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The Commonwealth Club of California is a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization based in Northern California. Founded in 1903, it is one of the oldest and largest public affairs forums in the United States.

It has more than 18,000 members who help host over 400 events each year on topics ranging across politics, culture, society, and the economy. It is currently headed by Dr. Gloria Duffy and is broadcast on many public radio stations, occasionally even live.

The Club has broadcast its forums since 1924, and current broadcasts are carried weekly by about 150 public and commercial radio stations across the nation. Local residents in the Bay Area can view televised programs from The Club on KGO TV, and video of selected programs is carried on the Fora.tv web site. The Club also issues free podcasts each week, a blog, and a monthly magazine and a monthly program update guide.

In addition to hosting speeches and panels, The Club runs the Voices of Reform project, which is a nonpartisan effort to bring together California's policy makers and opinion leaders to improve state governance, the Innovation in Education policy reform project, and a travel program, which leads several trips abroad each year to destinations ranging from Turkey to Russia to China.

Contents 1 History 2 Sample of speakers 3 Research Projects and Studies 4 External links

The Commonwealth Club was founded in 1903.

The "Club" has hosted numerous world-class speakers including many former U.S. Presidents and other major political leaders in the USA and abroad, business leaders and influential social activists. Speakers receive no honoraria.

The Club has offices in San Francisco and San Jose. It has some events at the Santa Clara, California convention center. Though the majority of its programs are in San Francisco, San Jose, and Lafayette (in the East Bay area northeast of San Francisco), it also hosts occasional events in Sacramento and Southern California.

The list of notable speakers is long and is sometimes referred to simply as "everybody."

While in office, Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke at the club. During his term as Vice President, Dan Quayle delivered his famous Murphy Brown speech to the group. One recent live "Address to the Club" was Condoleezza Rice's presentation of her new policy initiatives before her 2005 tour of world leaders in the Mideast. Other major recent speakers include Katie Couric, Walter Cronkite, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Gore, Christie Hefner, Anna Quindlen, Shelby Steele, and Steve Ballmer.

Over the years a number of subjects have been studied by Club employees, member committees, or scholars contracted by The Commonwealth Club. Among studies undertaken were environmental degradation, natural resources planning, occupational restrictions, automobile and industrial accident compensation, and legislative procedures. The long-standing mandate of many such studies has been the creed "to investigate and discuss problems affecting the welfare of the Commonwealth and to aid in their solution."

For example, one of the most extensive of these studies was commissioned in 1953 and lasted until 1956. It resulted in the book California Social Welfare: Legislation, Financing, Services, Statistics that was published by Prentice-Hall. Vaughn Davis Bornet, a recent Ph.D. recipient from Stanford University, authored the book.

More recent studies and projects include The Commonwealth Club's Voices of Reform project, which works with state leaders in a variety of fields to build bipartisan consensus on improvements to the state's governance, and Innovation in Education, a program launched in 2007 to build statewide consensus on ways to improve the public education system. Both projects carry on in The Club's century-long tradition of pursuing answers to common problems.

• Commonwealth Club of California
• Commonwealth Club of California Video