Why the Wilson Center Had To Go
The taxpayer-funded think tank cloaked elite impunity and American interventionism in the language of liberalism.
Employees at the Wilson Center, a prominent think tank chartered by Congress in the 1960s, were placed on leave last week following an executive order ordering its closure. The reaction among much of the mainstream political class to the closure was one of embarrassment, anger, and disappointment. But in this rare instance, President Donald Trump is doing the right thing. It's possible that he's doing it for the wrong reasons, but it's still the right thing to do.
The Wilson Center was part of a corrupt apparatus of American power. It may describe itself as nonpartisan or even "objective," but it perpetuates a system, supported by both the Republican and the Democratic establishments, that promotes American interventionism and whitewashes abuses abroad.
The think tank was much like its namesake, former President Woodrow Wilson: paternalistically claiming liberal values while actively engaging in oppression. The Wilson Center has financed figures with terrible human rights records.
Take Guillermo Lasso, the former president of Ecuador. Even as he faced an impeachment process for embezzlement and corruption tied to public contracts and offshore dealings—allegations substantiated by investigative journalism and congressional inquiries—the Wilson Center continued to offer Lasso space to speak and publish, framing him as a reformer. When cornered by growing scandal and plummeting approval, Lasso dissolved the National Assembly and called snap elections, effectively terminating the investigation and preserving his impunity. During his tenure, Lasso oversaw brutal police crackdowns on anti-government protests. I was personally tear-gassed while covering one of those demonstrations, an experience that laid bare his government's violent intolerance for dissent.
Watching the Wilson Center offer Lasso a space to revamp his image was a breaking point for me. I had joined the Wilson Center with the hope of contributing to meaningful dialogue in a respected institution around issues of consequence to the Western Hemisphere, but I could no longer ignore the way it cloaked state violence and elite impunity in the language of liberalism and polite debate. So I resigned.
Another example of the Wilson Center's moral bankruptcy is its embrace of Iván Duque, president of Colombia from 2018 to 2022. During his presidency, Duque oversaw bloody crackdowns on protestors, particularly during the 2021 Paro Nacional, when police and military forces killed, maimed, and disappeared demonstrators with impunity. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documented widespread abuses, including extrajudicial killings and arbitrary detentions during his tenure. Duque also gutted the peace process with leftist guerrillas, failed to protect hundreds of assassinated social leaders, and used state power to shield paramilitary allies. Yet Duque was named a Wilson Center chair and distinguished fellow, given a podcast, and had a new Iván Duque Center for Prosperity and Freedom established in his honor.
Another stain on the Wilson Center's credibility is the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, perhaps its most famous bureau. That an institution claiming to advance global peace would enshrine Henry Kissinger, a man responsible for the death, suffering, and displacement of millions around the world, is beyond parody. Kissinger's legacy is not one of realpolitik brilliance—it is one of calculated brutality. He greenlit coups in Chile and Argentina, enabled genocides in East Timor and Bangladesh, prolonged the Vietnam War, and supported the carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos. The directors of the Wilson Center are, of course, fully aware of this.
Yes, there are brilliant minds at the Wilson Center: scholars and staff who genuinely want to make the world better. I am grateful to have worked alongside them. But their presence offers an asterisk, not redemption. The center's boardrooms and panels overflow with figureheads from the military-industrial complex and from institutions central to some of the worst actions Washington has carried out globally. The Wilson Center doesn't just tolerate this ecosystem—it curates it. And U.S. taxpayers help pay for this.
