The Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity is identified in The Bob Zadek Show excerpts as a unit of the Cato Institute. Bob Zadek introduces guests by their affiliation with it in four separate episodes, spanning 2017 to 2021, and in each case the affiliation is offered as the credential that establishes the guest’s standing to speak on the episode’s subject. The excerpts do not describe the Center’s founding, its location, its staff beyond the named guests, or its funding; what they establish is the Center’s role as the institutional address from which Cato-affiliated scholars appear on the program.
Andrei Illarionov and the Russia episode
The earliest of the four episodes, from April 2017, concerns Russia. Bob Zadek introduces Andrei Illarionov as “right now a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity” Russia Today (Yesterday & Tomorrow) (2017). In the same introduction Bob supplies Illarionov’s other credentials: he was chief economic advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin from 2000 to 2005, served as Putin’s personal representative in the G8 conference, received his PhD from St. Petersburg University in 1987, and from 1993 to 1994 served as chief economic advisor to the Russian Prime Minister. Bob frames the episode as an attempt to understand “what our relationship with Russia is, what it should be, and more importantly, to help us understand Russia itself—the regime and the people.” Illarionov’s reply in the excerpt is limited to a greeting: “Good morning, Bob.” The excerpt contains no substantive statement by Illarionov about the Center, about Russia, or about his own work there.
Alex Nowrasteh and the immigration episodes
The Center appears twice in connection with Alex Nowrasteh. In the May 2019 episode, Bob Zadek introduces him as “an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity,” adding that “We like liberty and we sure like prosperity” What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019). The same episode’s later segment repeats the affiliation when Bob returns from a break, again calling Nowrasteh “an immigration policy analyst at Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity” and asking, rhetorically, “Who could oppose global liberty? Who could oppose global prosperity?” The excerpt also notes that Nowrasteh is co-author, with Mark Krikorian, of a book called Open Immigration: Yea and Nay, published by Encounter Broadsides in 2014, and that he holds a master’s in economic history from the London School of Economics.
In the May 2020 episode, Bob Zadek introduces Nowrasteh with a different title: “the Director of Immigration Studies at Cato’s Institute—at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity” Immigration Myth-Busting - Redux (2020). Bob describes Nowrasteh as his “friend” and “mentor in matters relating to immigration and liberty in general,” and says his “insights into immigration” and “data-driven, data-driven, fact-intensive studies are a must-reading.” The introduction then turns to the Cato Institute itself, which Bob calls “a free-market, libertarian-ish or libertarian think tank which furthers small government, personal freedom, maximum control over one’s life, freedom to run your life the way you wish,” and which he says is “non-partisan” and appears before Congress. Nowrasteh responds by crediting “the generous support of yourself and people like you, those who come to our website, read it, absorb the ideas, spread them,” and says of Cato’s non-partisan character that “we get cited about equally by Republicans and Democrats, you know, on different issues on Capitol Hill.”
The two Nowrasteh episodes differ in the title the Center’s affiliation carries. In 2019 he is an immigration policy analyst there; in 2020 he is Director of Immigration Studies there. The excerpts do not explain the change, and neither episode describes the Center’s internal structure.
Ian Vasquez and the Cuba episode
The July 2021 episode on the Cuban uprising of July 11 adds a third named figure. Bob Zadek introduces Ian Vasquez as “the Vice President for International Studies at Cato, my very, very favorite free-market think tank,” and states that Vasquez is “the head of the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity” Cuba Libre & The July 11th Uprising (2021). Bob also identifies Vasquez as co-author of the Human Freedom Index, which he describes as “a fact-based, statistics-based resource to learn what exactly is going on in the world,” asking whether human freedom is on the rise or decline, what is happening with poverty, and what the quality of life on the planet really is. Bob calls the Index “a must resource.”
The episode’s subject is the July 11, 2021 uprising in Cuba, which Bob describes as having begun “somewhat spontaneously, 90 miles from our southern border,” in “that highly repressed society, that communist nation.” Bob frames the program around a set of questions about United States policy toward Cuba: “Why do we have the policy that we have vis-à-vis Cuba? Is it the right policy? Who does it harm? Who does it help? And what would be a better approach to Cuba?” He notes that most Americans are “kind of unaware of what exactly our policy is” and that “We know about something about an embargo.” The excerpt ends during Bob’s introduction of Vasquez, at the words “Ian, welcome,” so the excerpt contains no answer from Vasquez to any of these questions.
Across episodes
The Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity appears in four episodes across three subjects — Russia in 2017, immigration in 2019 and 2020, and Cuba in 2021 — and in every instance it enters the record the same way: as part of Bob Zadek’s introduction of a guest. The treatment does not develop between the earlier and later episodes. The only change the excerpts show is in the title attached to Alex Nowrasteh, who is an immigration policy analyst at the Center in 2019 and Director of Immigration Studies there in 2020; no speaker in the excerpts remarks on that change or explains it. Andrei Illarionov is named a Senior Fellow there in 2017, and Ian Vasquez is named its head in 2021, but no excerpt has any of the three guests describing the Center, its work, or its relationship to the Cato Institute in their own words. The Center functions in these episodes as a credential and a framing device — Bob’s repeated liberty-and-prosperity wordplay turns on the Center’s name — rather than as an institution the program examines.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state when the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity was founded, where it is located, how it is funded, how many people work there, or what its stated mission is. They do not say what relationship it has to the Cato Institute beyond being described as part of it, nor do they name any officer other than Ian Vasquez, whose title as head of the Center is given without a date of appointment. No guest in these excerpts speaks about the Center at any length; the descriptions all come from Bob Zadek’s introductions. The excerpts also do not show the Center taking any position, publishing anything, or acting in any capacity other than as the affiliation of the guests introduced.