FORUM Activities

The Forum engages in four key activities—scholarship, Aspen symposia, the Higher Education Working Group, and publications.

Scholarship

The Forum sponsors research and creates knowledge intended to inform campus policy and decision-making. Its research agenda focuses on new thinking and ideas likely to affect the future of higher education. Each year, 15–20 new Forum Scholars are designated

Recent Forum Scholars include:

Alan Blinder, Princeton University
Barry Bosworth, The Brookings Institution
William Bowen, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Princeton University, emeritus
John Seely Brown, Xerox PARC (ret.)
Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School
General Wesley Clark, U.S. Army (ret.)
Jim Collins, author Good to Great and Built to Last
Mihaly Czikszentmihaly, Claremont Graduate University
Niall Ferguson, Harvard and Oxford Universities
Woody Flowers, MIT
Robert Frank, Cornell University and The New York Times
Richard Freeman, Harvard University
Benjamin Friedman, Harvard University
Howard Gardner, Harvard University
Leslie Gelb, Council on Foreign Relations and The New York Times, emeritus
Neil Gershenfeld, MIT Media Lab
Richard Haass, Council on Foreign Relations
Rep. Lee Hamilton, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Henry Hansmann, Yale University
Brian Hawkins, EDUCAUSE
Linda Hill, Harvard Business School
Caroline Hoxby, Harvard University
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School
Senator Bob Kerrey, New School University

Richard Light, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government
Alan Lightman, MIT
Burton Malkiel, Princeton University
General Montgomery Meigs, U.S. Army (ret.)
Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago
Joseph Nye, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government
Steven Pinker, Harvard University
Michael Porter, Harvard Business School
Samantha Power, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and Time Magazine
James Brian Quinn, Dartmouth College
V. S. Ramachandran, University of California, San Diego
Mitchell Resnick, MIT Media Lab
Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University
Robert Shiller, Yale University
Debora Spar, Barnard College
Robert Sternberg, Tufts University
Lester Thurow, MIT's Sloan School
Uri Treisman, University of Texas, Austin
Paul Volcker, U.S. Federal Reserve System (ret.)
Diana Chapman Walsh, Wellesley College, emeritus
Carl Wieman, University of British Columbia and University of Colorado, Boulder
Daniel Yankelovich, Daniel Yankelovich Group

Aspen Symposium

The Forum convenes an annual Aspen Symposium at The Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colorado. Forum Scholars present research and papers at Aspen symposia, which are discussed and debated by the Forum community. Time is also set aside for informal discussion and reflection.

Master Class. The Aspen Symposium is preceded by a Master Class during which current management and financial issues—endowment spending policy and capital structure, for example—are examined.

Higher Education Working Group

The Forum and the Council on Foreign Relations established the Higher Education Working Group on Global Issues in 2007. The purpose of the Working Group is to explore the role of colleges and universities in a rapidly changing world and how institutions can most effectively meet the challenges of globalization.

Publications

Forum scholarship is published in several print and electronic media and broadly disseminated throughout higher education. Forum publications include:

Forum Futures. Summaries of Forum research, published annually, and designed for use by trustees, presidents, and senior academic and administrative officers in board and planning retreats.
Aspen Symposium. Full-text of papers presented at annual Aspen Symposium (formerly, Forum on the Internet and the University).
Ford Policy Forum. Studies on the economics of higher education and related policy issues from the Ford Policy Forum.
Higher Education Finance Forum. Papers on higher education finance and financial management presented at the Forum on Higher Education Finance.