Status Defunct Headquarters location Washington, D.C. Founder Helen Dwight Reid Parent organization Taylor & Francis | Country of origin United States Official website www.heldref.org Founded 1956 | |
Publication types Academic journals, Magazines | ||
Heldref Publications was the publishing division of the Helen Dwight Reid Education Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization. Helen Dwight Reid, a political scientist who taught at Bryn Mawr College and the State University of New York at Buffalo, established the foundation in 1956. Heldref Publications at one time published 50 scholarly journals and magazines devoted to education, political science, history, world literature, the arts, popular culture, psychology, other social sciences, health, and the environment. It was headquartered in Washington, D.C.
In July 2009, Heldref sold all but two of its publications to Taylor & Francis. In its press release explaining the sale, Heldref announced that the proceeds of the sale would be used to establish a new institute to promote US engagement and democratic development and that the newly restructured organization would pay tribute to two the legacy of Heldref's original founders (deceased), Jeane and Evron Kirkpatrick.
This restructuring, however, did not take place. Rather, in November 2009, the board of Heldref, made up of members of the Kirkpatrick family, was renamed the Kirkpatrick Jordan Foundation and determined to divide the sale’s proceeds and deposit them into three newly established foundations headed separately by three family members (Jerry Jordan, Stuart A. Kirkpatrick, and John E. Kirkpatrick). In January 2010, the Heldref board transferred publishing rights for the foundation’s two remaining publications (World Affairs and Demokratizatsiya) to the independent World Affairs Institute headed by Heldref’s former executive director, James S. Denton.