Bush Plans Post-Presidential Think Tank [1]
Submitted by Bob Burton [2] on

Supporters of George W. Bush are aiming to raise $500 million to establish a presidential library at the Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas. While presidential libraries are run by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, establishment costs have to be raised privately. Part of Bush's plan is to also establish a think tank [3], which has the working title of Institute for Democracy, to promote "compassionate conservatism [4], the spread of freedom and democracy throughout the world and defeating terrorism." According to one Bush supporter, the think tank, which will be modelled on the Hoover Institution [5] at Stanford University, aims to financially support conservative scholars with "money to write papers and books favorable to the President's policies." The proposal that SMU host a think tank promoting Bush's agenda has encountered opposition from staff which, Inside Higher Ed noted, "strikes many professors as antithetical to a university's academic values."