Kohut, Andrew 1942-

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Kohut, Andrew 1942-

PERSONAL:

Born 1942. Education: Seton Hall University, A.B., 1964; Rutgers University, graduate study, 1964-66.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 1615 L St. N.W., Ste. 700, Washington, DC 20036.

CAREER:

Public opinion commentator. Gallup Organization, president, 1979-89; Princeton Survey Research Associates, founder, beginning 1989; Times Mirror Center, director of surveys, 1990-92, director, 1993—, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (formerly the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press), Washington, DC, director, and Pew Global Attitudes Project, director, 2004—. Member, Market Research Council and Council on Foreign Relations.

MEMBER:

American Association of Public Opinion Research (president, 1994-95), National Council on Public Polls (president, 2000-01).

AWARDS, HONORS:

First Innovators Award, American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), for founding the Pew Research Center; award for outstanding contribution to opinion research, AAPOR.

WRITINGS:

(With Norman J. Ornstein and Larry McCarthy) The People, the Press and Politics: The Times Mirror Study of the American Electorate, Addison-Wesley (Reading, MA), 1988.

(With Max Kaase) Estranged Friends? The Transatlantic Consequences of Societal Change, Council on Foreign Relations Press (New York, NY), 1996.

(With John C. Green, Scott Keeter, and Robert C. Toth) The Diminishing Divide: Religion's Changing Role in American Politics, Brookings Institution Press (Washington, DC), 2000.

(With Madeleine Albright) What the World Thinks in 2002: How Global Publics View: Their Lives, Their Countries, the World, America, Pew Global Attitudes Project (Washington, DC), 2003.

(With Bruce Stokes) America against the World: How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked, Times Books (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals and Web sites, including the New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, and AOL News.

SIDELIGHTS:

For his entire career Andrew Kohut has had his finger on the pulse of American and worldwide opinion. His findings have been published in a number of volumes, including The Diminishing Divide: Religion's Changing Role in American Politics, a Brookings Institution text he cowrote. The authors note that the divide between religion and politics is smaller than at any previous time in American history. The book is written for a general audience and assumes no prior knowledge of the scholarly literature on either subject. Frank Newport related in the Public Opinion Quarterly that "Kohut et al. move the reader through an examination of the basic distribution of individual-level religious indicators in the country today, the way in which religious variables are related to ideology and issue positions, and how religion, in turn, ends up being significantly related to political outcomes."

In 2002 Kohut was given the task of assessing international public opinion. His resulting poll, the Global Attitudes Project, was carried out over four months in forty-four countries, with 38,263 adults who spoke sixty-three languages. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who chaired the committee, oversaw the project and is coauthor of the volume that collects the data, What the World Thinks in 2002: How Global Publics View: Their Lives, Their Countries, the World, America. Statistics were collected regarding satisfaction with family lives, income, and work. Although participants in some Middle Eastern countries may not have been entirely honest due to the political environment, findings as to the role of the United States revealed the diminishing of American prestige; opposition to the war on terrorism, not only in the Middle East but among Muslim populations in African nations; and a generally negative image in many countries of the world, but with some countries, like Russia, giving the United States higher marks than in previous polls. Richard H. Curtiss noted in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs: "As should be obvious, opinions about the U.S. are complicated and contradictory. People everywhere embrace things American, while simultaneously decrying U.S. influence on their societies. Similarly, while the war on terrorism, the centerpiece of current U.S. foreign policy, continues to enjoy global support outside the Muslim world, pluralities in most of the countries surveyed complain about American unilateralism."

Kohut and National Public Radio commentator Bruce Stokes are the authors of America against the World: How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked, which contains the responses of 91,000 people in fifty countries, from 2002 to 2005, and again reveals that unilateralism, fueled by religion and nationalism, is the primary reason for anti-American sentiment, which has become the majority view since the 2001 terrorist attacks on America and the resulting invasion of Iraq. Findings reveal that Americans are perceived as self-obsessed consumers who believe in their own superiority over the rest of the world. Most respondents disagree with American capital punishment and obsession with religion, denial of gay rights, what they consider to be an unjust 2000 presidential election, and America's lack of response to the poor. Perceiving the United States as being a violent nation, seventy percent of non-Americans feel the world would be safer if there were another superpower to balance U.S. primacy. People in other countries believe that the United States' goal is to expand its empire, while the truth is that the people of the United States want the country to share global leadership. The authors write that non-Americans should not mistake "the ambitions of America's elites with the attitudes of the American public." But because American voters returned George W. Bush to the White House in 2004, it is assumed that the people approve of his administration's policies. Booklist contributor Vanessa Bush wrote of the book: "Not merely a dry, statistical account but a fascinating—and troubling—look at how the rest of the world views us."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Prospect, July-August, 2006, Suzanne Nossel, review of America against the World: How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked, p. 54.

Booklist, April 15, 2006, Vanessa Bush, review of America against the World, p. 24.

Foreign Affairs, May-June, 2006, Walter Russell Mead, review of America against the World, p. 158.

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2006, review of America against the World, p. 222.

Public Opinion Quarterly, winter, 2002, Frank Newport, review of The Diminishing Divide: Religion's Changing Role in American Politics, p. 633.

Publishers Weekly, March 20, 2006, review of America against the World, p. 48.

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January-February, 2003, Richard H. Curtiss, review of What the World Thinks in 2002: How Global Publics View: Their Lives, Their Countries, the World, America, p. 20.