Rachel Kleinfeld

After countless national elections, Rachel Kleinfeld remembers becoming increasingly frustrated with the candidates’ rhetoric on national security.  Loathe to be labeled as “soft” on defense, many otherwise progressive candidates parroted right-wing slogans, while others who voiced opposition to the war in Iraq, for example, were marginalized as representing the far-left wing of American politics. “There was a missed opportunity,” she says, “to articulate a uniquely progressive vision for a strong national defense, and make national security a winning issue for progressive politicians and national leaders.”  She had seen first-hand, working for human rights and economic justice in India, Israel and the Middle East,  how policies made within the narrow security establishment in the U.S., and how these policies were making  the world less secure. 

She noticed something else about the conservatives who had dominated political discourse over the past decade:  While progressives tended to emphasize issues; conservatives focused on people. 
 
So Kleinfeld took a page from the conservative manual and in 2005 co-founded the Truman National Security Project, a leadership institute to recruit and equip up-and-coming progressive leaders with sharp communication and political skills, and to place them as advisors to political leaders. In the 2008 presidential race, major candidates from both parties placed Truman fellows on their senior staffs, as did newly-elected members of Congress, and even veteran Senators. 

Kleinfeld chose as a namesake for the organization a president who presided over an era in which an unprecedented threat arose that required recalibrating our national security apparatus, and who said, “Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.”