From 1948 to 1958, RAND Corporation, the nonprofit research institute created by the U.S. Air Force, hired scores of exceptional young thinkers who would later go on to win Nobel prizes and other top accolades, launch new fields of study, help run the Pentagon, and start important think tanks of their own. Yet despite this success, few organizations have followed early RAND’s winning recipe of talent acquisition paired with a culture of free-wheeling collaboration.

Nicholas Rescher (1928–2024) was Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and a member of the Board of Advisors for the Center on Culture and Civil Society at the Independent Institute.
Defense and Foreign Policy
Other Independent Review articles by Nicholas Rescher
Summer 2021 On Editorial Varnish
Fall 2017 Realism about Political Philosophy
Winter 2014/15 The Case for Cautious Conservatism