Last spring, I interviewed the current Claremont Institute board member and former president from 2001 to 2014, Brian T. Kennedy CM ’88, at a Starbucks in the Claremont Village. Like many students at the Claremont Colleges, I had heard of the Claremont Institute — and I was curious.
Headquartered a few miles away in Upland, CA, the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy is an influential conservative think tank born from the Claremont Colleges. The Institute, whose affiliates call themselves “Claremonsters,” has become entwined with the Trump administration. Vice President JD Vance, at a recent speech given at a Claremont Institute-hosted dinner, described the Claremont Institute as “the only group in California that makes me seem like a reasonable moderate.”
The Claremont Institute was founded in 1979 by four Claremont Graduate University (CGU) students of Harry Jaffa, a Straussian conservative philosopher and longtime professor at CMC and CGU. The Institute has long preferred a public image of the elite intellectual over that of the conspiracy theory-courting populist. But that portrayal, as well as the Claremont Institute’s relationship to the Claremont Colleges, has changed drastically since the Claremont Institute’s origins — most significantly during Donald Trump’s first presidency.
Current and former professors at the Claremont Colleges — CGU, Claremont McKenna College (CMC) and Harvey Mudd College — have been affiliated with the Claremont Institute. CGU graduate students, CMC students and one Pitzer student have participated in Claremont Institute programs.
Now, only one professor at the Claremont Colleges remains directly involved with the Institute — CMC’s Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government Dr. Charles Kesler, the second-highest paid employee of the Claremont Institute.
What is the Claremont Institute?
Before Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Claremont Institute was not particularly publicly visible. It was mostly known in intellectual conservative circles for its publication of the “Claremont Review of Books” (CRB) and its summer fellowship programs for young conservatives. Alumni of the programs include Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro and Dinesh D’Souza. The Institute’s less flashy alumni — the speechwriters, federal government officials and journalists — are just as influential.
Kesler, former director of CMC’s Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom, has been the editor-in-chief of the CRB since 2000. Kesler first became involved with the Claremont Institute as a Publius fellow in the summer of 1980.
The Claremont Institute came under renewed national scrutiny after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. John Eastman CG ’93, a director of the Claremont Institute and Trump’s former lawyer, attempted to convince Mike Pence that the vice president had the authority to overturn the election.
Even after his criminal indictment and disbarment in California, Eastman remains the director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, the Claremont Institute’s legal activism branch. Recently, Eastman filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Claremont Institute in support of Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship.
The Claremont Institute, whose mission is “to restore the principles of the American founding,” was among the first conservative think tanks to embrace Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The choice seems to have paid off: Annual contributions to the Claremont Institute have more than doubled, from five million dollars in 2014 to almost 12 million dollars in 2024. Yet, the Claremont Institute’s newfound political clout has come at the cost of any academic prestige it once had.
In 2023, CMC’s Salvatori Center addressed the Claremont Institute’s changing relationship with academia, hosting a lunch seminar with political theorist Laura K. Field called “What the Hell Happened to the Claremont Institute?”
But what exactly was the nature of the Claremont Institute’s relationship with the Claremont Colleges? Why did it change?
To understand the colleges’ relationship with the Claremont Institute, I interviewed Kennedy, William B. Allen CG ’72, a founder of what became the Claremont Institute, Field, an expert on American far-right intellectualism and George Thomas, director of CMC’s Salvatori Center.
The Claremont Institute’s Claremont Colleges Origins
Public Research, Syndicated
The Claremont Institute began not as a think tank, but as an organization called Public Research, Syndicated, which published op-eds. Unlike most think tanks, the Claremont Institute has always focused on political engagement over public policy.
Allen founded Public Research, Syndicated in 1978. Allen was a professor of political philosophy at Mudd and CGU during the 1970s and 1980s. He has most recently been in the news for changing Florida’s standards of teaching Black history.
“I recruited several of the graduate students … that I had mentored, and with them created Public Research Syndicated, [which] distributed op-eds to regional newspapers,” Allen explained. Allen had also found a wealthy donor to fund Public Research, Syndicated.
Allen said that he created Public Research, Syndicated due to a lack of employment opportunities for the graduate students at CGU’s conservative political philosophy program.
Parallel to the Claremont Colleges
Public Research, Syndicated became the Claremont Institute when the graduate students who led the organization decided to shift from producing op-eds to scholarly research, creating what Allen termed a “genuine think tank.”
Including “Claremont” in the think tank’s name was a deliberate choice to associate it with the Claremont Colleges, Allen said. According to Field, author of “Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right,” the Claremont Institute was intended to exist in parallel with the Claremont Colleges, serving as an informal conservative counterpart to the Colleges.
Similar parallel institutions and centers exist in colleges around the country.
“These alternative institutions have been funded for the past 50 or so years by conservatives who felt ousted from the Academy,” Field said.
The Claremont Institute shares a donor with the Salvatori Center, CMC’s oldest research center, which focuses on political philosophy and American Constitutionalism. Henry Salvatori, the conservative philanthropist who established the center in 1969, also gave the Claremont Institute a large endowment fund.
Participation in Claremont Institute publications, fellowships and events was once somewhat common for conservative-leaning Claremont Colleges faculty and students, especially grad students from CGU’s now-defunct political philosophy program.
In her book “The MAGA Diaries,” journalist Tina Nguyen CM ’11 describes attending a Claremont Institute event as a CMC student and Claremont Independent writer and smoking a cigar with Andrew Breitbart at the afterparty.
Conservative Academics and the Claremont Institute
Allen’s students, as well as Allen himself, were students of Harry Jaffa. Jaffa was a Straussian, a follower of philosopher Leo Strauss’s esoteric approach to reading political philosophy.
“[Jaffa’s] importance cannot be overestimated … his influence was there on everything we did,” Allen said.
Like those he inspired at the Claremont Institute, Jaffa was involved in the political realm. Perhaps best known for his scholarship on the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Jaffa was deeply concerned with the ideals of the American founding and called for conservatives to emphasize equality as a natural byproduct, not an antagonist of, freedom. He was also extremely homophobic, asserting that the deadly 1980s AIDS epidemic was proof that homosexuality was a violation of natural law.
Jaffa, who passed away in 2015, would go on to contribute scholarships to the Claremont Review of Books (CRB) and the Claremont Institute. After his 1989 retirement from the post of Henry Salvatori Research Professor of Political Philosophy, Jaffa was named a distinguished fellow of the Claremont Institute in the same year.
In addition to Jaffa, the Salvatori Center and the Claremont Institute have also shared other scholars.
Professor Charles Kesler, currently editor of the CRB, was director of the Salvatori Center from 1989 to 2008. Professor Mark Blitz, who was an adjunct fellow of the Claremont Institute, though not in its leadership, was director of the Salvatori Center from 2008 to 2018. Blitz declined to comment about the Claremont Institute for this article.
George Thomas, the current director of the Salvatori Center, made clear the distinction between the Claremont Institute and the Salvatori Center.
“A think tank can be as irresponsible as it wants, but as a first-rate academic institution, we [at the Salvatori Center] have obligations about truth and the kinds of arguments and teaching we should engage in,” he said.
Many of the original graduate students who were leaders of the Claremont Institute did go on to work in academia.
For instance, Larry Arnn, a founding member and current vice-chairman of the Institute, is now the president of Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian liberal arts college and the academic institution most currently connected to the Institute.
After those graduate students moved on, their leadership positions became occupied by “think tank professionals … people no longer active in the academic world,” according to Allen.
The “Claremont Review of Books” and editor-in-chief Professor Kesler
A Scholarly Journal of Opinion
Since 2000, Kesler has been the editor-in-chief of the CRB, which has been active in some form since 1982. According to Allen, the CRB began as a scholarly journal, then “pivoted into being a journal of opinion … written by scholars of reputation … addressed to an elite audience.”
The CRB’s academic reputation has since changed, although its editor-in-chief has not.
Thomas agreed with Allen about the CRB’s prestige. “People used to write for the ‘Claremont Review of Books,’” he said. “[The CRB] was always conservative, but always had a good reputation. Scholars who were not conservatives would write for it.”
The CRB’s academic reputation has since changed, although its editor-in-chief has not.
“The Flight 93 Election”
In 2016, the CRB published an influential essay that analogized voting for Trump to passengers on Flight 93 crashing the plane themselves to avoid hitting a fourth building on Sept. 11. “The Flight 93 Election” was written under a pseudonym by Michael Anton, a graduate of CGU’s political philosophy program.
“‘The Flight 93 Election’ was the real turning point [at the Claremont Institute],” Field said, marking their shift away from academia and towards more far-right politics.
In the essay, Anton praises “Kesler’s esoteric endorsement of Trump” as an example of how conservative intellectuals should behave.
The Claremont Institute had “turned their back on what Jaffa held to be the highest ideals … freedom and equality,” Field said.
On Anton’s own blog, he had already pseudonymously published dozens of fearmongering posts like “The Flight 93 Election.” But the reach of the CRB was far wider. In 2019, Anton would go on in the CRB to platform misogynistic alt-right Internet personality Bronze Age Pervert, who he describes in a CRB review as “speak[ing] directly to a youthful dissatisfaction — especially among white males — with equality.”
“The Flight 93 Election” essay also decries the “ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty” who would vote against Republicans. In short, editor-in-chief Kesler had published an iteration of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory — and the academic world took note of the CRB’s flirtation with white nationalism.
“Professors are the ones lending their reputation to the CRB,” Thomas said. “I know outstanding scholars who used to write for them, but will not write for them now.” He mentioned knowing academics who stopped writing for the CRB because of “The Flight 93 Election.”
Thomas clarified that this was not because scholars were unwilling to debate, but rather because they did not want their reputation to suffer from association with the “borderline preposterous arguments” of the CRB.
“My sense is that the younger generation [of the Claremont Institute] was more [extreme] … and the older generation, someone like a Kesler … had to go along or be pushed aside,” Thomas said.
Field sees this yielding of the older generation as an effect of the insular nature of conservative intellectualism, adding that “the conservative academic world is much more narrow [than its liberal counterpart] … and doesn’t have the self-correcting mechanisms that exist more fully in other parts of academia.”
“The Flight 93 Election” marked the growing alienation between academia and the Claremont Institute. Kesler’s publication of Anton’s “The Flight 93 Election” signaled that among the conservative intellectuals at the Claremont Institute, solidarity was the norm, not scrutiny.
Jan. 6 Capitol Riot
The Jan. 6 Capitol riot, encouraged by the Claremont Institute’s very own John Eastman, elicited mixed responses within the Institute.
Joseph Besette, CMC’s Alice Tweed Tuohy Professor of Government and Ethics and once a regular CRB contributor, published a critique of Eastman in the CRB. Kesler, on the other hand, initially defended Eastman. Professor Bessette declined to comment for this article, stating he had “no connection to the Claremont Institute.”
Academics from outside the Institute also responded. Following Jan. 6, members of the American Political Science Association (APSA) called to remove John Eastman and the Claremont Institute from its annual conference, of which the Claremont Institute were longtime attendees. The Claremont Institute did not attend the APSA conference from 2021 to 2023, made a surprise return in 2024 and did not attend in 2025.
A year and a half after Jan. 6, Kesler at last acknowledged Eastman’s advice to Trump as “a bad idea,” simultaneously glossing over the Claremont Institute’s role in promoting the conspiracy theories which inspired Jan. 6.
Kesler declined to comment on this article. In 2024, he received a salary of $226,877 from the Claremont Institute for working an average of 10 hours per week. VIP tickets to attend a reception with Kesler at the recent CRB 25th Anniversary Dinner started at $10,000.
Inside the Claremont Institute & the Claremont Colleges Today
A Claremont Institute Insider
Though my efforts to interview Kesler were futile, the Claremont Institute communications team was quick to respond. Soon after Akshay Seetharam HM ’27 and I emailed the Institute, we met with Kennedy.
Unlike the new set of Claremont Institute leaders, most of whom have moved away from California to Texas, Kennedy remains in Claremont.
When asked about his ideas, Kennedy mentioned Jaffa and Socrates, but his focus was largely on nonacademic topics, such as his theory that COVID-19 was a Communist Chinese bioweapon.
Kennedy also emphasized rhetoric, particularly “common sense.” According to Kennedy, one should speak to people as if they already know what you are trying to convince them of. If most people lack knowledge, identify with their lack of knowledge and call it common sense. In Kennedy’s case, for example, he stated that not being an expert on missile defense made him more credible in his advocacy for a missile defense system.
In a perverse way, the Claremont Institute serves as excellent proof that what we do at the Colleges — the ideas we discuss, the history we learn, the relationships we build — matters.
When I spoke with Allen, who taught at the Claremont Colleges while Kennedy was there, I described Kennedy’s focus on “common sense” to him. In response, Allen characterized political philosophy as aiming “to deepen [people’s] awareness of the ability to question what they take to be common sense.”
Kennedy’s emphasis on persuasion rather than knowledge is more proof of the fracture between the classical political philosophy that the Institute was once rooted in and the anti-establishment Trumpism it now upholds.
Beyond his time at CMC, Kennedy has not been involved with the Claremont Colleges, though he was interviewed in a past TSL article. The last academic institution he gave a talk at was Hillsdale College, during which he joked about his testimony to the Jan. 6 Congressional Select Committee. I could not find his name in the subpoenas.
The Claremont Colleges Today
The right-wing Claremont Institute of today grew out of the graduate students, professors and major donors of the Claremont Colleges. Nowadays, the Claremont Institute no longer has a mutual relationship with the Claremont Colleges. While Professors Charles Kesler, Mark Blitz, Joseph Besette, William Allen and Harry Jaffa all at one point held affiliations with the Claremont Institute when at the Claremont Colleges, today, only one link remains: Kesler.
In a perverse way, the Claremont Institute serves as excellent proof that what we do at the Colleges — the ideas we discuss, the history we learn, the relationships we build — matters. Your engagement with academia does not have to separate you from the mythical “real world.” Instead, your education and position as a college student can bring you closer to our world, to question and care enough to change it.
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