Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Michael Stein, Washington Institute Founder, Dies at 88

Michael Stein, a co-founder of the influential Washington Institute for Near East Policy think-tank, has died. Stein died Nov. 7, one day before he turned 88, the Washington Institute said in a release.

Michael Stein

“Mike was a giant — a man of great ideas, boundless energy, and profound devotion to principle,” the institute’s current chairman, Howard Berkowitz, and president, Martin Gross, said in the release. “His passing is a grievous loss to us all.”

Stein, who co-founded the institute with Barbi Weinberg, served eight years as its president and six more as its chairman. Stein and Weinberg had been involved in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Its founding director, Martin Indyk, now the top U.S. Middle East peace negotiator, was a former AIPAC staffer.

The think tank now has ties with figures in the U.S. and Israeli governments and features well-known experts not only on the Arab-Israeli conflict, but on Turkey and Iran policy, among other fields.

Since the early 2000s, Stein has held the title of chairman emeritus. The institute named its flagship program on counterterrorism and intelligence in his honor and its annual lecture by a senior administration policymaker is also named in his honor.

Stein also was involved in many civic and charitable organizations in New York, Florida and Israel, including The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Long Island Jewish Medical Center, AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the Palm Beach Country Club and the Civic Association of Palm Beach.

The Harvard University graduate was medical care commissioner for the town of Palm Beach and served as treasurer of the Village of Kings Point, New York.

“It was my great privilege to work closely with Mike throughout my 28 years with this organization; he was mentor, advisor, confidant, and friend,” said Robert Satloff, the institute’s director. “No one lived the battle of ideas about U.S. Middle East policy more passionately than he did.”

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.