James Allen Smith

James Allen Smith is a historian who has written widely on public policy, philanthropy, civil society and American cultural policy. He is now serving as adviser to the president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. In 1993 he helped establish the Center for Arts and Culture, a Washington-based cultural policy research center. He has been President of the Center's board of directors since its creation. He was also the first executive director of The Howard Gilman Foundation, a post he held from 1992 to 1999, while shaping its programs in the arts, environmental conservation, and medical research.

Smith began his foundation career in 1979 when he became a program officer at The Twentieth Century Fund. He was responsible for the Fund's policy research program in the fields of freedom of expression, the nonprofit sector, and social policy. He was also staff director for Twentieth Century Fund Task Forces on federal education policy, campaign finance and the presidential debates.

While at the Twentieth Century Fund, Smith began work on a history of American think tanks. His book, The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite (Free Press, 1991), has won awards from the American Historical Association, the National Academy of Public Administration and has been translated into several foreign languages. He has also published Brookings at Seventy-Five (1991) and Strategic Calling (1993). His most recent articles and books chapters are "The Evolving American Foundation" in a volume prepared for the American Assembly entitled Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Sector in a Changing America (Indiana University Press, 1999) and "European Foundations" The Historical Background" to be published by the Bertelsmann Foundation in 2000. He is currently at work on a book about American foundations.

In 1988 Smith was appointed the first resident scholar at the Rockefeller Archive Center in Pocantico Hills, New York. Over the years he has served as a consultant to a number of foundations, including the Pew Charitable Trusts, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, Heinz Endowments, Alcoa Foundation, Bertelsmann Foundation, and Atlantic Philanthropic Foundation. He is on the advisory board of the Center for the Study of Philanthropy at the City University of New York and a member of the Board of Directors of Grantmakers in the Arts. He is one of the founding board members of the Creative Capital Foundation, a fund established in 1999 to support individual artists.

He has taught medieval history at Brown University, Smith College and the University of Nebraska. Since 1987 he has been on the adjunct faculty of the New School University where he teaches in the nonprofit management program of the Milano School; he is also a visiting scholar at the Remarque Institute of New York University.

Smith is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Colgate University where he earned his A.B. magna cum laude. He received his A.M. and Ph.D. from Brown University where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow; he was also a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Ghent (Belgium).