Administrative updates to Brookings leadership

John R. Allen, president of the Brookings Institution, was placed on administrative leave on June 8. Ted Gayer has been appointed Acting President. Gayer has served as Brookings’s Executive Vice President since 2018.

The integrity and objectivity of Brookings scholars and their research constitute the institution’s principal assets. Brookings seeks to maintain high ethical standards in all its operations. Brookings has strong independence policies in place to ensure financial supporters do not influence the research findings or policy recommendations of its experts.

Brookings is not the subject of a federal investigation into a personal trip Allen took to Qatar in 2017 before he became president of the institution. Brookings receives no funds from the government of Qatar. Brookings received funding from Qatar in the past to support operations for research and events. In early 2019, Brookings decided it would not renew funding from the country and would close its Brookings Doha Center, established in 2007. The decision to close the Brookings Doha Center was concurrent with the decision to transition all of Brookings’s foreign centers.