Activist Education at the Albert Einstein Institution: A Critical Examination of Elite Co-option of Civil Disobedience

international | anti-war / imperialism | feature

Saturday July 21, 2012 21:51

by lefty

Gene Sharp, harmless old man or cynical CIA asset?

Abstract: For most progressive activists, it is a given that the military-industrial complex is a clear and highly visible barrier to progressive social change. So it is particularly interesting to note that a number of groups involved in progressive activist education – which are held in high regard by activists – maintain strong links to military and political elites. One of the best known of these organisations is the US-based Albert Einstein Institution. This paper will provide a systematic analysis of the history of this Institution, and the key people associated with it, and demonstrate how their work is intimately linked to the international democracy-manipulating community – whose work is exemplified by the US-based National Endowment for Democracy, a group which is well-known for its support of the failed 2002 coup in Venezuela. This analysis will expose the crucial role such activist educators play in catalysing revolutions in countries deemed appropriative for regime change by transnational elites. In the light of the dubious nature of these educational activities, this paper will conclude by offering a number of suggestions for how concerned citizens and educators may counter the cynical (ab)use of activist education by political elites as a new and powerful tool of imperialism.

Foreword by lefty: Given the media spin and lies about events in Libya, Syria and the sabre rattling against Iran, I have reproduced here the contents of this important paper which was published as part of the "Activating Human Rights and Peace 2008" Conference Proceedings. I do hope Michael will forgive me for this but I feel certain that he would want this work to be more widely read given recent events, and the fact that his paper has recently been excised from the university website. (I guess it must have upset somebody!! :-) Kudos Michael Barker.
Note: This article is not copyleft. All copyright to this article remains with Michael Barker
-Lefty

Activist Education at the Albert Einstein Institution: A Critical Examination of Elite Cooption of Civil Disobedience

By Michael Barker
Griffith University

Key Words: Imperialism, Philanthropy, Polyarchy, Revolution

It is well understood by radical political theorists and historians that the strategic use of civil disobedience has provided a vital means of promoting democracy around the world (Zinn, 2003). However, while civil disobedience has certainly been used to benefit progressive activists, by enabling people power to present a viable threat to elite power, there is much overlooked evidence that suggests that elite powerbrokers have responded to this threat by attempting to co-opt this strategic resource.

Progressive activist-scholars theorize about the dynamics of elite power to facilitate its demise, while elitist scholars, on the other hand, document the processes of social change in an attempt to constrain progressive victories. Consequently, given the interests of elite theorists in progressive social change it not surprising that there is a long history of elite cooption of progressive social movements. In this regard, key elites that have been, and continue to be, involved in proactively manipulating civil society to serve their own ends include liberal foundations (Roelofs, 2003), corporations (Sims, 2005), labour groups (Scipes, 2007), government intelligence agencies (Saunders, 1999), and of course governments (Weissman, 1974). The success that such democracy manipulators have had in taming dissent and shaping the contours of progressive activism – in all manner of popular social movements – has been well documented (Barker, 2007a, 2008a; Haines, 1988; Wright et al., 1985). Such overt manipulations have been used to successfully combat the influence of communism through the provision of strategic support to socialists (Saunders, 1999), and have even succeeded in hijacking revolutionary popular uprisings, facilitating transitions from authoritarian to neoliberal forms of governance (Robinson, 1996). It is no contradiction then 26 Activating Human Rights and Peace 2008 Conference Proceedings that civil disobedience, like all other political resources, is considered to be a key armament of both the powerful and the less powerful, and can be used alternatively to either bolster or challenge imperialism. Thus, given the potential for the abuse of civil disobedience, that is its pragmatic geopolitical use by elites, it is highly problematic that progressive scholars have failed to critically focus on such abuses.

This paper will provide the first critical and comprehensive overview of one elite-supported group that promotes civil disobedience globally, a US-based group called the Albert Einstein Institution. This Institution provides a particularly relevant case study, because in spite of the strong links that it maintains to military and political elites it is still held in high esteem by progressive activists all over the world. By providing a systematic analysis of the history of this Institution, and the key people associated with it, the analyses presented in this study will expose the crucial role that activist educators can sometimes play in catalysing revolutions in countries deemed appropriative for regime change by the international democracy- manipulating community – a community whose work is exemplified by the US-based National Endowment for Democracy. In the light of the dubious nature of these educational activities, this paper will conclude by offering a number of suggestions for how concerned citizens and educators may counter the cynical (ab)use of activist education by political elites as a new and powerful tool of imperialism.

Gene Sharp and the National Endowment for Democracy

The Albert Einstein Institution was founded in 1983 by Dr. Gene Sharp and is an organisation that, according to its website, is ostensibly “dedicated to advancing the study and use of strategic nonviolent action in conflicts throughout the world.” At face value both Sharp’s ongoing work – which has caused him to be “widely recognised as the world’s leading non- violence researcher” (Martin, 2005: 252; Weber, 2003: 251) – and Albert Einstein’s historical contributions to peace activism seem related: however, a more critical investigation of the activities of Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institution suggests that this is not the case. It appears that Sharp has, politically speaking, moved a long way from the days when he was able to convince the notable anarchist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) to write the foreword for his first book manuscript in 1953 – a book that was eventually published in 1960 as Gandhi Wields the Weapon of Moral Power.

Martin (1989: 213) notes that “compared to the intensive use of his ideas by activists, scholars have devoted little attention to Sharp.” On this score, Martin provides a useful antidote to the uncritical adoption of Sharp’s ideas by critiquing “Sharp’s theory of power… by comparing it to structural approaches to social analysis.” Moreover, given that the funding for Sharp’s major theoretical contribution to non-violent scholarship – his trilogy, The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1972) – came from former RAND Corporation ideologue Professor thomas Schelling’s grants (Abella, 2008), which Schelling had in turn obtained from the US Department of Defense and the Ford Foundation (whose work was intimately linked with that of the CIA, see Berman 1983; Saunders, 1999) (Sharp, 1972: viii), it is fitting that Weber notes that Sharp often refers to nonviolence as an ‘alternative weapons system’ and even describes it as a ‘means of combat, as is war. It involves the matching of forces and the waging of “battles”, it requires wise strategy and tactics, employs numerous ‘weapons,’ and demands of its “soldiers” courage, discipline, and sacrifice.’ The central dynamic is one of ‘political jiu-jitsu’ rather than the ‘moral jiu-jitsu’ of Richard Gregg and Gandhi. (Weber, 2003: 258)1

This is not something that Sharp has tried to hide, and in the foreword to The Politics of Nonviolent Action Sharp observes that…

"I have been arguing for years that governments and defense departments – as well as other groups – should finance and conduct research into alternatives to violence in politics and especially as a possible basis for a defense policy by prepared nonviolent resistance as a substitute for war. As acceptance of such Defense Department funds involved no restrictions whatever on the research, writing, or dissemination of the results, I willingly accepted them." (Sharp, 1972: viii)

Eerily, echoing Sharp’s simple defence of the merits of encouraging the military to fund peace research, Serbian activist Ivan Marovic – who is a founding member of the US-funded opposition group, Otpor (for more details, see later) – acknowledged receiving funding from the US government to help overthrow Slobodan Milosevic, but says: “So we did get money, but we never got orders from anyone. That’s why we succeeded” (cited in Mueller 2005). This comment is significant on a number of levels, as not only did Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institution play an integral role in training Serbian activists in the techniques required to oust Milosevic, but Otpor itself also received financial aid from numerous foreign groups which included the National Endowment of Democracy (NED). This latter US-based quasi- nongovernmental organisation, the NED, was formed in 1984 with bipartisan support, and according to their former president, carries out “a lot of work” that was formerly undertaken by the CIA (cited in Ignatius 1991). Indeed, Cavell (2002: 105) in his book Exporting ‘Made in America’ Democracy suggests that the “degree to which the NED will go to subvert a country’s sovereignty can perhaps best be gleaned from its funding of anti-Sandinista groups in Nicaragua” throughout the 1980s.

The NED’s current president, Carl Gershman, stated in 1999 that “democracy-promotion has become an established field of international activity and a pillar of American foreign policy” (cited in Cavell, 2002: 112). With a relatively meagre annual budget of around $80 million, the NED’s most important function is to coordinate the work of larger better endowed ‘democratic’ funders like the US Agency for International Development and the CIA. The most detailed critical examination of the NED’s attempts to co-opt progressive movements and install low-intensity democracy around the world is Robinson’s (1996) seminal book Promoting Polyarchy: however, since then numerous other studies have bolstered his analyses (for further details, see Barker, 2006a).

The Albert Einstein Institution and Postmodern Coups

Writing in 1949, Albert Einstein observed that

"…under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights." (Einstein, 1949)

Einstein’s observations which also raised his concern over the lack of a free and open discussion of socialism, apply almost perfectly to discussions surrounding the arguably polyarchal work of the Albert Einstein Institution. Yet unfortunately within both academia and the peace movement, there has been almost no critical discussion of the problems associated with this Institution’s role in theorizing and promoting civil disobedience globally.

It is perhaps fitting that Sharp named his Institution after Einstein rather than after a more radical dissident, like for example Bertrand Russell. As Chomsky (2001: 167) points out, both Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein essentially agreed that “nuclear weapons might well destroy the species”, but while Russell demonstrated in the streets and was subsequently denounced and vilified by US elites, Einstein remained in his office and was considered a “saintly figure” who “didn’t rattle too many cages.” Thus as will become clearer later, it makes sense that Sharp wanted to associate his organisation with a leading dissenting intellectual whose activism was considered to be elite-friendly.

In a rare critical examination of Sharp’s work, Martin (2005: 258) observed that the “linkage of nonviolence research to policy makers is weak at best and often nonexistent.” Martin goes on to add that: “Some activists and scholars would say this is a good thing, given the risk that nonviolence could be co-opted by the state, having its radical potential defanged.” However, arguably this cooption has already happened. So considering the lack of critical research surrounding the Albert Einstein Institution’s activities, this article will now examine some of the Institutions’ funders, and investigate the polyarchal ties of many of the people who have been associated with the Institution.

Polyarchal Funders

A close examination of the groups that have provided funding to the Albert Einstein Institution over the years suggests that the latter’s work is highly entwined with imperial- minded foreign policy making elites. Consequently, although a complete documentary record of the Institution’s funding relationships is presently unavailable, a summary report of their work between 1993 and 1999 provides an informative list of their financial supporters (see Jenkins and Houlihan, 2000). During this period, the most ‘democratic’ of the Albert Einstein Institutions financiers were the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute (one of the NED’s four core grantees), the US Institute for Peace (the NED’s sister organisation, see Hatch and Diamond, 1990), and the German-based Friedrich Naumann Stiftung. In addition, the Albert Einstein Institution received aid from two of America’s most influential liberal philanthropic organisations, that is, the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Institute. This support is particularly significant given that the long history of collusion between the CIA and the biggest liberal foundations (e.g. the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations’) and their corrosive influence on the development of civil society worldwide (Arnove, 1981; Barker, 2008a; INCITE!, 2007; Roelofs, 2003). It is fitting then that from 1974 until 1976 Gene Sharp served as a Rockefeller Foundation fellow at Harvard University.

Other noteworthy liberal foundations that provided funding to the Albert Einstein Institution between 1993 and 1999 include the Arca Foundation (whose secretary, Mary King, is also a director of the Albert Einstein Institution), the Compton Foundation (whose president, James Compton, is Emeritus Chair of the NED-financed Fund for Peace (see Barker, 2007a), and has formerly worked for twelve years for the key democracy-manipulator World Learning for International Development – a group formerly known as the Delphi International Group, see Robinson, 1992), and the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation (whose former program officer, Antonio Maciel, is now the Director of the Open Society Institute’s US Justice Fund). Likewise, another group with particularly strong democracy-manipulating credentials that has funded the Albert Einstein Institution’s work is the Ploughshares Fund: however, owing to the lack of critical commentary on the Ploughshares Fund’s work, the following section will briefly introduce the work and people behind this philanthropic body.2

The Ploughshares Fund’s website notes that is a “public grantmaking foundation that supports initiatives to prevent the spread and use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and other weapons of war, and to prevent conflicts that could lead to the use of weapons of mass destruction.” Major funders (so-called Council Ambassadors) of the Ploughshares Fund include well known philanthropists like the Ford Foundation; while the Fund’s Peace and Security Funders Group includes, amongst its ranks, some of the most powerful liberal foundations, e.g. the Carnegie Corporation, the Compton Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (Ploughshares Fund, 2006). According to the Fund’s most recent annual report, they have provided financial aid to a wide variety of the world’s key democracy-manipulating organisations: some of these include Americans for Informed Democracy, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Henry L. Stimson Center, the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development (whose president, Stephen Cohen, is a national scholar at the Israel Policy Forum – an organisation that “seeks to strengthen Israeli security and to further U.S. foreign policy interests in the Middle East”), the International Crisis Group, Refugees International, and the NED-funded Search for Common Ground.

Given the Ploughshare Fund’s strong propensity for funding ‘democratic’ groups’, it is not surprising that many of its directors and advisors have vigorous polyarchal credentials: thus their directors include David Holloway (who is a faculty member of Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which is headed by former NED Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow Michael McFaul, whose most prominent ‘democratic’ ties are to Freedom House and the Eurasia Foundation), Cynthia Ryan (who serves on the advisory board of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, and is a former trustee of the Women for Women International – a group that received NED funding in 2003), and Philip Yun (who is currently vice president for resource development at the Asia Foundation); ‘democratic’ advisors to the Ploughshares Fund include J. Brian Atwood (who was president of the cored NED grantee the National Democratic Institute from 1986 to 1993, and served as the administrator of USAID from 1993 to 1999), Lloyd Axworthy (who is the chair of Human Rights Watch’s Americas Advisory board), Susan Eisenhower (who is a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), and Leslie H. Gelb (who is a member of the International Crisis Group, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace).

Civil Disobedience in the Service of Polyarchy

According to recent reports, the current Principals of the Albert Einstein Institution are Colonel Robert Helvey (who is the current president), Major General Edward Atkeson and Peter Ackerman (both of whom act as advisors to the Institution). Critical aspects of the biographical details of the first two former high-ranking military men, Colonel Helvey and Major General Atkeson, are fully outlined by Mowat (2005), while Ackerman’s lengthy democracy-manipulating resume has been outlined in full by Barker (2007b). Notably Ackerman is linked to various democracy-manipulating groups that work closely with the CIA, as he is member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, serves on the US advisory council of the US Institute of Peace, and is chair of the neoconservative Freedom House (where his his predecessor in this position was none other than former CIA Director, James Woolsey).

Freedom House provides a good example of an influential democracy-manipulating organisation whose work is uncritically promoted by both mainstream and progressive writers. This is despite the fact that Herman and Chomsky (2002: 28) note that Freedom House “has long served as a virtual propaganda arm of the government and international right wing.” One clear example of Freedom House’s democracy-manipulating activities is provided by their long-term involvement in destabilising the Nicaraguan government throughout the 1980s. Indeed, they undertook vital work for the democracy manipulators in Nicaragua, receiving around US$1 million to create an anti-Sandinista publishing house (Libro Libre), think-tank (CINCO), and quarterly journal (Pensamiento Centroamericano) in San Jose, Costa Rica. Furthermore, Freedom House’s democracy-manipulating propagandizing was not limited to Central America, as between 1984 and 1989 the NED provided them with around US$3 million to disseminate anti-Sandinista viewpoints within the US media. An extended critique of Freedom House, is provided by Barker (2008b).

Here, however, it is particularly important to point out the links that exist between the Albert Einstein Institution and the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), because in addition to serving as an advisor to the Albert Einstein Institution, Ackerman also serves as the chair (and major funder) of the latter group.3 In addition, ICNC director of programs and research, Hardy Merriman, formerly worked for three years with Gene Sharp at the Albert Einstein Institution. Consequently, it is hardly coincidental that in March 2005 the ICNC funded a strategy workshop in Boston that was hosted by the Albert Einstein Institution for Venezuelan nonviolent activists (Albert Einstein Institution, 2006 :10). The hosting of this workshop is controversial for two reasons, firstly, the workshop involved the participation of two former leaders of the Serbian nonviolent struggle group Otpor (Slobodan Dinovic and Ivan Marovic) – a group that was strongly supported by the NED and the international democracy-manipulating community to help facilitate the ouster of President Milosevic (Barker, 2006a). And secondly, it is not clear why NED-connected groups like Otpor, the Albert Einstein Institution and the ICNC, are training nonviolent activists from a country in which the NED actively supports opposition groups which have been involved in attempting to oust the democratically elected President Chavez from power.

Owing to the Albert Einstein Institution’s Venezuelan related activities, last year the organisation was accused by several writers of being linked to the US-led promotion of polyarchy (Barker, 2007c). Yet the Institution has to date been unable to respond to the various accusations that have been filed against it, and instead resorts to disingenuous claims of innocence. For example, in December 2007, the Albert Einstein Institution’s executive director, Jamila Raqib, wrote that:

"The Albert Einstein Institution is an independent nonprofit organization. It does not take direction from any other organization, or from any government, including the US government… The allegation of funding and support for the Albert Einstein Institution from… any… government body, is categorically false." (Raqib, 2007: 1)

Echoing the words of the Institution’s founder, Gene Sharp, Raqib (2007: 1) says that: “In principle… [they are] not opposed to accepting funds from institutions that have in turn received their funds from government sources, as long as there is no dictation or control of the purpose of our work, individual projects, or of the dissemination of the gained knowledge.” Yet besides the fact that his Institution has already received such funding, this statement demonstrates a narrow-minded, ahistorical appreciation of the influence of funding on social change. On this matter in reference to the cooption of academia, Horowitz (1969) points out that: “In the control of scholarship by wealth, it is neither necessary nor desirable that professors hold a certain orientation because they receive a grant. The important thing is that they receive the grant because they hold the orientation.”

Overemphasis in Leftist literature on aggressive aspects of imperialism (waged through both overt and covert military, economic, and diplomatic domination) has unfortunately meant that little attention has been paid to the equally important ‘friendly face’ of imperialism. Thus, when combined with the near total media blackout of critical analyses of elite funding of progressive groups, it is little wonder that there is minimal discussion of this phenomenon. This is not to say that there have not been a number of excellent critiques of the hijacking/colonisation of civil society by liberal elites – although they tend to be ignored (older examples include Brown, 1979; Lundberg, 1975; Whitaker, 1974). However, in recent years Petras’ (1999) landmark article NGOs: In the Service of Imperialism, has inspired much critical reflection among the Left – for example, see the work of Choudry (2002), Roy (2004), Bond (2005), Engler (2007), and Mojab (2007).

Needless to say many of the people who have worked for the Albert Einstein Institution over the past few decades have been well connected to elite circles. For example, former directors of the Institution include Joanne Leedom-Ackerman (who is a director of the NED-linked Human Rights Watch and International Center for Journalists (Barker, 2007a)), Stephen Marks (who has served as program officer for international human rights at the Ford Foundation), Hazel McFerson ?? (who is a director of the USAID-funded group, Pact), and thomas Schelling (a famous economist who formerly worked for the imperial think tank, the Rand Corporation, Abella, 2008). Likewise the late Connie Grice who served as the Albert Einstein Institution’s executive director from 1986 to 1988 was married to William Spencer, a person who was instrumental in guiding the creation of the US Institute of Peace. Having introduced some of the elitist funders and people involved with the work of the Albert Einstein Institution the final section of this paper will briefly review some of the countries in which the Institution has been active.

Facilitating Polyarchal Revolutions

According to the Albert Einstein Institution’s (2004: 16) historical overview of its global activities, proponents note that they have “conducted consultations with groups in more than 20 countries” around the world. Countries listed in the Consultations section of this report include Serbia, Venezuela, Belarus, Zimbabwe, Tibet, the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia), Burma, Iran, and Iraq.4 Thus given the evident importance attached to supporting civil disobedience in these countries this section will briefly compare the Institution’s work in the first five countries mentioned in their report with the work that undertaken by the NED. (For further details of the NED’s activities in Burma, Iran, and Iraq, see Barker, 2006c, 2008d.)

With regards to Serbia, in March-April 2000, Robert Helvey ran a workshop in Budapest (Hungary) that was funded by the International Republican Institute (one of the NED’s core grantees) for members of Serbia’s US-funded opposition group Otpor. Additionally, the Albert Einstein Institution observes that in 1999 a Serbian nongovernmental organisation called Civic Initiatives “coordinated the publication of a Serbian edition of AEI’s booklet, From Dictatorship to Democracy”. This is particularly significant because from 1997 until 2001, Civic Initiatives served as one of the major project partners of the NED-funded Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe’s Civic Bridges program. Moreover, as Barker (2006a) observes, polyarchy promoters were heavily active in Serbia, and:

In 2000, the US government provided approximately US$40 million to “promote democracy” in Serbia and "US-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the anti-Milosevic drive.” US$40 million is a significant amount of money, especially if you consider that the Serbian population is less than fifty 32 Activating Human Rights and Peace 2008 Conference Proceedings million, which means it is equivalent to giving more than US$200 million in foreign aid to US social movements to “promote democracy” domestically. Such an amount of aid would no doubt have also enabled opposition groups in the United States to successfully challenge the results of an election (for example, the “stolen 2000 election”) (Barker, 2006a: 6).

Moving to the next country, Venezuela, the Albert Einstein Institution notes that since President Chavez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, his “regime has become increasingly authoritarian”, a verdict that stands at odds with nearly all progressive commentators (e.g. Scipes, 2006), but not with the corporate media or the US government (Lendman, 2007). So, contrary to most progressive writers, the Institution then notes that since December 2001 “Chávez’s popularity began to wane” and points that in order to retain his hold on power his “government responded with violent repression against... protesters”. Consequently Gene Sharp and other Albert Einstein Institution staff have met with citizens opposed to Chavez’s democratic presidency to “talk about the deteriorating political situation in their country”, and these talks led to the Institution organising a nine-day in-country consultation in April 2003 in order to – with no irony evidently intended – “restore democracy to Venezuela.” Given the close links that exist between the work of the Albert Einstein Institution and the NED it is fitting that the NED provided aid to Sumate, the key nongovernmental organisation that coordinated the unsuccessful coup against President Chavez in 2002.

Belarus is another country in which the US is attempting to promote polyarchy: as the Albert Einstein Institution writes: “Since 1917, Belarus has been almost completely controlled and operated by the Russian security service... [and] Alyaksandr Lukashenko, the autocratic President of the Republic for the last decade, is himself a former KGB Major.” From 26-31 January 2001, Gene Sharp led a workshop in neighboring Lithuania to help facilitate “democratization in face of a dictatorial regime.” Belarus provides an interesting example of a country that has so far resisted the best efforts of the polyarchy promoters, as in 2000 alone, the US government (that is, Administration) provided opposition groups with US$24 million and according to US officials even more in 2001 (Chaulia, 2005). In addition to such financial aid, at around the time that Sharp was present in Lithuania, diplomatic aid was also used in an attempt to oust Lukashenko, and the skills and knowledge of the US Ambassador in Belarus, Michael Kozak, were of critical importance in organising the opposition. This is because Ambassador Kozak was an old hand at promoting polyachy, having gained invaluable experience overseeing the ‘democratic’ replacement of the Sandinistas in the 1990 elections, while acting as the US Ambassador in Nicaragua (1990 and 1992).

Next up: “In February 2002, [Albert Einstein Institution] consultants... met with Zimbabwean opposition groups” on two occasions, once with leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change, and another time with representatives from other assorted civil society groups. Again as in Serbia these consultations were sponsored by the International Republican Institute, and so it is fitting that the NED’s British counterpart, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, has been one of the most influential polyarchy promoters in Zimbabwe, channelling a lot of funding to the Movement for Democratic Change (Elich, 2002). As in the previous cases, the NED has been very active in Zimbabwe busily manipulating democracy, and in 2006 alone they provided civil society groups with $1 million (Barker, 2008e).

In 1996 the Albert Einstein Institution began a series on consultations in India with Tibetan democracy activists, and the Institution note that in 2002 they held yet another strategic workshop at the invitation of the Tibetan Parliamentary and Policy Research Center. This is significant because this Center was formed in 1991 as a “joint project” of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and Tibet's Parliament in exile. The Friedrich Naumann Foundation is one of the German ‘democracy promoting’ foundations whose success the NED was modelled upon. It is also important that one member of the Center’s governing council, Samdhong Rinpoche, also serves on the international advisory council of a group called the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), as this group is a regular recipient of NED funding. Furthermore, like many groups that obtain NED aid, ICT are not afraid to boast of their ‘democratic’ connections: thus in 2005 they awarded one of their annual Light of Truth awards to the president of the NED, Carl Gershman; while the year before (in 2004) ICT gave the same award to the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (Barker, 2007).

Conclusions:

In the light of the dubious nature of the educational activities undertaken by the Albert Einstein Institution – in the name of progressive activism worldwide – it seems fitting that activists committed to replacing imperial plutocracies with participatory democracies (not polyarchies) begin to critically reflect upon their relationships with such groups. In many ways activist education is being cynically utilized by political elites as a powerful tool in the service of imperialism. Of course this does not mean that valuable information cannot be gleaned from the research of government funded activist educators like the Albert Einstein Institution: in fact, much of the Institution’s research is very useful to progressive social movements. However, given the pragmatic adoption of civil disobedience by foreign policy elites to facilitate the ouster of ‘unfriendly’ governments, progressive activists must recognize and theorize about the potential limitations of the research undertaken by government-funded groups like the Albert Einstein Institution. For instance, an important question to ask is “are there certain subjects, tactics, or countries that are under-theorized by researchers attached to the Albert Einstein Institution?” Moreover, how do such groups studies compare to more explicitly political activist researchers like Churchill (1998) and Gelderloos (2007)?”

Progressive activists need to determine whether they want to help legitimize the work of a group that is so closely tied to the interests’ of capitalist elites. Indeed considering the evident connections that exist between the Albert Einstein Institution and the National Endowment for Democracy it seems sensible that concerned activists should distance themselves from both groups, and facilitate a public debate that thoroughly investigates the problems associated with both groups’ activities. Only once such forms of critical reflection becomes the norm within progressive social movements will activists be sure that their work is not being subtly manipulated, abused or deradicalised by polyarchal elites.

Endnotes
1. Weber (2003: 259-60) points out: “There are the occasional immediate, practical, and solidly ‘this worldly’ arguments for principled as opposed to pragmatic nonviolence. For example, Hayes has argued, ‘Sharp’s view of nonviolence could allow it to become a content-neutral technique of political struggle stripped of vocative elements which would then render it amenable for use by dominators.’ Richards adds that Sharp’s ‘neutralized concept of nonviolence,’ where the ‘distinguishing characteristic of nonviolent action… seems to be only the absence of any direct use of physical coercion,’ ‘may allow a considerable amount of coercion and harm to others’ and may be used for ‘evil as well as for good purposes.’ However, most of those arguments go strongly the other way with ‘this worldly’ arguments favoring pragmatic nonviolence.” 2. Another interesting group that has provided funding to the Albert Einstein Institution is the Olof Palme International Center – an organization that notes on its website that it “works with international development co-operation and the forming of public opinion surrounding international political and security issues.” The Center’s international work is funded by the Swedish International Development Agency, and crucially the Center’s board is chaired by Lena Hjelm-Wallen, who is a the former foreign minister of Sweden, and currently serves as the chair of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, and is also a director of the International Crisis Group – two key democracy-manipulating groups (Barker, 2007).The Center’s website also notes that: “Promoting democracy is central to the Palme Center’s programme”, so it is fitting that they are currently “managing over 40 projects and initiatives with a total budget of SEK 35 million” for the Swedish International Development Agency’s Iraq Program.
Other funding bodies that have supported the Albert Einstein Institution that do not appear to have obvious ‘democratic’ ties include the California Community Foundation, the CS Fund, the Greenville Foundation, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Miriam G. and Ira D. Wallach Foundation, and the New York Friends Group.
3. Notably Ackerman also serves on the advisory board of the Council on Foreign Relations misnamed Center for Preventive Action, a group that should arguably be referred to as the Center for Preventing Democratic Action (Barker, 2008).
4. Other countries that the Institution has worked with that are mentioned in the same overview report include Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Haiti, Ukraine, and Israel.

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