Frederick W. Kagan and General Jack Keane

In January 2007, one year ago, President George W. Bush announced the successful Iraq surge strategy. Last month, NPR's Morning Edition broadcast a retrospective on the surge and credited Frederick W. Kagan for the original idea. According to correspondent Guy Raz, "Kagan . . . along with retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, presented the White House with a plan to change its strategy in Iraq. It called for a surge in troops. The two men also pushed for a change in leadership. Keane suggested his protégé, Gen. David Petraeus, an ambitious officer with a Princeton pedigree to boot. The White House listened and agreed to roll the dice."

Visiting Scholar Richard Burkhauser

AEI welcomes Richard Burkhauser as a visiting scholar. A professor of policy analysis and economics at Cornell University, he will work on an AEI Press book arguing that disability insurance programs should serve as programs of last resort for those unable to work rather than as income transfer arrangements for those who, with appropriate assistance, can work. Burkhauser joins AEI through the National Research Initiative.

January 15 was the deadline for thousands of plaintiffs to register for the $4.85 billion Vioxx settlement, three years after Merck withdrew the popular drug from the market. Several AEI scholars have written about the issues involved in the Merck case. John E. Calfee described the episode's impact on the development of other drugs. Ted Frank wrote about the problems presented by the case for the litigation system as a whole. An early January event cosponsored by the AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest and the Federalist Society examined why Merck settled and whether the settlement will hold up to legal challenges.

The American magazine announced the winner of its 2008 Young Economist Award at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in New Orleans. Raj Chetty, an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, will receive the $100,000 grant from the Searle Freedom Trust to "identify a set of policy changes that will make low-income support programs more effective per dollar spent." In each issue, The American features an economist under forty who is doing groundbreaking original research.

As the 2008 presidential campaign seems to be turning on the vacuities of "change," Newt Gingrich proposes a substantive reform agenda in Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works (Regnery, January 2008). Among his ideas: make English the official language of government, offer prizes to invent an affordable car that gets one hundred miles to the gallon, build more nuclear power plants to help cut carbon emissions, and simplify the tax filing process.

The Wall Street Journal's "Weekend Interview" recently featured Jeffrey Gedmin, who directed AEI's New Atlantic Initiative from 1996 to 2001 and who, in 2007, was appointed president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which now broadcasts in Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. "At a time when everybody is arguing 'soft power' is so important, this kind of broadcast is the ultimate in soft power," Gedmin said. RFE/RL is overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is chaired by AEI's James K. Glassman.

Resident Scholar Joshua Muravchik

British magazine Democratiya ran an extensive interview with Joshua Muravchik in its December 2007 issue, touching on foreign policy, socialism, neoconservatism, and democracy promotion. The interview was reprinted on the official English-language website of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, glossed by a respectful demurral.

Jeffrey Azarva, an AEI research assistant in Middle Eastern studies, will soon take leave of the Institute to serve as a speechwriter and strategic planning assistant for Major General Douglas Stone, the deputy commanding general of the Multinational Force-Iraq (Detainee Operations). From Camp Victory at Baghdad International Airport, Azarva will craft the general's narrative about U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and the reintegration programs he is implementing for detainees and then disseminate this message to Iraqis.