Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP)

According to CEIP, a report it published in 2018 was used to form the basis of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy and is a “guidepost” for the Biden administration’s U.S. Department of State. ¹

Since 2019, CEIP has received $3,801,001 from the U.S. Government, $620,008 from U.S. Department of Defense contractors, and at least $10,565,011 in funding from foreign governments. ² In 2023, CEIP received $3,096,000 from left-of-center political donor George Soros’s Open Society Foundations ³ and $2,000,000 for more from the Pritzker Traubert Foundation, the Robert and Ardis James Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. ⁴

History and Leadership

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was founded in 1910 when Andrew Carnegie gave $10,000,000 to create the organization to promote international cooperation. ¹ In 1953, CEIP received tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service. ⁵

In 1945, CEIP president James T. Shotwell led a delegation of advisers to the conference where the United Nations (UN) Charter was drafted and advocated in favor of creating the UN Commission on Human Rights. In the 1970s, CEIP began working on nuclear security and nonproliferation issues. ¹

In 2002, CEIP established a working group on terrorism following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and a multi-year research effort on developing what it considered middle class-focused foreign policy in 2018. According to CEIP, this report was used to form the basis of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy and is a “guidepost” for the Biden administration’s U.S. Department of State. ⁶

Mariano-Florentino Cuellar has been the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace since July 2022. Cuellar was a co-chair of the Obama-Biden Transition Immigration Working Group, a member of the Obama administration White House Domestic Policy Council, and a staffer at the U.S. Department of the Treasury during the Clinton administration. ⁷

Prior to joining CEIP, Cuellar was a justice of the California Supreme Court from January 2015 to October 2021. He is on the board of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and is a member of the Harvard Foundation, the Council of the American Law Institute, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on Accelerating Climate Action. ⁷

Former Obama administration U.S. Department of State official Dan Baer is CEIP’s senior vice president for policy research. ^{4 8}

Former Obama administration Secretary of Commerce and Biden administration special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery Penny Pritzker was the chair of the CEIP board of trustees from 2018 to 2023. ⁹

Past members of CEIP’s board of trustees have included former President Dwight Eisenhower, former U.S. Secretaries of State Elihu Root and John Foster Dulles, former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ), and former World Bank president and George W. Bush administration U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. ¹

Ashley J. Tellis, who holds the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was arrested in October 2025 and charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with the unlawful retention of national defense information after authorities allegedly discovered more than 1,000 pages of classified documents at his Virginia home. Tellis, a 64-year-old Indian-born foreign policy scholar and longtime adviser on U.S. and South Asian affairs, has served in several senior government roles, including on the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration and as a contractor with the Office of Net Assessment at the Department of Defense. His attorneys have denied the allegations and stated that he “will vigorously contest” the charges. ¹⁰

Activities and Funding

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a foreign policy think tank founded in 1910 by Andrew Carnegie. It notes that it has a network of more than 150 “experts” who have “served in nearly every [presidential] administration since the endowment’s founding.” ¹ CEIP engages and leads strategic dialogues and back-channel diplomacy to build relationships between international policymakers seeking to solve geopolitical issues ¹ and is committed to the critical race theory-influenced concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). ¹¹

CEIP hosts Track 2 dialogues on U.S.-China relations in conjunction with Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy and the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies. ⁴ In January 2024, the Chinese Communist Party took a direct role in running Tsinghua University. ¹²

In June 2022, CEIP launched Carnegie California to focus on technology, Indo-Pacific, and subnational affairs issues. The organization also organized a Ukraine Initiative following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, ⁴ runs a fellows program for individuals it has identified as rising leaders in nuclear policy and foreign policy, ⁴ publishes the foreign affairs-focused Emissary newsletter, ¹³ and has criticized the expected foreign policy of the second Trump administration as “misguided.” ¹⁴

CEIP has published papers that claim “climate impacts will force millions of people to leave their homes, cities, and countries in the coming decades” and that industrial policy requires more foreign workers in the United States. ¹⁵ Following the second election of President Donald Trump in November 2024, CEIP published an article in its Emissary magazine asking if President Trump would “govern as a strongman.” ¹⁶

Other CEIP policy and regional programs are focused on Africa; American Statecraft; Asia; Democracy, Conflict, and Governance; Europe; Global Order Institutions; Middle East; Nuclear Policy; Russia and Eurasia; South Asia; Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics; Technology and International Affairs; and DEI. ¹⁷

International Offices

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace operates five centers outside of the United States. In 2007, the Carnegie Corporation of New York gave CEIP $3 million to establish its China Program. This program focuses research on China at a regional and global level with an emphasis on Southeast Asian perspectives on the Indo-Pacific region. As of 2024, CEIP operates the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. ^{18 19} The Berlin, Germany-based Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center was launched in 2023 after the Russian government closed the Carnegie Moscow Center in 2022. ²⁰

In 1993, CEIP created the Carnegie Moscow Center with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. ¹⁸ CEIP also runs the Carnegie Europe Program, the Carnegie Middle East Center, and Carnegie India programs overseas. ^{21 22 23 24 25 26}

Government Funding

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace receives funding from various governments and defense-related agencies, including United States European Command, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), and the U.S. Embassy to Russia in Moscow. Since 2019, CEIP has received $3,801,001 from the U.S. Government and $620,008 from U.S. Department of Defense contractors. ²

Foreign Government Funding

Since 2019, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has received at least $10,565,011 of funding from foreign governments. ² In 2023, CEIP received funding from the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; the European Commission; Global Affairs Canada; the Japan Bank for International Cooperation; the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs; the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; the Embassy of Japan in the United States; the Ministry of External Affairs of India; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands; the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency; and the German Federal Foreign Office. ⁴

Non-Government Funding

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace receives its funding from contributions, grants, program service revenue, and investment income. In 2023, CEIP reported revenue of $86,800,356 and expenses of $52,595,867. CEIP reported revenue of $59,878,250 and expenses of $47,202,026. ^{27 4}

In 2023, CEIP received $3,096,000 from left-of-center political donor George Soros’s Open Society Foundations ³ and $2,000,000 or more from the Pritzker Traubert Foundation, the Robert and Ardis James Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. CEIP received between $1,000,000 and $1,999,999 from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Eileen Donahue, the California Community Fund, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, and the Stand Together Trust in 2023. ⁴

CIEP also received financial support from Meta (formerly known as Facebook), the Tavitian Foundation, the Asfari Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, King Philanthropies, the Open Philanthropy Project Fund, the Skoll Foundation, the Willam and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Amazon Web Services, the Bright Horizon Foundation, the ClimateWorks Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Google, the Knight Foundation, Microsoft, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Pivotal Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Boeing, the California Community Foundation, the Korea Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Ploughshares Fund, the Prospect Hill Foundation, the Warburg Pincus Foundation, and Harvard University in 2023. ⁴

CEIP received $4,500,000 from the Charles Koch Institute in 2022 ²⁸ and has received at least $25,138,802 from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation since 1998. ²⁹