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Are there any good centrist or right-wing think tanks in the U.S. that are respectable, principled, and might have interest in hiring a mathematical modeler that I could apply for jobs at?
For context, I have a PhD in math, I specialize in game theory and mathematical modeling. I also have some experience with disease modeling, though not Covid specifically. I am currently nearing the end of a postdoc research position at a University, and a few published papers and several drafts I'm still working on. Over time I've felt less comfortable in academia as everything shifts less and all diversity stuff keeps getting worse. It hasn't affected me directly much (though you can never tell when you don't hear back from a job application whether being a straight white male was the cause or not), but it's kind of uncomfortable, and some topics that I'm interested in I'm afraid to actually go into because the papers might be rendered unpublishable. And just in general I feel the papers I publish don't actually matter all that much, and I suspect something more applied like this might feel more meaningful.
I'm still applying for some jobs at universities, but also industry jobs and am wondering if maybe a right wing think tank would be a good opportunity. Given the left's capture of the Universities, this maybe implies there's a shortage of right-wing academics and I'd have a better shot of getting in? But that's probably less true in math. And I definitely don't want to work for some propaganda machine that just hacks studies together to conclude whatever they already believe is true. I think that the left sometimes has legitimate points that are worth considering, and ideally would like to be able to make good scientific papers and mathematical models that give insight to people on both the left and right, and can potentially make the right stronger and smarter.
Bonus points for places that allow working remotely or are near the East Coast so I don't have to move very far, but at this point I'll take what I can get.
Respectable to whom? Honestly, I've wondered about such things, and I've worried that taking a job with an explicitly conservative organization would follow me around for the rest of my life and make me unemployable.
This is a legitimate concern, but speaking as someone who has taken the plunge, there's a certain freedom that comes from accepting that those doors are closed. I never realized how much mental effort I was putting into saving face in front of people who hated me. It's really nice working with people who largely agree wit me for once, and knowing for that my employer will happily go to the mattresses for me in the event of an attempted cancellation is a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. It's similar to the feeling of peace you get when you finally delete your social media accounts: you may have placed yourself into exile, but the knowledge that the mob no longer holds any (or at least as much) power over you is worth it in my opinion.
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Basically all of them are Center-Center-Right except for social issues, where the Center prevails.
If you got lots of juice, go for the golden ring: Try for Rand, Hoover, CfR, Cato, or American Enterprise.
That said, there is no such thing as a principled think tank in general, and ESPECIALLY on the right. American Enterprise is the most straight down the middle Con think tank, with the knowledge they want you to own nothing and like it; eat bugs in a pod; grind orphans into paste to grease axial shafts and such.
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I think Richard Hanania is trying to do explicitly this. Heterodox Academy may also be up your alley. Manhattan Institute has clearly positioned itself as anti-woke (though I don't care much for Rufo).
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Probably posted wrong area but my guess is people here would be looking for something connected to mercatus. EA adjacent. Koch funded. Think branded more civil libertarian. Probably also look at Econlib. Maybe in general see whatever orgs Tyler Cowen is supporting or has Koch funding. Koch is sort of a dirty word but to do research you need a rich patron if your outside of the left today. Also Elon Musks has an online school he’s perhaps looking into that I forget the name they probably need people doing course development. Thiel might be another billionaire to look at what he’s involved with. Almost by necessity feels like for right leaning would need to go to one of their spots.
Second the Mercatus suggestion. Something connected to GMU is probably the closest to "real" academia you'll find in right wing think tank world. Reason (the Foundation, not the magazine), Cato, and the Manhattan Institute are all relatively respecable places (or they were 10 years ago, at least. All three will definitely get you called a fascist by most people in academia nowadays, though thats more a problem with academia than the organizations) that do the sort of data-driven work you seem to be interested in, and are libertarian enough that they try to stay somewhat clear of the partisan mud wrestling. AEI, while strongly associated with the neocons and generally having more of a "hackish" reputation, is notable for giving a lot of freedom to its scholars to pursue their work without meddling from the executives (or at least it was when Arthur Brooks was running it. I dont know of that still holds true today)
[Edit]: also, if you're interested in legal reform, law firms like the Institute for Justice are increasingly relying on their own in-house researchers and analysts to provide evidence to take down civil asset forfeiture, cottage food bans, etc.
In the past people would probably include Claremont but I feel like they’ve gone downhill. Hoover still seems to hold its own at Stanford. UC might have something but anything outside the business school has gone woke just less so than elsewhere.
Who is UC? (From context it seems not to be University of California - my otherwise obvious guess.)
Probably should have spelled out University of Chicago. They do have an old ethos of being very free speechy and nerdy but the last decade they’ve moved away from pure nerds to trying to climb rankings. Still something there would be relatively less leftist captured. In the same way that MIT and especially Caltech have resisted capture.
If this is what resistance looks like, it seems to be entirely a rearguard action of a defeated people.
Fair. It does seem the we do real things schools have started to fall too versus the pure prestige elite competition schools. Chicago and MIT seemed to have fallen last.
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