Council on Foreign Relations

Over a six-decade-long relationship with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a leading, independent, nonpartisan think tank and publisher, The Starr Foundation has provided more than $56 million in support for both general operations and a range of targeted initiatives, increasing the depth and breadth of scholarly work carried out by CFR.

Driven by C.V. Starr and longtime Foundation Chair M.R. Greenberg’s commitment to furthering international dialogue and public understanding of global political and economic dynamics, Foundation support to CFR includes the following:

• The Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies, which was established in part with endowment support from the Foundation. The Center strives to enhance understanding of how economic and geopolitical forces interact to shape world affairs, focusing on trade, immigration, energy, climate change, global monetary policy, and financial markets.
• The Maurice R. Greenberg Chair, Vice President and Director of Studies, which is responsible for overseeing more than 70 CFR fellows as well as CFR’s substantive work, including publishing hundreds of books, articles, reports, and op-eds, and managing events on a broad range of U.S. and international issues.
• The Richard Haass Center for Education, which was created in 2023 to honor CFR’s former president, helps educate students, teachers, and the broader public about international relations, economics, and national security.
• The International Affairs Fellowship (IAF), which aims to bridge the gap between the study and the making of U.S. foreign policy by offering mid-career professionals the chance to gain a new perspective of their fields; academic fellows are placed in public service and policy-oriented settings, and government officials are placed in scholarly settings. The IAF program’s more than 650 alumni include a former secretary of state; several undersecretaries of state and defense; ambassadors; and many other influential leaders in government, academia, and the private sector. Fellows have included a Tufts University postdoctoral fellow who conducted a project on U.S. strategy toward Central America at the U.S. Department of Commerce; a U.S. Institute of Peace program officer who worked on Afghanistan at the Department of Defense; and a State Department official who studied diversity in the foreign service at George Washington University.

The Foundation has also endowed numerous CFR initiatives focused on Asia, reflecting C.V. Starr’s and M.R. Greenberg’s dedication to furthering U.S. relations with the region. These include the following:

• The C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Chair in Asia Studies, who currently leads a CFR project to produce actionable policy recommendations on how the United States and China can manage competition, work together, and avoid war.
• The Maurice R. Greenberg Chair in China Studies, which supports the research of fellows focused on China studies.
• The C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director of Asia Studies, which funds research on India, Pakistan, and South Asia.