The Institute ceased producing new video content during 2022;[4] its website was shuttered on July 16, 2023, for lack of payment.[5][6]
Mission
The Gravel Institute was created with the explicit goal of countering PragerU, with Henry Williams stating "the issues that we've so far focused on were, on the one hand, drawn from looking at PragerU topics and countering them" in an interview with Salon.[3] The Gravel Institute collaborated with a number of organizations, including the People's Policy Project (3P) and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).[7]
According to the official website, the Institute's mission was to "build the institutions the left needs to win".[‡ 2] According to David Oks, the Institute's "main target audience is people who are in the center, but don't have particularly well-thought-out political beliefs", adding: "I don't really think we're going to be converting people who consume PragerU."[8]
The Gravel Institute was mainly run by Williams, Oks, and Henry Magowan, who ran Gravel's 2020 presidential campaign when they were teenagers.[9] Video production and direction was headed by New York filmmaker Tymon Brown. Mike Gravel himself, who was 90 years old when the Institute launched, was not involved in day-to-day operations but served as a consultant and provided advice.[11]
On September 28, 2020, The Gravel Institute uploaded their first video, formally introducing the project, narrated by H. Jon Benjamin.[‡ 3] Also on September 28, The Gravel Institute uploaded their first video focused on a specific subject.[2]
In February 2022, The Daily Beast alleged that a video released by The Gravel Institute in mid-February on the Azov Battalion, titled "How America Funded Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis" and later renamed "America, Russia, and Ukraine’s Far-Right Problem", contained controversial talking points about the influence of neo-Nazism in the Ukrainian government and claimed that Ukrainian nationalism is linked to Nazism. The Daily Beast also accused the institute of publishing misinformation about Ukraine. The Gravel Institute responded by claiming that the video was accurate and was reviewed by experts prior to publication, but the video was ultimately pulled from public view.[12]
In June 2023, a banner was posted on the Gravel Institute's website announcing that the site would be taken down due to unpaid hosting costs.[5] The site went down the following July 16.[6] Additionally, the Gravel Institute YouTube channel has not posted a video since August 2022.[4]
^ ab"The Gravel Institute: Videos". YouTube. Retrieved July 24, 2023. More recent video posted is "Marianne Williamson: Why You're So Sad", 11 months prior.