How Philanthropy Can Aid National Security

Philanthropists should finance efforts to rethink national security, said speakers at a recent conference of wealthy donors and foundations, reports The Wall Street Journal.

At the conference, sponsored by the Philanthropy Roundtable, a group in Washington, Josiah Bunting, a retired military officer and president of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, said private support was needed to stimulate interest in new research because “a number of subjects subsumed under the subject of national security are looked down on or ignored by academia.”

Donors at the conference were urged to sponsor research on practical applications of national-security theory. Unlike government officials, outside researchers can consider long-term strategy instead of daily “crisis management,” said Stephen Rosen, a professor at Harvard.

Conference participants said that while the Defense Department and other federal agencies support plenty of research, policy makers are more likely to rely on research by outside scholars.