Public Policy Think Tank to Be Established at Nixon Library

The Center for Peace and Freedom, a think tank to be unveiled next week at the Nixon Library and Birthplace, will be a public policy center unlike any other in the country, officials said Friday.

“The Center for Peace and Freedom is going to be an organization that establishes some chairs that engage in the kind of policy study and . . . philosophical and strategic discussions over America’s role in the world very much in the pattern of Richard Nixon,” said attorney Ken Khachigian, a member of the library’s board of directors and a former Nixon White House staffer.

The think tank’s privately endowed chairs will operate in Orange County and Washington, Khachigian said. Details on the number of positions to be endowed, the areas of study and other specifics are being withheld until the formal announcement on Thursday, which is planned to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Nixon’s first presidential inauguration.

The center will be “not just a physical structure (but also) a policy think tank . . . to carry the President’s legacy over the years,” Khachigian said. “It will be funded in the same manner as a foundation,” he said, although he could provide no details on who the financial backers will be or how much money will be involved.

Library officials have closely guarded the details of the center.

“The whole ball of wax is going to come out next week, Thursday for sure,” he said.

However, Khachigian described the think tank as “a very substantial undertaking.”

“Chairs will be endowed in basic areas of foreign policy inquiry and will engage the study of (America’s) role in the world,” he said. “And it will be balanced between various disciplines.”

Possible areas of study, according to Khachigian, may include national security, strategic considerations, international finance and economics. The endowed chairs will function much like endowed chairs at universities, he said. Money will be provided to “support the work of individuals in certain areas,” he said.

With branches to be located in Yorba Linda and Washington, the center will be “dedicated to the pursuit of enlightened national interest and pragmatic idealism at home,” library spokesman Kevin Cartwright said Friday.

The center will go beyond the scope of conventional think tanks, Cartwright said.

“It’s a public policy center unlike any that currently exists,” he said. “The domestic policy aspect of the center will be just as important as any other aspect.”

Nixon, along with luminaries from his Administration, including his successor in the White House, Gerald R. Ford, and former Cabinet members Henry A. Kissinger, George P. Shultz, and Caspar W. Weinberger, are scheduled to be present at the library for Thursday’s celebration.