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IPS Board of Directors

Harriet Barlow has been a friend and collaborator of IPS almost from the start.  She has worked on every major progressive issue since the Civil Rights Movement. She is the co-founder of the Blue Mountain Center, a gathering place for organizers, activists and cultural workers.

She has been on the Board of Directors of over 50 nonprofit organizations, including numerous environmental groups and the Environmental Grantmakers Association.  She is the Co-Founder of twelve institutions, including Libraries for the Future, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the Tomales Bay Institute, and Common Assets.  She is on the board of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.  She is a co-Founder and Director of the Blue Mountain Center, and an advisor and trustee of the HKH Foundation. 

Harry Belafonte is a singer, actor, producer, and activist, who has used his position as an entertainer to promote human rights worldwide. Belafonte raised thousands of dollars to finance the Freedom Rides for SNCC volunteers. He also bailed Martin Luther King, Jr. out of the infamous Birmingham City jail, supported voter-registration drives, helped in leading the youth march for integrated schools in 1958 and in organizing the March on Washington.

Belafonte continues to use his power as an entertainer in the struggle for civil rights through his production company, Harbel, formed in 1959, which produces movies and television shows by and about black Americans. Belafonte's idea for the hit song "We Are the World" generated more than 70 million dollars to fight famine in Ethiopia in 1985. Two years later, he became the second American to be named UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. A long-time anti-apartheid activist, Belafonte recorded an album of South African music, Paradise in Gazankulu in 1988 and chaired the welcoming committee for Nelson Mandela's first visit to the U.S. after his 27 years as a political prisoner in South Africa.

Elsbeth Bothe is a retired Baltimore Circuit Court Judge. She was awarded for "exemplifying the highest lifetime standards and achievement in the field of criminal law" by the Maryland State Bar Association in 1998. Judge Bothe was the first woman attorney appointed to the Maryland Public Defender's office in 1972, where she successfully challenged Maryland's capital punishment laws for 25 death row inmates. She is currently in active retirement, sitting occasionally in circuit courts around the state. She also reviews books for the Baltimore Sun.

Robert Borosage is the founder and Co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, former Director of IPS, and freelance writer on economic and national security issues for publications such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, Rolling Stone and The Nation. He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Fox Morning News, National Public Radio, C-SPAN, and Pacifica Radio.

He has served as an issues advisor to progressive political campaigns, including those of Senators Carol Moseley-Braun, Barbara Boxer, Paul Wellstone and the presidential campaign of Reverend Jesse L. Jackson. Mr. Borosage is a graduate of Yale Law School, and holds a Master's Degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

John Cavanagh (ex-officio) IPS Director

James Early is Director of Cultural Studies and Communication at the Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. Over the course of his twenty-five year professional career, he has consistently recognized the integrity of historically evolved values and cultures of African-American, Latino, Native American and Asian-Pacific American communities. He has taught high school Spanish, worked with the incarcerated, taught at the college level, as well as lectured and written on the politics of culture.

An activist for over 25 years, he has participated and advocated for student movements, support and solidarity committees for liberation in Southern Africa, the Caribbean, Latin American, Asia and the Pacific, and in many democratic rights movements in the U.S. He is on the board and steering committees of numerous cultural D.C.-based groups.

Barbara Ehrenreich is an award-winning political essayist, columnist and one of the nation's most insightful social critics. She is also an IPS Senior Scholar. Her scathing commentaries have appeared in Time magazine, The Nation, Harper's, Z Magazine and Mother Jones. Ehrenreich is the author of a number of best-sellers, including Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War and Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Ehrenreich has appeared on "Oprah", "Good Morning America," "Today," "Charlie Rose," among other television programs. Originally a biologist who earned her Ph.D. from Rockefeller University (1968), Ehrenreich became involved in political activism during the Vietnam War and has written professionally ever since.

Ralph Estes is the Executive Director of Stakeholder's Alliance and Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. Dr. Estes is a professor emeritus in business at American University, co-founder of the Center for the Advancement of Public Policy and former president of the national Accountants for the Public Interest and of the Texas Civil Liberties Union. He has authored a number of books, monographs and scholarly articles on corporate responsibility and accountability and is currently working on a series of books on these topics with the first being a response to "the Enron moment".

Jodie Evans has worked with IPS for many years, but most intensely since 2002 when she co-founded CodePink: Women for Peace.  She has been a community, social and political organizer for the last 30 years. She has used her skills,for the protection of the earth, to give voice to communities and people who go unheard and unseen in the area of human and civil rights, the rights of women, living wages for farm workers, and opposition to U.S. intervention abroad.

From 1973 to 1982, she served in administrative capacities in all of Jerry Brown's campaigns and in his staff and cabinet as Director of Administration. Breakthroughs in wind and solar energy happened while she was overseeing the office of Appropriate Technology.  With a group of women friends concerned about bringing children into this world, she founded the Environmental Media Association.  Her other areas of involvement were supporting activists organizations such as Citizen Action, Neighbor to Neighbor, Earth Island Institute, Environmental Media Association, Interfaith Task Force on Central America, International Overseas Education Fund, Los Angeles Women's Foundation, El Rescate, and C.A.R.E.

In 1991, she came back together with her friend Jerry Brown to run his campaign for President, which was based on political reform and a $100 contribution limit. The innovations she began in his campaign have become the standard in many campaigns. 
Following the campaign, she created We the People to encourage those that had been motivated by the efforts of the campaign to work in their communities by creating community projects and instilling them with habits of democracy and to continue the fight against big money in the election process. She also produced the radio program 'We the People with Jerry Brown', a daily liberal talk show.   She also produced the Shadow Conventions 2000, alternative conventions to politics as usual.

Frances Farenthold is a Houston-based attorney, a leader of the women's and peace movements for the past 35 years and former member of the Texas legislature. She was nominated for Vice President at the 1972 National Democratic Convention and the first Chair of the National Women's Political Caucus. She has taught at Texas Southern University Law School, University of Houston Law School, and Thurgood Marshall School of Law. She also served as president of Wells College from 1976-80. She is the founder of the Rothko Chapel in Houston.

Lisa Fuentes is an activist on Latin American and Israeli-Palestinian issues. She is a professor of Latin American Studies at American University. She serves on boards of the D.C. Jewish Community Center, the Washington Office on Latin America, The Family Place, and Global Exchange.

Larry Janss was born on the Conejo Ranch in Thousand Oaks, California in 1950, a fifth generation Californian. Larry studied photography with, and later worked for Ansel Adams and considers his time spent with Adams to be his photographically formative and foundational period. Ansel acknowledged Larry as enthusiastic as a muddy puppy, and as clumsy too. Larry was mentored in his early years in political thought and documentary filmmaking by IPS Fellow and trustee Saul Landau. Larry accompanied and assisted Saul in the filming of Que Hacer , shot in Chile in 1969/70, concerning the elections of Salvador Allende. In 1973, Saul and Larry came to work at the Institute for Policy Studies, establishing an embryonic, albeit short lived, film department and filming the goings on in Congress during the 93rd session, the Watergate Congress.

Larry Janss day job is in real estate development, banking and collecting fine art photography. He lives in Thousand Oaks, Ca., with Marney, his wife of 23 years, who tolerates him well. They are the proud parents of two adult sons, Andrew Janss, a cellist extraordinaire, and William Morrow, who navigates the arcane waters of international finance.

Nancy Lewis is a prominent social activist in the D.C. community. She is on the board of Martha's Table, and works with several advocate groups for the homeless. She has been an advisor to IPS staff and fellows for the last 20 years, and is former assistant to the Director of IPS.

Clarence Lusane is an Assistant Professor at the School of International Service at American University, teaching in the areas of global race relations and international drug policies. He is the author of 5 books, and has published numerous journal, magazine and new articles. He lectures on international affairs, race relations and electoral politics around the world, and has been a policy consultant for the Congressional Black Caucus, National Rainbow Coalition, Washington Office on Africa and other non-profit organizations. He currently is a board and committee member of several local and national political organizations and on fellowship at the The London Goodenough College in the United Kingdom.

E. Ethelbert Miller is the Chair of the Washington D.C. Humanities Council, core faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars at Bennington College, Director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University, critically-acclaimed poet, as well as founder and director of the Ascension Poetry Reading Series. He currently serves on the boards of the Cultural Development Corporation and Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts. He also serves as an advisory editor for the African American Review, an advisory board member of Arts & Letters: Journal of Contemporary Culture, a contributing editor to Callaloo, Editorial Advisor for the Black Issues Book Review, advisor to Dialogue Magazine and an editor of Poet-Lore magazine. Mr. Miller is Commissioner for the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Andy Shallal was born in Iraq and immigrated with his family to Northern Virginia at age 11. Andy earned a bachelor's from Catholic University and a Masters in Microbiology from Howard University in preparation for a career as a medical immunologist. After a few years at the National Institutes of Health, he realized he didn't want to spend his days with test tubes because "I like people too much." He began his career in the restaurant business. He managed the Foggy Bottom Café and opened his first place in Annandale, a pasta and pizza parlor he called "Little Italy." Then he made a go of DC location. He opened Mimi's - named for the "theater muse" of La Boheme and Rent - and has made it a center of theater-related activities, hosting fundraisers for the likes of Signature Theatre and Arena Stage, the Offies Awards ceremony for the League of Washington Theatres and employing over a hundred of the region's performers and would-be performers who need a job as they pursue that ultimate break. In 2005, Andy opened Busboys and Poets, a recreational and cultural center with a restaurant, bar, and bookstore.

Rita L. Sperry is an artist. She was born on March 16, 1933. She graduated in 1950 from the Moravian Seminary for Young Women and received her BA from Smith College in 1954. She has studied with Jack Jefferson, Oliver Jackson, Gregory Amenoff and Richard Diebenkorn. She married Leonard Sperry, former assistant attorney general in California. She was a friend of Dick Barnet and praised herself with being involved with the Institute for Policy Studies.

Lewis Steel (General Counsel) is a civil rights attorney at Steel, Bellman, Ritz & Clark, P.C. in New York City. In recent years, he has specialized in employment and housing/zoning discrimination cases. He has also tried and appealed major criminal cases involving defendants who have contended that they were victims of racially tainted prosecutions, including the Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and John Artis murder case, and the Harlem Four and Tony Maynard murder cases. Earlier in his career, at another law firm, he represented District 65, UAW and other unions. From 1964-68, he served on the legal staff of the NAACP, handling a broad range of civil rights matters. Mr. Steel has also written a number of articles which have appeared in many newspapers and journals. He is a regular contributor to The Nation.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is Editor of The Nation. She is a frequent commentator on American politics on CNBC, CNN, and MSNBC and writes frequently about American and Russian politics. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.

She is the co-author of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers and editor of the anthologies, The Nation: 1865-1990, The Best of The Nation: Selections from the Independent Magazine of Politics and Culture, and the collection A Just Response: The Nation on Terrorism, Democracy and September 11, 2001.

A co-founder of "You and We," a Russian-American newsletter for women, she is a recipient of Planned Parenthood's Maggie Award for her article, "Right-to-Lifers Hit Russia." The special issue she conceived and edited, "Gorbachev's Soviet Union," was awarded New York University's 1988 Olive Branch Award.

Daphne Wysham (Secretary) IPS Fellow and co-director Sustainable Energy and Economy Network