

The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1949 as the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies.^[2] It is headquartered in Washington, D.C., but also has campuses in Aspen, Colorado, its original home.^[3]

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Aspen Institute

Formation	1949; 75 years ago (1949)
Founder	Walter Paepcke
Type	Research institute, think tank
Tax ID no.	84-0399006
Headquarters	2300 N Street, NW, Suite 700
Location	Washington, D.C., U.S.
President & CEO	Daniel R. Porterfield
Revenue	$160,402,073[1] (2019)
Expenses	$147,137,098[1] (2019)
Website	www.aspeninstitute.org

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The Institute is largely funded by foundations such as the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Gates Foundation, the Lumina Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, by seminar fees, and by individual donations.^[4] Its board of trustees includes leaders from politics, government, business and academia who also contribute to its support. A report by the Center for International Policy's Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative of the top 50 think tanks^[5] found that from 2014 to 2018 the Aspen Institute received more than US$8 million in funding from outside the United States, the fifth-highest amount the think tanks. This funding originated primarily in Western democracies but also included "sizeable donations from undemocratic regimes in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates."^[6]

The institute was largely the creation of Walter Paepcke, a Chicago businessman who had become inspired by the Great Books program of Mortimer Adler at the University of Chicago.^[7] In 1945, Paepcke visited Bauhaus artist and architect Herbert Bayer, AIA, who had designed and built a Bauhaus-inspired minimalist home outside the decaying former mining town of Aspen, in the Roaring Fork Valley. Paepcke and Bayer envisioned a place where artists, leaders, thinkers, and musicians could gather. Shortly thereafter, while passing through Aspen on a hunting expedition, oil industry maverick Robert O. Anderson (soon to be founder and CEO of Atlantic Richfield) met with Bayer and shared in Paepcke's and Bayer's vision. In 1949, Paepcke organized a 20-day international celebration for the 200th birthday of German poet and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The celebration attracted over 2,000 attendees, including Albert Schweitzer, José Ortega y Gasset, Thornton Wilder, and Arthur Rubinstein.^[8]

In 1949, Paepcke founded the Aspen Institute; and later the Aspen Music Festival and eventually (with Bayer and Anderson) the International Design Conference at Aspen (IDCA).^[9] Paepcke sought a forum "where the human spirit can flourish", especially amid the whirlwind and chaos of modernization. He hoped that the institute could help business leaders recapture what he called "eternal verities": the values that guided them intellectually, ethically, and spiritually as they led their companies. Inspired by philosopher Mortimer Adler's Great Books seminar at the University of Chicago, which was later adopted by Encyclopædia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World, Paepcke worked with Anderson to create the Aspen Institute Executive Seminar.^[10] In 1951, the institute sponsored a national photography conference. During the 1960s and 1970s, the institute added organizations, programs, and conferences, including the Aspen Center for Physics, the Aspen Strategy Group, Communications and Society Program and other programs that concentrated on education, communications, justice, Asian thought, science, technology, the environment, and international affairs.

In 1979, through a donation by Corning Glass industrialist and philanthropist Arthur A. Houghton Jr., the institute acquired a 1,000-acre (4 km²) campus on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, known today as the Wye River Conference Centers.^[11]

In 1983, former United States Senator Dick Clark founded the Aspen Institute's Congressional program, which sought to educate members of Congress on foreign affairs issues.^[12]

In 2005, it held the first Aspen Ideas Festival, featuring leading minds from around the world sharing and speaking on global issues. The institute, along with The Atlantic, hosts the festival annually. It has trained philanthropists such as Carrie Morgridge.^[13] It has since added additional events such as the Aspen Ideas Health and Aspen Ideas Climate.^[14] In 2023, the Aspen Ideas Climate event included Vice President Kamala Harris and famed singer Gloria Estefan.^[15]

Since 2013,^[16] the Aspen Institute together with U.S. magazine The Atlantic and Bloomberg Philanthropies has participated in organizing the annual CityLab event, a summit dedicated to develop strategies for the challenges of urbanization in today's cities.^[17]

Walter Isaacson was the president and CEO of Aspen Institute from 2003 to June 2018. Isaacson announced in March 2017 that he would step down as president and CEO at the end of the year.^[18] On November 30, 2017, Daniel Porterfield was announced as his successor. Porterfield succeeded Isaacson on June 1, 2018.^[19]

In April 2020, the company received approximately $8 million in federally backed small business loans as part of the Paycheck Protection Program. The company received scrutiny over this loan, which meant to protect small and private businesses. The Washington Post noted their large endowment and membership of billionaires made this problematic. Dele Olojede, a fellow at the institute, called it "contrary to the stated purpose of this institute", that "one of America’s most elite institutions thinks it is okay to take the money", going on to say "Those who purport to be values-based and public-spirited leaders cannot at the same time put self interest first, when there is so much human suffering and death".^[20] The day after Olojede and the Washington Post highlighted the funding, Aspen Institute announced they would return it, stating "Upon listening to our communities and further reflection, we have made the decision to return the loan".^[21]

In 2023, Simon Godwin was named Aspen Institute's Harman/Eisner artist in residence. Godwin is the artistic director for the Shakespeare Theatre Company and will serve in a one-year residency at the institute.^[22] In June 2023, CAA's Bruno del Granado was named to be head of the Board of the Aspen Institute's Latinos Society Program.^[23]

As of 2019 the Aspen Institute had net assets of $310,055,857.^[1]

• Aspen Review Central Europe
• Aspen Summer Words
• Aspen Strategy Group
• Aristotelianism
• Educational perennialism