I noted with interest — and some confusion — that George Lakoff’s Rockridge Institute has spun off (?) a new organization, the Longview Institute.
According to the Rockridge press release, the move is intended to expand the capacity available to address the huge demand for framing-based consulting services.
But, the distinction between the two organizations seems pretty unclear:
The Rockridge Institute will extend George Lakoff’s linguistics-based approach to public policy, political communications, and framing. Its central mission will be to produce the Rockridge Progressive Manual, a detailed guide to progressive values, ideas, reasoning, and language spanning all major issue areas. In the Longview Institute, the senior founding fellows Fred Block, Jerome Karabel, Ruth Rosen, Larry Wallack, Carole Joffe, Kristin Luker, and Troy Duster will pursue broad issues of policy, politics, and values while developing an overall progressive vision.
I wonder if this is more a story of organizational chaos and/or personality conflict? The vagueness of the press release, and the fact that Longview seems to include seven out of eight of Rockridge’s senior analysts makes me wonder what the backstory is here.
Anybody out there able to shed some more light on this?
Rumor mill says that there was a big falling out, resulting in the split-off. I haven’t run into any details, though. With all the money being thrown at Lakoff et al by progressives desparate not to lose again, it’s not surprising that a break would occur.
Not surprising indeed. How often have we seen that the best way to destroy an innovative idea/coalition/organization is to dump a big pile of money on it before it has legs?