The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California, was an influential think tank from 1959 to 1977.
It attained some controversy with its conference of student radical leaders in 1967, and with a suggested new U.S. Constitution proposed by Fellow Rexford G. Tugwell.
For a time, Associate Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was Chairman of the center's board of directors.
Fellows of the Center included: Stringfellow Barr, from 1959 to 1969; Elisabeth Mann Borgese from 1964-1978; education philosopher Frederick Mayer ("A History of Educational Thought"); Linus Pauling, from 1963 to 1967; Bishop James Pike, from 1966 to 1969; Robert Kurt Woetzel; Raghavan N. Iyer; and Harvey Wheeler.
New appointees following the 1969 reorganization included Jacque Fresco director of The Venus Project, Alex Comfort of The Joy of Sex fame,[2] Bertrand de Jouvenel, and Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb.