Maria Casa is the Director of the National Program and Outreach Administration at The Council of Foreign Relations.
Hewitt Times: Can you tell me about The Council on Foreign Relations?
Maria Casa: The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank. Richard N. Haass has been president since 2003. CFR is home to an interesting assortment of activities. The council started out as a membership organization. It was founded in 1921 by about 150 people, who had supported Woodrow Wilson in the peace talks in Versailles after the First World War. They were Americans who were very interested in foreign policy. Back in the United States, they decided to band together and create this membership organization. CFR membership has grown since that date from about 150 to 4,900 people from all across the United States. You have to be an American citizen to be a member of The Council on Foreign Relations, but you may reside outside the country.
Our members come from all walks of life. They’re policy practitioners, politicians, business people, people in the arts, academics, all kinds of people.
In all, we program probably about 1,000 meetings a year, both in our New York and Washington D.C. house and across the country. Meetings are also programmed remotely for our members across the country. So, that’s just the membership piece. Then, we have Foreign Affairs, one of the better-known foreign policy magazines. We like to say it’s the best in the United States! Now, on their website, you can see the archives of the old magazines. So, you can go all the way back in the history of the magazine – nearly 100 years – to see how it has covered foreign policy and international affairs. Finally, our David Rockefeller Studies Department is home to over 70 fellows—scholars with a wide range of regional and thematic specialties.
HT: How is the publication, Foreign Affairs, different from The Council on Foreign Relations?
MC: Foreign Affairs is an American journal of international relations and U.S. foreign policy, Published six times annually since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations, its mission is to promote understanding of foreign policy and America’s role in the world. Gideon Rose is the magazine’s editor. Foreign Affairs authors are selected by the editorial staff and are experts in the fields they write about. While the style is meant for the general interested public, it differs from the journalistic approach where an author interviews a series of experts and summarizes their comments.
Like any work that comes out of the Council on Foreign Relations, the views expressed are those of the authors. The organization does not take an institutional stance on any issues.
HT: Is it difficult to maintain a neutral stance while trying to achieve your objectives?
MC: Though many organizations are built on promoting a given point of view, it is important to remember this organization’s neutrality as an institution. The fellows that make up our think tank change. While some have been here 15 years, some come for only six months at a time. Right now, we are averaging about 75 experts in total So there are shifts in regional and thematic coverage. Depending on the experts in residence, the studies department will cover a certain area or not cover a certain area. And again, these fellows will have their own opinions on policy or other matters that they will express in the work they publish, but that is their personal opinion and not the opinion of The Council on Foreign Relations.
HT: And even though there is no stance, are there any values that The Council on Foreign Relations promotes?
MC: We promote knowledge and discussion of foreign policy and international affairs.
HT: Who is a part of CFR’s target audience?
MC: We’ve always had the same target audience – those interested in the role of the United States in the world and international relations. But as the world changes and technology changes, I think it affects what that audience is. It was interested citizens. It always has been interested citizens. That was defined more narrowly at a time before technology and computers and emails and before there were so many news outlets. So now, it’s much broader. Interested citizens could be absolutely everybody.
HT: Do you know if there is a strong audience from the younger generation?
MC: We are very interested in the younger generation! We’re very interested in a participatory approach to communications that is building a relationship and understanding the people that we’re speaking with and not just having that one-direction flow of information. It’s hard to measure who we’re getting to; we have a lot of different outlets for our information. Our primary outlet is cfr.org, our website. We also have an Academic Initiative, where we have a lot of opportunities for people and students to interact with our fellows. We have a conference call series that provides students an opportunity to ask CFR fellows and we live stream our on-the-record events. We’re on various social media outlets. But we’re always looking for good ideas – so they are welcome!
HT: What is CFR’s influence on the United States government?
MC: CFR’s influence on the government is akin to any opinion leader’s influence is on the government. It depends on whether the government wants to look at CFR’s work and pick it up. Does the government look at the op-ed pieces of The New York Times or does the government look at work coming out of universities? Does the government look at CFR as a think tank and pick up on the ideas being promoted by the fellows there? It’s more of a question of what they pick up.
HT: I remember previously, when I first met you, you talked about how people from The Council on Foreign Relations go to Congress for testimony. Does the government ask for reports?
MC: As you know, congress calls on a wide range of experts, from university professors to people working in the field for testimony since politicians can’t expected to be experts in every field. When they are making important decisions, they need to call on specialists who can give them background or advice. Last year, I think we had more than a dozen times that the fellows spoke at congressional hearings.
HT: And when I first met you, you mentioned that you lived in different countries. How did living in different countries affect your understanding of foreign policy?
MC: I think, especially for people interested in policy, that it’s a wonderful opportunity to be able to live in different countries. When you live in different countries, you are exposed to different social, economic, and political systems and different cultures. You realize that there are different ways to approach life. You realize that there’s not one solution. It’s important to remember that the conditions in different places are different. It’s not always given that a policy in one place may work in another, so it’s good to dig a little deeper, see where the differences are, and see where policies might be tweaked to be more efficient. I think it’s hard to understand unless you have felt the effect of a different policy to really understand how much it affects you.
HT: What was it like living in China?
MC: I feel lucky to have lived in China in the 80s. It was a much different country than it is now and was much different from the United States. It made me consider the different policies in the two countries. For example, regulations for what citizens can do were very strict, much stricter than they are now, which made me think a lot about movement. Movement of people at that time in China – maybe to a certain extent it is now still true – was restricted even internally. If you wanted to buy a plane ticket from Beijing to Shanghai, you couldn’t do it without permission. I would ride my bike to the end of the city, and there would be a sign that said you can’t go beyond this point. What are the reasons that a country would have such regulations? What would be reasonable policy regarding movement of people in a large and densely populated country such as China?
HT: Where else have you lived?
MC: I’ve lived and worked in Europe, which is more of a social democracy kind of environment. I saw what those kinds of governments in developed social democracies offer citizens in terms of education and health. Then, I’ve worked here in the United States, where market forces have a stronger hand in dictating policy.