Our History

CSPC was founded in 1965 by Dr. R. Gordon Hoxie at the behest of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Dr. Hoxie, a historian and chancellor of Long Island University, built an organization that would provide historical perspective about our nation’s highest offices for citizens and policymakers. Since then, CSPC’s journal Presidential Studies Quarterly—first published in 1971—has provided renowned scholarly study of the U.S. presidency, while the CSPC Presidential Fellows Program has educated young leaders about careers in public service since 1972.

In 1999, CSPC was re-headquartered in Washington, D.C., under the leadership of Ambassador David M. Abshire. With CSPC serving as a non-partisan convener of leaders and experts from the government, private sector, and academia, its roundtables and policy programs have sought to foster strategic consensus to tackle our nation’s most pressing challenges. To learn more about CSPC’s history and past programs, click here.