Shah added a very moving personal note to his story. For many years, right up until he recently moved to India to launch the center, Shah led a comfortable existence as an economics professor at the University of Michigan. When struck with a serious illness, which caused him to look at his life's accomplishments, he felt he had achieved many of his life's ambitions, with the exception of setting up a think tank in India. Upon a healthy recovery, he committed himself to achieving this aim for his fellow Indians. Attracting and maintaining a competent staff is one of the daily challenges.
More life threatening, however, is the weakness of Turkey's civil society.
But now, information is freely flowing. We go out and work on ideas we think are critically important to the public, but we don't try to package them in a way the public wants to accept them. If we were private businesses, we'd go out of business. He urged everyone to put a marketing and public relations spin on every single product produced by the think tank. Crowley cautioned that journalists are moved much more by personal relationships, than by the best ideas.