Marcus Raskin, '57, 1934-2017: Think Tank Founder who Helped Shape Liberal Ideas
Marcus Raskin, Think Tank Founder who Helped Shape Liberal Ideas, Dies at 83
Marcus Raskin, an author and advocate who helped shape left-leaning thought for decades as a founder of one of Washington’s most prominent liberal think tanks, the Institute for Policy Studies — and who, as a college student, gave piano lessons to composer Philip Glass — died Dec. 24 at his home in Washington. He was 83.
The cause was a heart-related ailment, said his son Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the U.S. House from Maryland.
Mr. Raskin, a child prodigy on the piano and a University of Chicago Law School graduate, joined President John F. Kennedy’s administration while still in his 20s. He went on to become the author or co-author of more than 20 books on foreign policy, civil rights, political philosophy and the “national security state,” a term he originated in the early 1970s to describe a military, intelligence and security network that exists with little legal supervision.
From civil rights marches to antiwar protests to the Pentagon Papers, Mr. Raskin was a persistent and ubiquitous intellectual provocateur of the left. He and his fellow founder of the Institute for Policy Studies, Richard J. Barnet, were on President Richard M. Nixon’s enemies list in the early 1970s.
“What we’re playing for,” Mr. Raskin told The Washington Post in 1986, “is the spirit of the time.”
Read more at Washington Post