- Though headquartered in the U.S., the Aspen Institute also has seven branches overseas — in Spain, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, and Romania.
- During his opening remarks at an Aspen Institute event in March 2011, Eboo Patel, the founder of a national movement promoting interfaith religious cooperation and one of President Barack Obama‘s advisers on faith, derided George Washington as a slaveowner; identified slaves and their descendants as the people who, because they “responded to America’s original sin with a magnanimous blessing,” were “most responsible for the continuity of the American project”; lamented Americans’ resistance to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf‘s efforts to construct an Islamic Center near Ground Zero in Manhattan; and asserted that “the six fundamentals of Shariah” are “remarkably” similar to “the privileges enumerated in America’s Founding Documents.”