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RAND Corporation (Research ANd Development^[2]) is a nonprofit global policy think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the United States armed forces by Douglas Aircraft Company. It is currently financed by the U.S. government and private endowment,^[3] corporations^[4] including the healthcare industry, universities^[5] and private individuals.^[6] The organization has long since expanded to working with other governments, private foundations, international organizations, and commercial organizations on a host of non-defence issues. RAND aims for interdisciplinary and quantitative problem solving via translating theoretical concepts from formal economics and the hard sciences into novel applications in other areas; that is, via applied science and operations research. Michael D. Rich is president and chief executive officer of the RAND Corporation.

RAND has approximately 1,700 employees and three principal North American locations: Santa Monica, California (headquarters); Arlington, Virginia; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The RAND Gulf States Policy Institute^[7] has offices in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Jackson, Mississippi. RAND Europe^[8] is located in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and Brussels, Belgium. The RAND-Qatar Policy Institute^[9] is in Doha, Qatar. RAND's newest offices are in Boston, Massachusetts, Abu Dhabi, The United Arab Emirates, and Mexico City, Mexico, a representative office.

RAND is also home to the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School, one of the original^{[clarification needed]} graduate programs in public policy and the first^{[citation needed]} to offer a Ph.D. The program aims to have practical value in that students work alongside RAND analysts on real-world problems. The campus is at RAND's Santa Monica research facility. The Pardee RAND School is the world's largest Ph.D.-granting program in policy analysis.^{[citation needed]}

RAND publishes The RAND Journal of Economics, a peer-reviewed journal of economics.

To date, 32 recipients of the Nobel Prize, primarily in the fields of economics and physics, have been involved or associated with RAND at some point in their career.^[2][10][11]

Project RAND[link]

RAND was set up in 1946 by the United States Army Air Forces as Project RAND,^[12] under contract to the Douglas Aircraft Company, and in May 1946 they released the Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship. In May 1948, Project RAND was separated from Douglas and became an independent non-profit organization. Initial capital for the split came from the Ford Foundation.

History[link]

Since the 1950s, the RAND has been instrumental in defining U.S. military strategy.^{[citation needed]} Their most visible contribution is the doctrine of nuclear deterrence by Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), developed under the guidance of then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and based upon their work with game theory.^[13] Chief strategist Herman Kahn also posited the idea of a "winnable" nuclear exchange in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War. This led to Kahn being one of the models for the titular character of the film Dr. Strangelove.^[14][15]

Mission statement[link]

RAND was incorporated as a non-profit organization to "further promote scientific, educational, and charitable purposes, all for the public welfare and security of the United States of America." Its self-declared mission is "to help improve policy and decision making through research and analysis", using its "core values of quality and objectivity."^[2]

Achievements and expertise[link]

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RAND Corporation, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The achievements of RAND stem from its development of systems analysis. Important contributions are claimed in space systems and the United States' space program, in computing and in artificial intelligence. RAND researchers developed many of the principles that were used to build the Internet. RAND also contributed to the development and use of wargaming.

Current areas of expertise include: child policy, civil and criminal justice, education, health, international policy, labor markets, national security, infrastructure, energy, environment, corporate governance, economic development, intelligence policy, long-range planning, crisis management and disaster preparation, population and regional studies, science and technology, social welfare, terrorism, arts policy, and transportation.

RAND designed and conducted one of the largest and most important studies of health insurance between 1974 and 1982. The RAND Health Insurance Experiment, funded by the then-U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, established an insurance corporation to compare demand for health services with their cost to the patient.

According to the 2005 annual report, "about one-half of RAND's research involves national security issues."

Many of the events in which RAND plays a part are based on assumptions which are hard to verify because of the lack of detail on RAND's highly classified work for defense and intelligence agencies.

The RAND Corporation posts all of its unclassified reports, in full, on its official website.

Notable participants[link]

John von Neumann, consultant to the RAND Corporation.^[16]

• Abram Shulsky — former Director of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans^[17]

Criticism[link]

In 1958, Democratic Senator Stuart Symington accused the RAND Corporation of defeatism for studying how the United States might strategically surrender to an enemy power. This led to the passage of a prohibition on the spending of tax dollars on the study of defeat or surrender of any kind. However, the senator had apparently misunderstood, as the report was a survey of past cases in which the U.S. had demanded unconditional surrender of its enemies, asking whether or not this had been a more favorable outcome to U.S. interests than an earlier, negotiated surrender would have been.^[18]

See also[link]

• A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates (published by RAND)
• Pentagon Papers
• Lloyd Shapley
• Daniel Ellsberg
• Brookings Institution
• Council on Foreign Relations
• Hudson Institute
• Trilateral Commission
• Kepner-Tregoe
• Rational choice theory
• Amrom Harry Katz

References[link]

Further reading[link]

Books[link]

• Alex Abella. Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire (2008, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hardcover; ISBN 0-15-101081-1 / 2009, Mariner Books paperback reprint edition; ISBN 0-15-603344-5).
• S.M. Amadae. Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism (2003, University Of Chicago Press paperback; ISBN 0-226-01654-4 / hardcover; ISBN 0-226-01653-6).
• Martin J. Collins. Cold War Laboratory: RAND, the Air Force, and the American State, 1945-1950 (2002, Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press hardcover, part of the Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight Series; ISBN 1-58834-086-4)
• Agatha C. Hughes and Thomas P. Hughes (editors). Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering, World War II and After (2000, The MIT Press hardcover, part of the Dibner Institute Studies in the History of Science and Technology; ISBN 0-262-08285-3 / 2011, paperback reprint edition; ISBN 0-262-51604-7).
• Fred Kaplan. The Wizards of Armageddon (1983, Simon and Schuster hardcover, first printing; ISBN 0-671-42444-0 / 1991, Stanford University Press paperback, part of the Stanford Nuclear Age Series; ISBN 0-8047-1884-9).
• Edward S. Quade and Wayne I. Boucher (editors), Systems Analysis and Policy Planning: Applications in Defense (1968, American Elsevier hardcover).
• Bruce L.R. Smith. The RAND Corporation: Case Study of a Nonprofit Advisory Corporation (1966, Harvard University Press / 1969; ISBN 0-674-74850-6).
• Mark Trachtenberg. History and Strategy (1991, Princeton University Press paperback; ISBN 0-691-02343-3 / hardcover; ISBN 0-691-07881-5).

Articles[link]

• Clifford, Peggy, ed. "RAND and The City: Part One". Santa Monica Mirror, October 27, 1999 – November 2, 1999. Five-part series includes: 1; 2; 3; 4; & 5. Accessed 15 April 2008.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: RAND Corporation

• Official website
• The Research and Development (RAND) Corporation from the Smithsonian Institution Archives

Alex Abella (born 1950) is an American author and journalist best known for his non-fiction works Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire (2008) and Shadow Enemies: Hitler's Secret Terrorist Plot Against the United States (2003, with Scott Gordon).

Early life[link]

Abella was born in Cuba in 1950. His family left the country after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.^[1] The family settled in New York, where Abella attended Columbia University on a Pulitzer scholarship.^[2]

Career[link]

After college, Abella moved to California to work for the San Francisco Chronicle initially covering local news, then network news as a reporter, writer, and producer.^[1]

Abella left the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1980s for Los Angeles, spending seven years there as a Spanish language interpreter for the Los Angeles Superior Court.^[1] His first novel, The Killing of the Saints (1991), is a Los Angeles crime thriller about the beliefs of the Santería religion used as a defense for murder.^[3] Saints and its sequels, Dead of Night (1998) and Final Acts (2000), feature a Cuban-American lawyer and investigator of Cuban heritage.^[4]

Abella's second novel, The Great American (1997) is set in Cuba in 1957 during the Cuban Revolution and is the fictionalized story of a United States Marine who fought on the side of Fidel Castro.

Abella's non-fiction work includes Shadow Enemies: Hitler's Secret Terrorist Plot Against the United States (2003), co-authored with law professor and current Los Angeles Superior Court judge Scott Gordon. The book is set in Germany during World War II and follows a group of German-American agents trained in sabotage and terrorism.^[5]

The author's most recent book, Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire (2008), is the first history of the foreign policy think tank founded by the United States Military and funded in part by the United States Government.^[6][7]

In addition to his non-fiction books, Abella has been a contributing writer with the Los Angeles Times and now contributes to the Huffington Post.^[8]

Awards[link]

At KTVU-TV, Abella was nominated for an Emmy Award for "Best Breaking News Story." His first novel, The Killing of the Saints (1991), was a New York Times Notable Book.,^[9]

Works[link]

Novels[link]

• The Killing of the Saints (1991)
• The Great American (1997)
• Dead of Night (1998)
• Final Acts (2000)

Non-fiction books[link]

• Shadow Enemies: Hitler's Secret Terrorist Plot Against the United States (with Scott Gordon, 2003)
• Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire (2008)

References[link]

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in the Danish Wikipedia. (September 2011) Don't speak Danish? Click here to read a machine-translated version of the Danish article. Click [show] on the right to review important translation instructions before translating. Google's machine translation is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. After translating, {{Translated|da|Bilal Philips}} must be added to the talk page to ensure copyright compliance. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips
Philips in August 2010
Born	Dennis Bradley Philips (1946-01-06) 6 January 1946 (age 66) Kingston, Jamaica
Education	B.A. Islamic Studies, M.A. Aqeedah, & PhD Islamic Theology
Alma mater	B.A. - Islamic University of Medina, M.A. - King Saud University, & PhD - University of Wales
Occupation	Islamic preacher
Years active	1971-present
Religion	Islam
Website
www.bilalphilips.com

Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips (born Dennis Bradley Philips on 6 January 1946 in Jamaica) is a contemporary Islamic scholar, teacher, speaker, and author, resident in Qatar.^[1][2] He appears on Peace TV, which is a 24-hour Islamic satellite TV channel broadcasting to many countries around the world.

Biography[link]

Education[link]

Philips was born on 6 January 1946^[3] in Jamaica, but grew up in Canada, where he converted to Islam in 1972. He received his B.A. degree from the Islamic University of Medina and his M.A. in Aqeedah (Islamic Theology) from the King Saud University in Riyadh, then to the University of Wales, where he completed a PhD in Islamic Theology in the early 1990s.^[4] Philips comes from a family of educators, as both his parents were teachers and his grandfather was a Christian minister and Bible scholar.^[5]

Islamic Information Center[link]

In 1994 he founded (and continues to direct) an Islamic Information Center, now known as Discover Islam, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.^[5]

Islamic Online University[link]

The Islamic Online University has been founded by Dr. Bilal Philips as a completely tuition-free institution that is offering an online intensive, undergraduate, and graduate courses in Islamic Studies. The university offers a four year bachelor of arts degree in Islamic studies program.^[6]

The IOU was initially launched in 2001 from UAE with an offering of a few short courses. After a five year interlude, it was restarted in 2007 from Qatar with a greater offering of completely free short courses.^[7]

Controversies[link]

According to Steven Emerson, Executive Director of Investigative Project on Terrorism, he follows a strong anti-Western agenda and is connected to radical and terrorist Islamists.^[8] Bilal has made statements against suicide bombing and other terrorist tactics as un-Islamic. He has also suggested that once violent conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims can be better solved with education.^[9]

Bilal Philips (left) and Pierre Vogel speaking on a rally in Frankfurt in 2003.

In an interview given, Philips accused the Australian authorities of "blindly following American allegations and unsubstantiated false accusations" claiming that investigations in the UK, Canada and Australia had found no evidence that he was in any way connected with terrorism.^[2] In this interview, he also pointed out that he had not entered the USA since 1995, characterizing media claims that he had been deported in 2004 as an "outright lie". Philips also called the statement that he was an "unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing "really a joke", claiming that it was based on a "supposedly leaked report" of over 100 prominent Muslims who were never charged. In April 2011 he has been banned from re-entering Germany as persona non grata.^[10]

At a conference in Toronto during the city's Pride Parade on July 3, 2011, Philips briefly reiterated his view that homosexuals caught in the act should be executed in countries governed by Islamic law.^[11]

Publications[link]

Books[link]

• Fundamentals of TAWHEED (Islamic Monotheism) International Islamic Publishing House; ISBN 9960-9648-0-9^[12]
• The Evolution of Fiqh (Islamic Law & The Madh-habs) International Islamic Publishing House (Edited by Bradley Philips); ISBN 9960-672-86-7^[13]
• True Message of Jesus Christ Islamic Book Services 2006; ISBN 81-7231-360-8^[14]
• Purpose of Creation 84pp, Islamic Book Services 2002; ISBN 81-7231-358-6^[15]
• Funeral Rites International Islamic Publishing House; ASIN 9960850846^[16]
• Polygamy in Islam Islamic Book Services; ISBN 81-7231-715-8^[17]
• Islamic Studies Al-Basheer 2002; ISBN 1-898649-19-7^[18]

Videos[link]

• Sundry videos at LightUponLight.com

See also[link]

• List of Da'ees
• Dawah
• Islam in Canada
• Zakir Naik
• Jamaal al-Din M. Zarabozo
• Muhammad bin Jamil Zeno

References[link]

External links[link]

• Bilal Philips' official website
• Bilal Philips' Blog
• Bilal Philips audio and video lectures
• Interview with Bilal Philips on Famous Muslims
• Lecture: Hardening of the Heart
• Bilal Philips' Islamic Online University