George Soros’ Social Agenda for America

Drug Legalization, Euthanasia, Immigrant Entitlements and Feminism

Neil Hrab

April 2003

CONTENTS

George Soros’ Social Agendafor America

page 1

Open Society InstituteBoard of Trustees

page 5

Philanthropy Notes

page 6

Summary: The February issue of

Founda-tion Watch

examined the philanthropy of the billionaire financier George Soros. It found that Soros-funded groups supported increased government spending and taxincreases, and opposed the death penaltyand President Bush’s judicial nominees. In this article author Neil Hrab looks at Soros grants in four other policy areas:drug legalization, euthanasia, immigrant entitlements, and feminist organizing.

George Soros: Promoter of radical social change.

n 1956 George Soros (born 1930) movedfrom Great Britain, where he was educated,to the United States, where he made hisfortune in the business of managingmoney, his own and other people’s. TheHungarian-born Soros became a billion-aire. Then about two decades ago he be-gan to give away some of that fortunewhile continuing to work at making evenmore money.Soros is the author of a number of books, which attempt to explain his pecu-liar and rather contradictory vision of howglobal society should evolve. But there islittle confusion in his philanthropic giv-ing, which is coordinated by the OpenSociety Institute (OSI), his grant-makingfoundation based in New York City. It’shard to understand Soros’ ideas by read-ing his books. It’s much easier to under-stand them by examining his grantmaking.What follows is a review of recentSoros grants in four policy areas: druglegalization, euthanasia, immigrant entitle-ments, and feminist pro-abortion organiz-ing.

DRUG LEGALIZATION

George Soros has waged a long per-sonal war against America’s “war ondrugs.” Until 2000, he relied primarily ontwo nonprofit groups to carry on thebattle. One was the Lindesmith Center, apro-marijuana legalization think-tank setup in 1994 with a pledge of $4 million (over5 years) from Soros. The Center frequentlyheld pro-legalization conferences, issuedpublications and in general provided aplatform for legalization’s proponents. TheCenter is named after Alfred Lindesmith, adeceased Indiana University sociologistwho favored more relaxed drug laws. Theother nonprofit was the Drug Policy Foun-dation, a membership organization estab-lished in 1987, which also provided fund-ing for groups opposing the drug war.However, three years ago, the two merged tobecome the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), whichcontinues their work. New York City-basedDPA maintains seven offices across thecountry, including branches in Washing-ton, D.C. and in the states of New Jersey,California and New Mexico.

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DPA executive director EthanNadelmann argues, “People shouldn’t bepunished for what they put in their bodies,absent harm to others.” To achieve thatend, DPA works to loosen narcotics laws.In early 2002, for example, the New MexicoDrug Policy Project, a DPA branch, con-tinually aired pro-legalization ads on stateTV stations for five weeks at a cost of $90,000. Broadcast as often as ten times aday, the ads alleged that the “war ondrugs” cost New Mexicans more than $40million each year.Other policies advocated by DPA in-clude:

•

Making marijuana legally avail-able for medical purposes;

•

Repealing mandatory minimumsentences for non-violent drug offenses.

•

Ending imprisonment for simpledrug possession, except where the distri-bution of drugs to children is involved;

•

Redirecting most governmentdrug control money from criminal justiceto public health and education.It’s no exaggeration to say that with-out Soros there would be no serious lobbyagainst the drug war. He makes possibleOSI’s grantmaking and DPF’s policy lead-ership.It’s not easy to determine how muchSoros currently gives to DPA through theOpen Society Institute because of the timelag in IRS disclosure of nonprofit tax forms.However, in 2000 the OSI gave about $3.5million to DPA - about the same total amountgiven to its predecessors in 1998. In 2000,DPF made more than 100 grants ($1.7 mil-lion) to groups demanding that Washing-ton relax its anti-narcotics laws. For ex-ample,

about $120,000 went to organiza-tions agitating for reduced penaltiesagainst marijuana users such as the Wash-ington, D.C.-based National Organizationfor the Reform of Marijuana Laws, theDrug Policy Forum of Hawaii andDrugSense of Irvine, California. And re-searchers at Yale University received$25,000 to persuade Connecticut healthauthorities that needle exchange programswere good public policy.In 2000, the DPF also donated $60,000in total to three left-wing groups opposedto U.S. government efforts to work withSouth American governments on commonanti-narcotic policies: the WashingtonOffice on Latin America, the Andean In-formation Network and Witness for Peace.Many pro-legalization groups

enthu-siastically endorse using drugs and

areignored by policymakers and the press ortreated as fringe organizations. But that’shardly true for DPA, whose researchershave placed articles in prestige journalssuch as

Foreign Affairs

and

Science.

Theconservative

National Review

publishedan article by Ethann Nadelmann in 1995about Switzerland’s liberal attitude to-wards heroin addicts. And important sci-entific periodicals like the

Journal of the American Medical Association

and

Brit-ish Medical Journal

review books pub-lished by DPA.And DPA gets good media coverage,in part because executive directorNadelmann always has great soundbitesfor reporters. At a 1999 conferenceNadelmann told his audience: “WhenNancy Reagan said, ‘Just say no,’ shewasn’t altogether wrong. But it’s the GeorgeWashington-chopping-down-the cherrytree version of drug education. It’s cute,it’s simple, but it doesn’t work for teenag-ers.”While OSI opposes drug policies that“rely too heavily on police and prisons,” itfavors what it terms “harm reduction” ser-vices to drug users. These are programsthat claim to show concern for drug users’health and human rights. OSI’s Interna-tional Harm Reduction Development(IHRD) program provides extensive fund-ing to foreign government agencies andnongovernmental organizations (NGOs),especially in Eastern Europe and the formerSoviet Union. Working closely with DPA,it gives grants for advocacy training, legalassistance and coalition-building.The IHRD website says it is not cur-rently accepting unsolicited grants for “ser-vice delivery projects” such as needle ex-changes or methadone. However, IHRD’slist of current grants programs abroad in-cludes a sub-category for “sex workers,”the term favored by nonprofits that differ-entiate forced from consensual prostitu-tion (See “Vital Voices Global Partnership,”

Foundation Watch

, March 2003).DPA is only one U.S. drug legalizationgroup receiving Soros’ support. Last year,according to a November 2002 article in

USA Today

, Soros personally gave$400,000 to Nevadans for Responsible LawEnforcement, a pro-marijuana-legalizationgroup, to advocate for the liberalization of Arizona’s drug laws. It gave $65,000 in2000 to the Marijuana Policy Project Foun-dation, a Washington, D.C.-based group,and $50,000 to the Drug Policy Forum of Texas. In 1998, it provided $125,000 to theCommon Sense for Drug Policy Founda-tion, a backer of the so-called “right” to“medical marijuana.” In 1996, Soros wasreported to have donated about $500,000to marijuana legalization initiatives in Ari-zona and California, which both failed. Thatyear OSI also approved $2.25 million forDrug Strategies, a D.C.-based group ques-tioning the city’s drug control regime.

3April 2003

Found

ation Watch

The ACLU has been a particular ben-eficiary of OSI grants. In 2000, it received$150,000 for its drug policy litigationproject and $23,000 to support a speaker’sseries in Massachusetts to promote “alter-natives to incarceration for drug offend-ers.” The ACLU of Washington (state)Foundation got $75,000. In 1997-1998, OSIgave the national ACLU Foundation $1.2million, partially to fund anti-drug war liti-gation.

EUTHANASIA

Many of Soros’ policy interests ap-pear quixotic. Euthanasia, like drug use,has little public support, and Americanslook at public policy proposals to make itlawful with reactions ranging from skepti-cism to revulsion. Soros, however, ap-proaches the popular reaction as an op-portunity for public education. Hisgrantmaking in this area is a form of na-tional tutoring that he no doubt expectswill eventually have a long-term impact—reaching even to rulings of the U.S. Su-preme Court.In a November 1994 lecture at Colum-bia Presbyterian Medical Center in NewYork City Soros revealed one motive forhis interest: “Voters in Oregon just ap-proved a law that makes it the first state tolift the prohibition against physician-as-sisted suicide. As the son of a mother whowas a member of the Hemlock Society ... Icannot but approve.” Founded in 1980, theHemlock Society is a nonprofit group thatadvocates the right of the terminally-ill tocommit suicide and calls for passage of laws permitting physician-assisted suicide.That year Soros began giving moneyto start the Project on Death in America(PDIA), whose purpose is “to understandand transform the culture and experienceof dying and bereavement through fund-ing initiatives in research, scholarship, thehumanities, and the arts, and to fosterinnovations in the provision of care, pub-lic education, professional education, andpublic policy.” OSI remains a strong sup-porter of PDIA; in 2000 the foundationcontributed a three-year $15 million grantto sustain its mission.Soros’ goal is to transform Americanattitudes toward death by changing publicattitudes about physician-assisted sui-cide. His financial backing has helped druglegalization proponents gain a new respect-ability, and he aims to do the same forsupporters of euthanasia. PDIA’s largeannual budget—$5 million—has helped itachieve prominence. PDIA directorKathleen M. Foley has testified beforeCongress on physician-assisted suicide,and PDIA-linked physician Susan Block,MD, a psychiatrist with the Dana FarberCancer Institute in Boston, last year ar-gued in the pages of the

New England Journal of Medicine

that “physician-as-sisted death may be an acceptable optionof last resort.”PDIA funds individual scholars in theU.S., Britain and Canada. Last year, forexample, a PDIA-funded University of NewMexico scholar, Dr. Judith Kitzes, orga-nized a conference in Albuquerque onpalliative care. A past recipient of PDIAfunds, Dr. Robert Twyncross of OxfordUniversity, attended Kitzes’ conferencewhere he lectured participants aboutAmerica’s medical system. Twyncross la-mented that U.S. medicine was “hell-benton defying death”—as if that were wrong—and referred favorably to Britain’s social-ist health system.In 2000, OSI also made grants to theDeath with Dignity National Center($100,000) and the Oregon Death with Dig-nity Legal Defense and Education Center($75,000). National Death with Dignitydescribes itself as “the premier educa-tional organization dedicated to discuss-ing physician aid in dying openly, seri-ously, and with intellectual rigor.” TheOregon group works to make the state thefirst to allow “terminally ill individualsmeeting stringent safeguards to hastentheir own deaths.” Founded in 1993, itwould make it legal for ailing people toobtain lethal drug prescriptions. AnotherOregon-based group, the Compassion inDying Federation of America (CDFA), hasreceived OSI funding—$150,000 in 1998and $125,000 in 1999. CDFA supports “aid-in-dying for terminally ill, mentally compe-tent adults” and claims “assurance of ahumane death enhances the celebration of life.”In 2001, PDIA made grants totaling$5,105,000 to groups concerned with what’scalled “end of life” assistance for ailingpeople, such as palliative care for the ter-minally ill elderly. Other programs such asthe PDIA “Social Work Leadership Devel-opment Awards” aim to increase the pres-tige of social workers committed to “end of life care” and help make them “mentors”and “role models” for a new generation of social workers.

IMMIGRANT ENTITLEMENTS

The Emma Lazarus Fund of the OpenSociety Institute was established with a$50 million endowment in 1996. Namedafter the author of the poem whose versesadorn the Statue of Liberty, it committed$43 million the following year to organiza-tions committed to fighting “the unfairtreatment of and discrimination againstimmigrants who are lawfully present in theUnited States.” The Fund was a directresponse to the 1996 welfare reform law,approved by President Clinton, which lim-ited immigrants’ access to welfare entitle-ments. Its mission was to counter the “in-tensifying anti-immigrant rhetoric” thatwelfare reform purportedly encouraged andto help integrate newcomers into the Ameri-can mainstream.During its three years of existence, theLazarus fund contributed generously toso-called “public interest” legal associa-tions like the Alliance For Justice ($80,000over two years), a liberal coalition of largelyWashington, D.C. groups that, along withPeople for the American Way, has spear-headed campaigns to appoint liberal activ-ist judges to the federal courts and stopthe confirmation of conservative ones. TheFund also gave $600,000 to support theACLU’s Immigrant’s Rights Project, whichworked to challenge the constitutionalityof national, state and local efforts to curbimmigrants’ entitlement to welfare ben-efits.In 1998, the Fund announced it wouldgive $75,000 to the leftist National Law-yers Guild, whose core membership is anetwork of some 4,000 radical legal practi-tioners. It also promised $140,000 to theCalifornia Rural Legal Assistance Foun-dation (CRLAF), which was promoting the