Institute for America’s Future is a left-progressive political advocacy organization and think tank. The organization was founded in 1996 and is part of a large network of policy groups and advocacy organizations that promote far-left policies. The organization was co-founded by Roger Hickey, a long-time left-wing activist and organizer who has helped to found several left-leaning organizations including the Economic Policy Institute, the Campaign for America’s Future, and Americans United to Protect Social Security. ¹ The Institute acts as the parent organization for two groups that bill themselves as separate organizations: the Perception institute, a think tank which promotes left-of-center social policies, and the Public Leadership Institute, an advocacy network of pro-abortion state and local lawmakers. ²

In addition to supporting its two child organizations, the Institute for America’s Future has a sister organization, the Campaign for America’s Future. The Campaign acts as the Institute’s lobbying arm to promote various left-leaning policies and sponsors a pledge to promote left-progressive policies that has been signed by many notable individuals in Democratic politics. Both organizations promote left-wing policies, including a Green New Deal, government-run Medicare-for-All, tax increases, and taxpayer-funded public college. ³

Background

The Institute for America’s Future was founded in the 1990s by activists Roger Hickey and Robert Borosage, both of whom still work as co-directors of the organization. Unlike its sister organization, the Campaign for America’s Future, the Institute for America’s Future does not maintain a public facing profile. The Institute’s website listed on its tax documents, ourfuture.org, directs to the website for OurFuture, a different left-leaning advocacy group that is operated by People’s Action, a large network or left-wing advocacy organizations. It is unclear to what extent the Institute for America’s Future is affiliated with People’s Action. ⁴

The Institute for America’s Future operates two projects, the Public Leadership Institute and the Perception Institute, that position themselves as separate organizations with separate websites, staffs, and focus areas. The Institute lists both organizations as projects on its tax filings and does not list any other significant activities. Gloria Totten and Alexis McGill-Johnson, who direct the Public Leadership Institute and the Perception Institute respectively, are listed as employees of the Institute for America’s Future, with both women earning over $100,000. McGill-Johnson is also as of early 2021 the acting president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. ⁵

Public Leadership Institute

The Public Leadership Institute is an Institute project focused on promoting left-leaning legislation at the state and local level. The organization states a focus on abortion issues but promotes hundreds of pieces of left-leaning legislation and “model bills” concerning economic and social issues. ⁶

According to the Public Leadership Institute’s 2019 public policy report, the organization targets dozens of pieces of model legislation annually to across multiple issue areas. The organization promotes so-called model bills including bills to forbid the government from asking citizens about immigration status, promote affirmative action, regulate prepaid debit cards and credit card marketing, ban all natural gas fracking, divest the United States entirely from fossil fuels, and ban plastics, among others. ⁷

Despite claims of being nonpartisan, the Public Leadership Institute promotes many viewpoints and publishes editorial content that is in favor of the Democratic Party and directly against the Republican Party. A 2015 post on the organization’s website derides the 2014 elections, which saw Republicans gain seats in the Congress and a handful of governorships, as “ghastly” while noting that Republicans then enjoyed record high control over governorships and legislative chambers. ⁸ The organization further criticized the business and Tea Party wings of the Republican Party for pushing right-of-center legislation. ⁹

Perception Institute

The other arm of the Institute for America’s Future is the Perception Institute, a research organization that promotes left-leaning social theories around race, gender, and sexual orientation. The organization holds trainings and provides materials in support of these theories to sectors including education, healthcare, the media, law enforcement, and civil justice. The central theory around the Institute is that while most individuals think they do not have racial or gender biases, there are “stereotypes embedded in our brains, shaped over time by history and culture”¹⁰ that individuals are unable to control. ¹¹

Publications from the Perception Institute cover topics including purported implicit bias in the criminal justice system, criminal prosecution, and schools; gender and racial stereotypes; stereotypes about African American men; and biases regarding African American women’s hair. ¹²

In its tax filings, the Institute for America’s Future stated that the Perception Institute had designed the curriculum for Starbucks’s anti-bias training, which was delivered in 8,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada.  The organization also delivered trainings for several departments within the City of Philadelphia criminal justice system and has training programs in school districts in states including Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and California. ¹³

People

Left-progressive writer and activist Robert Borosage is the co-founder and co-director of the Institute and the Campaign for America’s Future. Borosage is also the Campaign’s secretary-treasurer. Borosage is also the co-founder of Progressive Majority PAC and of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center. Borosage sits on the board for the far-left think tank Institute for Policy Studies. Borosage formerly worked as the issues director for the Jesse Jackson 1988 presidential campaign. ¹⁴ Borosage is the president of the board of the Institute for America’s Future. ¹⁵

Roger Hickey is co-director and co-founder of both the Campaign for America’s Future and the Institute for America’s Future. He was a founder of the labor union-backed Economic Policy Institute, where he formerly worked as a communications director. Hickey is also a founder of the Public Media Center in San Francisco and formerly worked as an organizer for the Virginia Civil Rights Committee. ¹⁶

1. “Roger Hickey.” Campaign for America’s Future. 2019. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://campaignforamericasfuture.org/signer/roger-hickey/
2. “Institute for America’s Future.” IRS Form 990. 2018. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/521971942/02_2020_prefixes_47-52%2F521971942_201812_990_2020021017129290
3. “Resources.” Campaign for America’s Future, 2019. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://campaignforamericasfuture.org/resources/.
4. “Home.” OurFuture. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://ourfuture.org/
5. “Institute for America’s Future.” IRS Form 990. 2018. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/521971942/02_2020_prefixes_47-52%2F521971942_201812_990_2020021017129290
6. “Model Bills.” Public Leadership Institute. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://publicleadershipinstitute.org/model-bills/
7. “Progressive Agenda 2019.” Public Leadership Institute. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://publicleadershipinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/PLI-Progressive-Agenda-2019-with-hyperlinks.pdf
8. “State of the States and Localities.” Public Leadership Institute. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://publicleadershipinstitute.org/2015/01/19/state-states-localities/
9. “State of the States and Localities.” Public Leadership Institute. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://publicleadershipinstitute.org/2015/01/19/state-states-localities/
10. “Theory of Change.” Perception institute. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://perception.org/about-us/theory-of-change/
11. “Theory of Change.” Perception institute. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://perception.org/about-us/theory-of-change/
12. “Publications.” Perception institute. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://perception.org/publications/
13. “Institute for America’s Future.” IRS Form 990. 2018. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/521971942/02_2020_prefixes_47-52%2F521971942_201812_990_2020021017129290
14. “Robert Borosage.” Campaign for America’s Future. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://campaignforamericasfuture.org/signer/robert-borosage/
15. “Robert L. Borosage.” Institute for Policy Studies. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://ips-dc.org/ips-authors/robert-l-borosage/
16. “Roger Hickey.” Campaign for America’s Future. Accessed December 16, 2020. https://campaignforamericasfuture.org/signer/roger-hickey/