Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American foreign policy think tank based in New York City. It describes itself as being "dedicated to increasing America's understanding of the world and contributing ideas to U.S. foreign policy," and accomplishes this mainly by promoting constructive, closed debates and discussions, clarifying world issues through research and analysis, and publishing the noted journal Foreign Affairs and related content online.

History

The Council on Foreign Relations, as well as the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, came about as a result of a meeting on May 30, 1919, at the Hotel Majestic in Paris. Some of the fifty participants were Edward M. House, Harold Temperley, Lionel Curtis, Lord Eustace Percy, Herbert Hoover, Christian Herter, Paul Warburg, and American academic historians James Thomson Shotwell of Columbia University, Archibald Coolidge of Harvard and Charles Seymour of Yale.

Formally established in 1921, it is one of the most powerful private organizations with influence on U.S. foreign policy. It has about 4,000 members, including former national security officers, professors, former CIA members, elected politicians, and media figures. The CFR is not a formal institution within U.S. policy making.

In 1944, Harold I. Pratt's widow donated the family's four-storey mansion on the corner of 68th Street and Park Avenue and this became the CFR's new headquarters, Harold Pratt House, where it has remained to the present.

Board of Directors and Membership

OFFICE NAME
Chairman Peter G. Peterson
Vice Chairman Carla A. Hills
Vice Chairman Robert E. Rubin
President Richard N. Haass
Board Member Peter Ackerman
Board Member Fouad Ajami
Board Member Madeleine K. Albright
Board Member Charlene Barshefsky
Board Member Jeffrey Bewkes
Board Member Henry S. Bienen
Board Member Stephen W. Bosworth
Board Member Tom Brokaw
Board Member Lee Cullum
Board Member Kenneth M. Duberstein
Board Member Martin S. Feldstein
Board Member Richard N. Foster
Board Member Helene D. Gayle
Board Member Maurice R. Greenberg
Board Member Richard C. Holbrooke
Board Member Karen Elliott House
Board Member Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
Board Member Ronald L. Olson
Board Member Thomas R. Pickering
Board Member David M. Rubenstein
Board Member Richard E. Salomon
Board Member Anne-Marie Slaughter
Board Member Joan E. Spero
Board Member Laura D'Andrea Tyson
Board Member Vin Weber
Board Member Fareed Zakaria

The Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations is composed of thirty-one members.

There are two types of membership - term membership (which lasts for 5 years and is available to those between 30 and 36) and regular membership. Only US citizens (native born or naturalised) and permanent residents who have applied for U.S. citizenship are eligible for membership. Proposed members must be nominated by current members.