May 24, 2022

Rita Hauser, an international lawyer, philanthropist, and committed RAND supporter, has made a $1 million gift to RAND. The gift will support the RAND Archives, which collects, preserves, and provides access to materials that document the origins, development, operations, and impact of RAND and its research from 1948 to the present.

“The RAND Archives is a vital part of our organization’s corporate memory,” said RAND president and CEO Michael D. Rich. “As more and more scholars and journalists are using the RAND Archives—an important way to share RAND’s historical and ongoing impact—we are grateful for this generous gift. Rita Hauser’s contribution will help us invest in several important enhancements that will extend the reach and influence of our archival holdings.”

In recognition of the gift, the Archives will be renamed the Hauser RAND Archives. The gift will help RAND modernize the Archives facility, including constructing a new storage vault for preservation, a digital preservation studio, a processing room, and an archival research room.

“RAND is such an important institution—one that truly embraces quality and objectivity as core values,” said Rita Hauser, president of the Hauser Foundation and former member of the RAND Board of Trustees. “I’m honored to help preserve the organization’s intellectual history and keep these records accessible for the benefit of RAND, the community, and future generations.”

The Hauser RAND Archives contains materials deemed to be of permanent historical value that capture the organization’s legacy of innovation and its enduring contributions to public policy and decisionmaking. The Archives team makes the collection accessible to RAND staff and external scholars from universities and research organizations around the world who are writing books, journal articles, and dissertations.

At RAND, Hauser serves as a member of the Tomorrow Demands Today fundraising campaign cabinet. She helped to establish the advisory board of the RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy and helped fund RAND’s Strategic Rethink project, which explored important strategic questions facing the United States.

Throughout her career, she has been committed to peace, diplomacy, and humanitarian efforts. She chaired, for two decades, the International Peace Institute and was chair of the advisory board of the International Crisis Group. Hauser has served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, as a member of the United States delegation to the twenty-fourth U.N. General Assembly, as a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and as a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.