FOUNDING & PURPOSE

The Howard Baker Forum was founded by former Senator Howard Baker in Washington, D.C. to provide a platform for examining specific, immediate, critical issues affecting the nation’s progress at home and its relations abroad. Under the leadership of its President, Scott Campbell, the Forum organizes a variety of programs and research projects to examine and illuminate public policy challenges facing the nation today. The Howard Baker Forum is a public and international affairs affiliate of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell, and Berkowitz, P.C.

PHILOSOPHY

Sound governance through reasoned consensus, founded upon an agreed set of facts, is the philosophy that guided Senator Baker’s distinguished service in the U.S. Senate and as Chief of Staff during the Reagan Administration. It is in this spirit that The Howard Baker Forum was founded—to contribute to the process of fact finding and consensus building to help solve critical problems facing the nation.

In governance, wrote James Madison in Federalist No.14, the government should never disregard as touchstones of sound policy “the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience.” Sorting out these “suggestions” in today’s modern world of advocacy and spin is a daunting challenge. The Howard Baker Forum serves as neutral ground for examining relevant issues and finding creative solutions to pressing national problems.