On June 22, 2007, members of the National Security working group met to discuss U.S. Iraq policy. With seven discussion pieces to ground their conversation, the scholars considered politics inside Iraq, U.S. force posture in the Mideast, managing al-Qaeda, the humanitarian mission in Iraq, preventing the spread of conflict, and the response from Washington.
On June 23, 2007, the Institutions of Democracy working group met to chart a path forward for the initiative. Participants grounded their discussion with a collection of short, idea-generating pieces prepared by members of the group. Conversation transitioned to a focus on the main obstacles of reform of the election system and the types of policies and institutions that would enable the election system to run better.
In May 2007, the Risk working group met to consider "Managing Risk in the 21st Century" and to develop a research for the group going forward. Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) attended the meeting and offered on-the-ground perspective, highlighting the challenges that policymakers face in proposing new policy.
The scholars contributed short papers for discussion at the meeting:
In the Spring of 2007, three new Tobin Project working groups came together to discuss fundamental unanswered questions in their field and set an agenda for future research and engagement. These early working group meetings included Macroeconomics (with Representative John Spratt, Chair of the House Budget Committee), Health, and Retirement Security.
On April 21, 2007, the National Security working group convened to explore a series of questions that will drive the initiative forward:
To ground the discussion, a group of scholars presented short, idea-generating papers.