Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (or Wilson Center), located in Washington, D.C., is a United States Presidential Memorial that was established as part of the Smithsonian Institution by an act of Congress in 1968. It is also a highly recognised think tank, ranked among the top ten in the world.

The Center was established within the Smithsonian Institution, but it has its own board of trustees, composed both of government officials and of individuals from private life appointed by the President of the United States. The Center's director and staff include scholars, publishers, librarians, administrators, and support staff, responsible to the trustees for carrying out the mission of the Center. The trustees and staff are advised by a group of private citizens called the Wilson Council. Interns, usually undergraduate or graduate students, support the activities of visiting scholars and staff while learning the business of top-level research.

In addition to its residential program, the Center conducts research through its programs, organizes conferences and seminars, and disseminates the content of its work and fellows’ research through The Wilson Quarterly, Dialogue (The Center’s radio and television program), and its book publishing venture, the Woodrow Wilson Center Press. The Center invites Fellows to take part in the Center’s conferences, meetings and seminars and to benefit from the wide range of dialogue that takes place at the Center.

The Center is a public-private partnership. Approximately one-third of the Center's operating funds come annually from an appropriation from the U.S. government, and the Center itself is housed in a wing of the Ronald Reagan Building, a federal office building where the Center enjoys a 30-year rent-free lease. The remainder of the Center's funding comes from foundations, grants and contracts, corporations, individuals, endowment income, and subscriptions.