Madison Center for Educational Affairs

The now-defunct Madison Center for Educational Affairs emerged from a merger between the Institute for Educational Affairs and the Madison Center.

According to a report by People for the American Way, "Simon and neoconservative ideologue Irving Kristol founded the Institute for Educational Affairs (I.E.A.). Its purpose is to seek out promising Ph.D. candidates and undergraduate leaders, help them to establish themselves through grants and fellowships and then help them get jobs with activist organizations, research projects, student publications, federal agencies, or leading periodicals. I.E.A. received start-up grants of $100,000 from the Olin, Scaife, J.M. and Smith Richardson foundations, as well as substantial contributions from Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Ford Motor Co., General Electric, K-Mart, Mobil and Nestle corporations."

In 1990, I.E.A. merged with the Madison Center, founded in 1988 by William Bennett, Allan Bloom (author of The Closing of the American Mind), and Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield to become the Madison Center for Educational Affairs (M.C.E.A.); its current president, Charles Horner, was the associate director of the United States Information Agency under Ronald Reagan. Between 1988 and 1991, eight conservative foundations pledged in excess of $1.5 million.

Recognizing the importance of campus newspapers in the dissemination of its right-wing agenda, I.E.A. established the Collegiate Network of right-wing student publications. Unlike many student publications, the member newspapers are far less reliant on university funding for their existence. As noted earlier, 70 student papers belonged to the network by 1994; researcher Sara Diamond notes that the ultraconservative Dartmouth Review was its first member. Beyond that, however, the Network provides substantive content guidance to the student newspapers; the editor-in-chief of the Network-sponsored Stanford Review acknowledged as much in most direct terms, saying that the Network staff "help us form our opinions." In 1990, M.C.E.A. spent more than $300,000 on its network activities alone, and $1 million on all its projects.

M.C.E.A. has also joined in efforts to recruit minority students to the cause of conservatism. In 1990, the M.C.E.A. established a project to recruit minority students supportive of its conservative agenda. One of the participants at the founding conference was Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas," the report stated.