of the Young People Socialist League (YPSL), the youth section of the Socialist Party of America; he served as Vice Chairman, Co-Chairman, and then Chairman of YPSL. Acting as YPSL's Vice Chairman at its 1972 December Conference, he wrote a thirteen-page, singly spaced, international-affairs document which called for the Cuba's Castro regime to stop funding guerrilla movements and also for its "loosening the bonds" of repression; it was approved and an alternative document calling for the United States to recognize Cuba's government was defeated. YPSL criticized the "New Politics" led by George McGovern, which had lost 49 of 50 states to Richard Nixon in the 1972 election. At the Socialist Party USA Convention in December 1972, he introduced the international program, which was approved by a two to one vote; the losing alternative, proposed by Michael Harrington, called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, while the majority resolution called for a negotiated peace settlement. At this convention, the Socialist Party changed its name to Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA) by a vote of 73 to 34. Harrington resigned from SDUSA and founded the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) in 1973. In 1975, Gershman published a monograph on the foreign policy of the American labor movement. Gershman became a leader of SDUSA. From 1975 to January 1980, Gershman served as the executive director of SDUSA. In 1980, he debated Michael Harrington on the topic of foreign policy. United Nations Committee on Human Rights (1981–1984) Gershman served as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council during the first term of the Reagan Administration. National Endowment for Democracy (1984–present) Carl Gershman has served as the President of the National Endowment for Democracy since 1984. In a 2006 interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Gershman said "I'm non-partisan; I try to bring Democrats and Republicans together in the United States, which is not that easy because we're very divided politically, today. And also, people from the business community and the trade union movement and intellectuals, and so forth, and try and bring people together around a common democratic faith and philosophy." In a 1982 speech at the Palace of Westminster, President Ronald Reagan proposed an initiative "to foster the infrastructure of democracy--the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities." The U.S. government, through USAID (United States Agency for International Development), contracted The American Political Foundation to