This article discusses the founding of the Manhattan Institute as part of a wider mobilization of conservative ideology and activism in 1970s New York. Important to the success of this mobilization was the concerted effort to reframe the “urban crisis” as a problem of values and culture and to construct a narrative of moral decline—and ultimately of conservative redemption—based in liberal New York.
Tom Wolfe , “Revolutionaries,” New York Post, January 30, 2003; Wolfe, “Ideas Matter,” New York Post, January 30, 2003. An expanded version of Wolfe's column appears as “The Manhattan Institute at 25,” in the commemorative collection sponsored by the institute, Brian Anderson, ed., Turning Intellect Into Influence: The Manhattan Institute at 25 (New York: Reed, 2004).
2.
George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty (New York: Basic Books, 1980); Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984); Peter W. Huber, Liability: The Legal Revolution and Its Consequences (New York: Basic Books, 1988); Peter W. Huber, Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom (New York: Basic Books, 1991); Myron Magnet, The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass ( New York: William Morrow, 1993).
3.
Charles Murray, Losing Ground.
4.
Heather Mac Donald, “The Billions of Dollars That Made Things Worse,” City Journal, Autumn 1996, http://www.city-journal.org/html/6_4_a1.html .
5.
Sol Stern, quoted in “Conservatives Plant a Seed in NYC,” Boston Globe, February 22, 1998.
6.
William E. Simon, A Time for Truth (New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1978), 127.
7.
See, for examples, Sven Beckert, “Democracy in the Age of Capital: Contesting Suffrage Rights in Gilded Age New York,” in The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History, eds. Meg Jacobs, Julian Zelizer, and William J. Novack (New Jersey: Princeton University Press , 2003), 146-177; and Stephen Pimpare, The New Victorians: Piety, Politics, and Propaganda in Two Gilded Ages (New York: The New Press, 2004).
8.
Joe Hagan , “President Bush's Neoconservatives Were Spawned Right Here in N.Y.C., New Home of the Right-Wing Gloat,” New YorkObserver, April 28, 2003.
9.
On New York as a foil for conservative organizing, see Joshua B. Freeman, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II (New York: The New Press, 2000), 272.
10.
Myron Magnet, ed., The Millennial City: A New Urban Paradigm for Urban America (New York : Ivan R. Dee, 2000), Introduction.
11.
Myron Magnet , “Solving President Bush's Urban Problem ,” City Journal, Winter 2001.
12.
For leading discussions of, respectively, the suburban, “white ethnic” and Sun Belt origins of contemporary conservatism, see Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Jonathan Rieder, Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn Against Liberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985); and Kevin Phillips, The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath (New York: Random House, 1990).
13.
For two important examples of a much larger literature on ghetto formation published in the 1970s and early 1980s, see Kenneth Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870-1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976); and Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960 ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
14.
Alexander Bloom , Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Joseph Dorman, Arguing the World: The New York Intellectuals in Their Own Words ( New York: The Free Press, 2000).
15.
These themes are captured in various documents relating to the initial founding and subsequent support for the Joint Center in the Ford Foundation Archives, Grant File # 58-391, New York.
16.
Sam Bass Warner , The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968).
17.
For a review of Joint Center activities, see “Final Report to the Ford Foundation,” December 31, 1970, Grant File 58-391 , Ford Foundation Archives.
18.
Martin Anderson , The Federal Bulldozer: A Critical Analysis of Urban Renewal, 1949-1962 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964).
19.
Edward C. Banfield and James Q. Wilson , City Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963 ); Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1963).
20.
James Q. Wilson, ed., The Metropolitan Enigma: Inquiries into the Nature and Dimensions of America's “Urban Crisis .” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968).
21.
James Q. Wilson, “ Urban Problems in Perspective,” in The Metropolitan Enigma , 388.
22.
Daniel P. Moynihan , “Poverty in Cities,” in The Metropolitan Enigma, 367-85; Wilson, “ Urban Problems,” 403.
23.
For a more extended discussion, see Alice O'Connor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth Century U.S. History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
24.
On Banfield's career and his turn away from planning, see James Q. Wilson, “ The Independent Mind of Edward Banfield,” The Public Interest, no. 150 (Winter 2003): 63-90.
25.
Edward C. Banfield, “ Rioting Mainly for Fun and Profit,” in The Metropolitan Enigma, 312-341. The essay would reappear as a chapter in Banfield's subsequent The Unheavenly City (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), a book, as noted below, so incendiary in its argument as to set off a virtual riot on its own. On the lack of evidence for his own central argument about the origins of lower-class culture, see Banfield, The Unheavenly City Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974, reissued by Waveland Press, 1990), ix.
Irving Kristol , “Common Sense about the `Urban Crisis ,'” Fortune, October 1967: 233-4.
29.
On Kristol's background, see Bloom , Prodigal Sons, 35-42, 263-69, 328-29; and Irving Kristol, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (New York: Free Press, 1995), 3-40.
30.
Kristol, Autobiography , 29.
31.
For an excellent discussion of these events and the lead-up to the 1969 election, see Freeman, Working-ClassNew York, 215-37. On school decentralization , see Jerold E. Podair, The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill Brownsville Crisis ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); and Wendell Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 221-38. On its emblematic symbolism for the right, see Nathan Glazer, “Neoconservatism and Liberal New York,” 36-7 in Rethinking the Urban Agenda, ed. John Mollenkopf and Ken Emerson (New York: The Century Foundation Press, 2001).
Hamill as quoted in “Focus on New York,” The Public Interest , no. 16 (Summer 1969): 60.
35.
Irving Kristol and Paul Weaver, “ Who Knows New York? Notes on a Mixed-Up City,” The Public Interest, no. 16 (Summer 1969): 44-45.
36.
For a fuller statement of the urban crisis as a moral one, see Irving Kristol, “ Urban Civilization and its Discontents,” Commentary50, no. 1 (July 1970): 29-35.
37.
On this point, see also Glazer, “ Neoconservatism and Liberal New York.”
38.
Martin Anderson , Welfare: The Political Economy of Welfare Reform in the United States (Palo Alto, CA: Hoover Institute Press, 1978), 6.
39.
Kristol and Weaver, “Who Knows New York?” 58.
40.
James Q. Wilson, Thinking About Crime ( New York: Basic Books, 1975).
41.
The following is based on John Blundell, “No Antony Fisher, No IEA: `The Case for Freedom' After 50 Years,” Economic Affairs, September 1998; and Richard Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable: Think Tanks and the Economic Counter-revolution, 1931-1983 (New York: Harper Collins, 1994).
42.
Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable, 306-7.
43.
In addition to the cited sources, my discussion of the Manhattan Institute also draws on interviews with Howard Husock, ( Cambridge, MA, January 29, 2004); Nathan Glazer, (Cambridge, MA, July 16, 2004); and current MI president Larry Mone (New York, NY, June 29, 2005 ). On Bell's supply-side sympathies, see Robert L. Bartley and Amity Shlaes, “The Supply-Side Revolution,” in Intellect Into Influence, 36.
44.
Wolfe, “ The Manhattan Institute at 25,” in Intellect Into Influence , 2.
45.
Simon, A Time for Truth , 228-31.
46.
Irving Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1978).
47.
Irving Kristol , “Business and the `New Class,'” in Two Cheers, 25-31.
48.
Midge Decter , “Looting and Liberal Racism,” Commentary, 64, no. 3 (September 1977): 48-54. See also Freeman, Working-ClassNew York281-2.
49.
On the New York City fiscal crisis, see Freeman, Working-ClassNew York, 216-87; Fred Ferretti, The Year the Big Apple Went Bust (New York: Putnam, 1976 ); and William K. Tabb, The Long Default: New York and the Urban Fiscal Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1982). For the headlines, Freeman, 267; Simon, Time for Truth, 132.
50.
Simon, Time for Truth, 180.
51.
Simon, Time for Truth139-46.
52.
Freeman, Working-ClassNew York, 272.
53.
On the Olin Foundation, see John J. Miller, Strategic Investment in Ideas: How Two Foundations Shaped America (Washington, DC: Philanthropy Roundtable, 2003 ).
54.
Robert L. Bartley , “Irving Kristol and Friends,” Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1972.
55.
Roger Starr, The Rise and Fall of New York City (New York: Basic Books, 1985).
56.
Tod Lindberg, “ New York Down, Washington Up,” Commentary81, no. 1 (January 1986 ): 36-57.
57.
Greg Easterbrook, “ Ideas Move Nations”; Eric Alterman, “The `Right' Books and Big Ideas,” The Nation, November 22, 1999 .
58.
Janny Scott, “ Turning Intellect into Influence,” New York Times, May 12, 1997. On conservative think tanks and their influence in public debate, see Andrew Rich, Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
59.
Fred Siegel, The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life (San Francisco: Encounter Books , 2005), 60-65.
60.
Ibid, 61.
61.
Hammett, quoted in Tom Redburn, “Conservative Thinkers Are Insiders ,” New York Times, December 31, 1993 .
62.
Fred Siegel and Kay S. Hymowitz, “Why Did Ed Rendell Fizzle Out? ” City Journal, Autumn 1999, http://www.city-journal.org/html/9_4_a1.html. On privatization and the “new breed” reform mayors, see Michael B. Katz, The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the Welfare State ( New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001 ) 105-120; William D. Eggers, “ Righting City Hall,” National Review, August 29, 1994.
63.
Much of Stern's thinking and reporting on school reform is reflected in his recent book, Sol Stern, Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice (New York: Encounter Books, 2003).
64.
Heather Mac Donald, “The Real Welfare Problem is Illegitimacy ,” City Journal, Winter 1998, http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_1_a1.html; Kay Hymowitz, “ The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies,” City Journal, Summer 2005, http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_3_black_family.html .
65.
Howard Husock, America's Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake (New York: Ivan R. Dee, 2003).
66.
Heather Mac Donald, “CUNY Could Be Great Again,” City Journal, Winter 1998, http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_1_cuny_could.html.
67.
Wolfe, “ Revolutionaries”; Andrew Kirtzman, Rudy Giuliani: Emperor Of The City (New York: William Morrow, 2000), 39.
68.
Wolfe, “Revolutionaries ”
69.
Tom Redburn, “ Conservative Thinkers are Insiders,” New York Times , December 31, 1993.
70.
Myron Magnet, ed., The Millennial City, Introduction. See also Magnet, The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass (New York: William Morrow, 1993).
