MITCHELL B. PEARLSTEIN, Ph.D. Founder and President

Mitch Pearlstein is Founder and President of Center of the American Experiment, a nonpartisan, tax-exempt, public policy and educational institution that brings conservative and free market ideas to bear on the hardest problems facing Minnesota and the nation.  A think tank, for short.
 
Before his 1990 return to the Twin Cities, Dr. Pearlstein served for two years in the U.S. Department of Education, during the Reagan and (first) Bush administrations, where he held three positions, including Director of Outreach for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement.  Just prior to his federal service in Washington, Dr. Pearlstein spent four years as an editorial writer and columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where he focused on foreign and national affairs.
      
He also has been special assistant for policy and communications to Gov. Albert H. Quie of Minnesota; a research fellow at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota; assistant to University of Minnesota President C. Peter Magrath (pronounced Ma-grah); director of public information at the State University of New York at Binghamton; a reporter for The Sun-Bulletin, again in Binghamton; and a columnist for CityBusiness and Twin Cities Business Monthly.

Dr. Pearlstein is author of Riding into the Sunrise: Al Quie and a Life of Faith, Service & Civility (2008); co-author (with Katherine A. Kersten) of Close to Home (2000); co-editor (with Wade F. Horn and David Blankenhorn) of The Fatherhood Movement: A Call to Action (1999); co-editor (with Annette Meeks) of Minnesota Policy Blueprint (1999); editor of Certain Truths: Essays about Our Families, Children and Culture from American Experiment’s First Five Years (1995); and editor of the Center’s former flagship publication, American Experiment Quarterly.  His newest book, tentatively titled Shortchanging Student Achievement: The Costs of Family Fragmentation, is scheduled for a 2010-11 release.

A former adjunct professor of public administration at Hamline University in St. Paul, he earned his Ph.D. in educational administration, with an emphasis on higher education policy, at the University of Minnesota.  He did his undergraduate work in political science at SUNY-Binghamton.  In 2006, the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota named him one of 100 “Distinguished Alumni” from the college’s first 100 years.

Dr. Pearlstein is a director of the Greater Twin Cities United Way; a former chairman of the St. Paul-based Partnership for Choice in Education; and an emeritus director of the General John Vessey Jr. Leadership Academy.  He is a member of the New York-based Commission on Parenthood’s Future; the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute Advisory Council; the Advisory Board for the Tocqueville Center at the University of Minnesota; the Public Policy Advisory Committee of the School of Education at the University of St. Thomas; and the Hiawatha Leadership Academy’s Board of Advisors.  He was a member of the Citizens League Higher Education Study Committee; the Aspen Institute’s Domestic Strategy Group; the Steering Committee of Minnesotans for Major League Baseball; and a founder of the Washington-based Center for New Black Leadership. 

He is married to the Rev. Diane Darby McGowan, a Minneapolis Police chaplain and deacon at St. Phillip and St. Thomas Episcopal Church in St. Paul.  They live in Minneapolis and have four adult children and two grandchildren.

October 2009