Claremont Institute
Conservative think tank; Southern California; founded 1979; intellectual home of The Claremonters
What It Is
The Claremont Institute is the institutional center of the Claremonter camp of the MAGA New Right. Founded in 1979 by students of Harry V. Jaffa, it is unlike most Washington think tanks: it has been “far less policy-oriented and wonkish” and “more overtly political.” Its political bent comes entirely from Jaffa’s thinking.
The Institute has no formal connection to the Claremont group of colleges in California, though there is overlap among faculty and scholars.
Publications
- Claremont Review of Books — the flagship journal; edited by Charles R. Kesler; published The Flight 93 Election in September 2016
- The American Mind — the Institute’s online publication; published The Fight is Now on November 4, 2020
Key People
Leadership:
- Thomas Klingenstein — Chairman of the board; New York investment manager; former largest donor (providing ~$2.5M, ~half the budget, as of 2019); “woke communism” coinage; “In war, you don’t negotiate until you’ve won”
- Ryan Williams — President since ~2017 (appointed at age 35, succeeding Michael Pack); launched The American Mind as “punk-rock CRB”; architect of the New Right pivot
- Arthur Milikh — Executive director, Center for the American Way of Life (DC office, focused on anti-woke institutional battles); called university social justice programming “a system of fraud”
- Charles R. Kesler — Professor at Claremont McKenna; editor of Claremont Review of Books; the “éminence grise” of the old guard
- John C. Eastman — Senior fellow for 30 years; Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence; author of the “Coup Memos”; Klingenstein’s “one of ours”
- Larry P. Arnn — Co-founder; President of Hillsdale College (affiliated)
Founders (1979): Larry Arnn, Peter Schramm, Tom Silver, Chris Flannery — all students of Harry V. Jaffa
Fellowship Alumni (Publius and Lincoln): Tom Cotton, Josh Hammer, Christopher Rufo, Ben Shapiro, Jack Posobiec, Babs Hough (MTG aide), Michael Anton, Charles Kesler
Budget and Funding
- 2019: ~2.5M (roughly half)
- 2022: ~$9 million; Klingenstein no longer providing a majority
- Major donors: Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation; Bradley Foundation (beyond Klingenstein)
History and Role
The Institute was founded by Jaffa’s students following the Goldwater movement, keeping alive the West Coast Straussian tradition through the Reagan era and beyond. It operated in relative obscurity until the 2016 election, when Michael Anton’s The Flight 93 Election — published in the Claremont Review of Books — went viral and made the Institute a central node of the intellectual MAGA movement.
Rush Limbaugh’s September 7, 2016 show, in which he read the essay to ~15 million listeners and called it “a home run, every paragraph,” transformed the Institute’s profile overnight.
The Clarence Thomas connection: Clarence Thomas, as chairman of the EEOC under Reagan and George H.W. Bush, hired Claremont scholars Ken Masugi and John Marini as aides. They were, in Thomas’s description, theorists “who understood Lincoln.” Thomas spent hours discussing Jaffa’s natural law teachings with them, and began citing the Declaration of Independence in his jurisprudence — a connection between Claremont’s Declarationism and Supreme Court constitutional theory that has lasted decades.
The Ryan Williams pivot (~2017): When Williams became president at 35, he launched The American Mind, opened the DC Center for the American Way of Life (run by Arthur Milikh), widened the fellowship programs to include Hard Right-adjacent figures, and incorporated Curtis Yarvin into the contributor ecosystem. The goal: reach New Right internet audiences while maintaining the institute’s scholarly credibility — what journalist Matthew Continetti called a “dual track approach.”
The Institute and January 6
The Claremont Institute’s role in the “Stop the Steal” movement was substantial:
- The Fight is Now (November 4, 2020) called for huge rallies and legal battles immediately after the election, before any credible fraud claims had been investigated
- John Eastman authored the “Coup Memos” providing legal cover for Pence to refuse to certify the 2020 electoral results
- Michael Anton published “Game-on for the Coup?” — linked approvingly in The Fight is Now
Field: the Institute’s institutional imprimatur gave the stolen-election narrative intellectual legitimacy within conservative circles.
Relationship to Hillsdale College
While formally separate, Hillsdale College in Michigan operates as a closely affiliated institution. Larry P. Arnn (Claremont Graduate University PhD, Jaffa student) became its president. Hillsdale’s free online Constitution courses have reached millions of Americans, extending the Claremonter influence far beyond elite circles.
The “Lagging Indicator” Thesis
Thomas Merrill (The Claremont Institute Harry Jaffa and the Temptation of Theory, 2021) offers the most analytically precise external account of why the Institute was so susceptible to Trumpism — and contests the simpler narrative that Claremont caused it.
Merrill’s argument: the Claremont school is “more a reflection of the mood of today’s conservatism than a cause of it — a lagging indicator rather than a leading one.” The movement carried the intellectuals along; the intellectuals then provided post-hoc rationalization. The mechanism: intellectuals with grand theories develop a Manichaean framework that divides the world into civilization and its destroyers. Once in that frame, they cannot see what is in front of them clearly. They mistake an incompetent, incoherent political movement for a unified, malevolent enemy; they persuade themselves everything rides on a single election; they find it hard to believe their candidate lost because that would mean the “silent majority” doesn’t actually want to be saved by them.
The exception Merrill carves out: John Eastman, whose January 6 memos were an active intellectual contribution to the coup attempt — not merely reflective of a popular mood but causative.
Philip Jaffa — Harry Jaffa’s son — told Merrill directly that his father would not have supported Trump. This is corroborated by Philip’s own 2021 memoir (My Father and the Birth of Modern Conservatism). The institute founded in Jaffa’s name became Trump’s most prominent intellectual defender in ways that directly contradict the egalitarian, Lincoln-centered constitutionalism Jaffa himself preached.
Post-January 6 Split
The institute’s response to Eastman’s Coup Memos crystallized internal divisions:
- Chris Flannery (co-founder) called Eastman “an American hero”
- Matthew Continetti (Lincoln fellow, author of The Right) stopped contributing to the CRB
- Klingenstein: Eastman is “one of ours” — kept him on
- Kesler: “I disagree with John. I think it was a bad idea to give Trump that advice and an even worse idea to speak at the rally.” Ran the CRB Eastman-Bessette debate anyway
- Williams: “We’re not going to throw him under the bus just because his representation of the president was controversial.”
Cross-References
- The Claremonters — the intellectual movement the Institute anchors
- Harry V. Jaffa — intellectual founder; students founded the Institute
- Thomas Klingenstein — chairman and major funder
- Ryan Williams — current president; architect of New Right pivot
- Michael Anton — the Institute’s most famous recent figure
- The Flight 93 Election — published in the Claremont Review of Books
- The Fight is Now — published in The American Mind
- John Eastman — the Institute’s most legally consequential figure
- Hillsdale College — affiliated institution
- January 6 2021 — the downstream consequence of the Institute’s 2020 actions
- Curtis Yarvin — incorporated into American Mind contributor ecosystem under Williams
- How the Claremont Institute Became a Nerve Center — primary journalistic source
- The Claremont Institute Harry Jaffa and the Temptation of Theory — Merrill’s external diagnosis of Claremont’s susceptibility to Trumpism
- My Father and the Birth of Modern Conservatism — Philip Jaffa’s memoir; confirms Harry would not have supported Trump