James Allen Smith
James Allen Smith is a historian who has written on public policy,
philanthropy, civil society and American cultural policy. He is now serving as
senior adviser to the president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Prior to joining
the Getty in 2000, he was the first executive director of The Howard Gilman
Foundation, a post he held from 1991 to 1999, while shaping its programs in the
arts, environmental conservation, and medical research. In 1993 he helped
establish the Center for Arts and Culture, a Washington-based cultural policy
research center and served as President of the Center's board of directors from
1993 to 2001.
Smith is the author of three books, including The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and
the Rise of the New Policy Elite (Free Press, 1991). His most recent articles
and book chapters are "The Evolving American Foundation" in a volume prepared
for a 1998 American Assembly entitled Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Sector in a
Changing America (Indianapolis, 1999) and "Foundations in Europe: The Historical
Context" in a Bertelsmann Foundation-sponsored volume, Foundations in Europe:
Society, Management and Law (London, 2001). He is currently at work on a book
about American foundations.
Smith is a founding board member of the Creative Capital Foundation, a fund
established in 1999 to support individual artists. He also serves on the
boards of the Center for the Study of Philanthropy at the City University of New
York and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation.
Smith is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Colgate University where he earned his A.B.
magna cum laude. He received his A.M. and Ph.D. in medieval history from Brown
University where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow; he was also a Fulbright Fellow
at the University of Ghent (Belgium). He has taught medieval history at Brown
University, Smith College and the University of Nebraska. Since 1987 he has been
on the adjunct faculty of the New School University where he teaches in the
nonprofit management program of the Milano School; he is currently a senior
fellow and visiting professor at the UCLA School of Public Policy and Social
Research.