23

Education and World Affairs

No one could have foreseen that during the last few months of my university presidency and from 1962 to 1970 an organization called Education and World Affairs (EWA) would absorb a large portion of my time. The genesis of this organization, its purpose and how I came to be involved in it have a claim on this record.

During the 1950s American institutions of higher education began to shed their parochialism and slowly to embrace the concept that the world is education’s parish. One after another, universities became involved in international activities, generally with Third World countries, in the form of technical and advisory assistance. Yet that development was in a sense haphazard, without coordination, and characterized more by good will than by wise planning. Both in government and in the private sector, the feeling grew that the higher-education community should be making a more impressive contribution to alleviation of international problems than so far had been the case. Secretary of State Christian Herter, through his special assistant for educational and cultural affairs, Ambassador Robert H. Thayer, convened a meeting of representatives from government, private foundations, universities, and the business and professional worlds. Out of it came the recommendation that the Ford Foundation be asked to form a committee of influential citizens to study the involvement of universities in international affairs and to suggest what could be done to improve their contribution.

J. Lewis Morrill, who retired as president of the University of Minnesota in 1960 and became a consultant to the Ford Foundation, chaired the committee that was subsequently appointed.¹ With the help of an able staff, the Morrill Committee conducted an intensive and thorough review of the international activities in which universities were engaged. Its report, published in late 1960, was distributed widely in the United States and abroad and influenced the thinking of people in education, government, and world affairs. In addition to ideas and proposals for improvement of the universities’ performance in the international field, the Morrill Committee Report included the recommendation to establish an organization as a center for coordinating the universities’ activities through planning, conducting studies, holding conferences, and gathering and dispersing information on American higher education’s role in world affairs.

Under the continuing leadership of the Ford Foundation, along with representatives of other foundations, meetings were held to discuss the implementation of the report, particularly concerning the nature and operation of the proposed central organization. The result was appointment of a task force of five university and college presidents to suggest the manner and form of the implementation. Franklin Murphy of the University of California, Los Angeles, was chosen to head the task force composed of Robert Goheen of Princeton University, John Hannah of Michigan State University, Douglas Knight of Lawrence College (later of Duke University), and me. We met during the spring and summer of 1961 and decided that a new, separate organization, which should have a role as far as possible distinct from what other organizations in the field were doing, was needed. We proposed a beginning budget for the year of $650,000, to be supplied by the major foundations.

President Henry Heald of the Ford Foundation and President John Gardner of the Carnegie Corporation, in concurrence with our proposal, suggested that the members of the task force be the nucleus of a board of trustees for the new organization and that we name additional trustees up to a total of fourteen. To provide the financing, the two foundations soon approved five-year grants—$2,000,000 from Ford and $500,000 from Carnegie—payable after the organization’s incorporation. By spring of 1962, we had succeeded in persuading seven others to join us on the board: Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, U.S. representative on the Council of the Organization of American States; Ray Eppert, president of the Burroughs Corporation; T. Keith Glennan, president of the Case Institute of Technology; Kenneth Holland, president of the Institute of International Education; David Lilienthal, former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) board and of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and since 1955 chief executive officer of the Development and Resources Corporation, whose wise and provocative questions were to serve as a stimulus to educators on the board; Frank McCulloch, bureau chief for China and Southeast Asia, Time-Life Foreign News Service; and Logan Wilson, president of the American Council on Education.²

During the organizational period Murphy and other members of the steering committee, knowing that I was leaving the presidency of Indiana University, had tried to prevail upon me to take the position of chairman and chief executive officer full time. Although I was deeply interested in the purposes and believed profoundly in the potential of the new organization, I did not wish to sever my ties with the university and with the state of Indiana. I had agreed with Elvis Stahr when he succeeded me as president of the university that I would take an active role in the affairs of the Indiana University Foundation, continuing as president while he assumed the office of chairman of the board. It was proposed that I devote myself largely to stimulating our giving program and particularly to working with major donors who were interested in Indiana University. Moreover, throughout my professional life I had resisted all requests to leave Indiana University to take other positions, several of them in New York. I frequently stated that I preferred to carry on whatever outside work I did from a Hoosier base rather than to surrender it and establish a new one.

In the end, William Marvel, executive associate of the Carnegie Corporation, was named president and I was made chairman of the board under an arrangement whereby I was to give 40 percent of my time to the New York office, commuting from Bloomington where I attended to my responsibilities with the Indiana University Foundation. For the following eight years I devoted a substantial amount of my time to the work of EWA, commuting typically weekly to New York or at least every other week and spending three or four days there unless I was on an EWA assignment elsewhere. It had been agreed that I would take no additional salary for this effort, but, since I was being paid by the Indiana University Foundation, the EWA would compensate the Foundation for the time I spent on EWA work.

My association with EWA made for exciting and rewarding years. We had a talented staff of highly experienced younger men who brought to the work extraordinary enthusiasm and dedication. In addition to Marvel himself there were such colleagues as Ralph Smuckler, Maurice Harari, John Scott Everton, Howard Reed, Henry Russell, Preston Schoyer, Ebba Corcoran, Allan Michie, Peter Gillingham, and several others.

Unquestionably, one of the signal successes in the formative days of EWA was the quality of the persons who agreed to serve on its board—men of great experience and accomplishment in their respective fields. As planned, they took an active part in discussions of the principal issues, kept themselves informed about EWA’S programs, and made themselves available to advise in matters of policy and practice. In other words, the trustees did not perform in a perfunctory manner, but rather as a vital intellectual resource, deliberating on the issues and developing the policies of the organization. On at least two occasions their sessions were held in Washington rather than in New York in order to consult with Ambassador David Bell of the Agency for International Development (AID); Leona Baumgartner, assistant administrator for Human Resources and Social Development; Lucius Battle, assistant secretary of state for Education and Cultural Affairs, and others.

I found contact with this talented board a stimulating experience, and to serve as their chairman was challenging and demanding. The board discussions were of a very high order and really constituted the policy bible for the work of the organization. It was my first experience in the development of an entirely new organization of considerable size and national importance. President Marvel and I and members of the board worked for many months with the complicated legal and practical problems of bringing the organization into being, recruiting a staff, and finding a location for our work. After working in temporary quarters, we finally acquired a permanent home at 522 Fifth Avenue, which proved to be adequate and desirable for our purposes.

In certain ways, these years were very demanding ones for me. The personal problems involved in living and working in two locations were considerable. In addition, it seemed undesirable to give up membership on a number of national committees and boards with which I was already connected. Fortunately, several of these met in New York and attendance at their meetings was in part facilitated for me by my having a New York base.

One of the ambitious initiatives that was felt essential to enable the new organization to operate effectively as early as possible was carried out within its first full year. EWA held regional conferences at Sante Fe, New Mexico; East Lansing, Michigan; Hanover, New Hampshire; Pebble Beach, California; White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia; and Princeton, New Jersey in order to bring the program of EWA close to the educational leadership in each area. Those conferences brought into the EWA a large number of scholars and administrators particularly who began to look to EWA for guidance in their international concerns. EWA had an active program of conferences, seminar studies and reports, consultations with colleges and universities, consultation on international educational policy making, and an active, functioning program of committees and councils dealing with specialized problems.

Early in the development of the EWA program, it was determined that two operational services would be useful and could best be discharged by divisions of EWA. As a consequence the Overseas Educational Service (OES), sited in our EWA office in New York, and the Universities Service Center, sited in Hong Kong, were established to provide new services to the American educational community.

In the 1950s many American educators and technicians were abroad carrying out technical-assistance contracts, pursuing studies, or acting as consultants. The logistical problems they faced were substantial: for example, difficulty in obtaining extended leaves of absence, differences in salaries at home and abroad, unusual living conditions, slow reentry into the U.S. academic community, and limited productive feedback into their own universities after their return. All of these were deemed to be important problems. The recruitment of U.S. faculty and administrators for this work abroad was another important need. Also, as universities and colleges in the Third World attempted to recruit staffs on their own to assist them in the development of their institutions, they needed some facilitating service to aid them in their efforts. OES was started to perform these services. Its office was within the EWA office in New York and it was under the general authority of the EWA board of trustees. Uniquely, however, OES had sponsors in addition to EWA: the American Council on Education, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, and the Institute of International Education. The service was separately funded with an initial grant from the Carnegie Corporation, but was expected to receive most of its program and operating funds in the United States from foundations and agencies of the U.S. government, and abroad from the governments and universities that drew upon its services. Its executive director was the distinguished diplomat and scholar, John Scott Everton, and its Policy Advisory Group was composed of representatives of the sponsoring bodies.

The other operating arm, the Universities Service Center, was established with a grant by the Carnegie Corporation in Hong Kong, operating under the general direction of the EWA and its board. With the Communist victory in China in 1949, American scholars had henceforth been excluded from that important country; scholars and students of China had thus been denied access to the country whose people and affairs they were studying. Subsequently, Hong Kong became the center of such studies. The availability of people and current printed materials from mainland China made it the mecca for academic researchers from the United States and other Western countries. However, the scholars arriving in Hong Kong to work for six months or a year faced formidable difficulties, largely logistical in nature but nonetheless real. With a special grant from the Carnegie Corporation to help scholars studying there, EWA established in the fall of 1963 the Universities Service Center in Hong Kong. Its purpose was to help scholars move more quickly into productive research by providing useful contacts and effective access to research resources. Furthermore, it hoped to give advice and guidance on local political situations, to find ways to improve and develop resources, and to offer services and physical facilities for professional scholars carrying on their work in Hong Kong. Although the Universities Service Center was under the general supervision of the EWA board, an advisory board of twelve leading figures in the fields of Chinese studies, higher education, and public affairs in Canada, Great Britain, and the U.S. was created, and this board met from time to time in Hong Kong and gave invaluable assistance to the effort.³ A distinguished and experienced China scholar, Preston Schayer, was made director of the center.

To describe the work of the EWA during all these years would require a volume and then the full story would not be told. As what is pertinent to these memoirs is mostly my participation in the enterprise, I shall merely add that I think the accomplishment of EWA in pursuing its purpose was substantial and a record was made of which all connected with the organization can take just pride. Their publications constitute a lasting contribution to the subject of educational world affairs and still furnish valuable guidance and information to those interested in some aspect of the field. During its years of operation nearly every important figure in the field of international studies and education in America had some contact with or participation in the work of EWA. Never before nor since has there been such an enterprise in which the personalities in this field were so universally encompassed. Rather than present a sketchy view of the whole program, I shall mention only two or three special projects in which I had a personal part.⁴

In 1964, at the request of the U.S. State Department, EWA accepted the responsibility of developing a plan for an Indian-American binational educational, cultural, and scientific foundation. It so happened that a large amount of rupees had been accumulating in India to the credit of the U.S. government in payment for food exports from the U.S. These rupees were not transferable and heretofore had only been used for defraying the expense of carrying on our governmental functions in India such as the operation of the embassy, salaries of consulate staff, and so on. As this sum grew it became embarrassingly large and constituted a difficult fiscal problem for the Indians. Therefore, with the consent of certain congressional leaders, the U.S. State Department decided to propose to India that a foundation along the lines of the Ford Foundation be formed and endowed by a substantial proportion of these PL480 surplus rupee funds. It was proposed that the capital base endowment be in the order of $300 million in rupees (1.5 billion rupees), which, in terms of purchasing power in India, would have made the foundation larger in assets than those that the Ford Foundation had available for its programs in America and worldwide. EWA was asked to undertake the formulation of this project and its presentation to the Indian authorities. I was given principal responsibility for this task and made two trips to India for that purpose. The idea had the enthusiastic backing of Ambassador Chester Bowles and of John Lewis, a former Indiana University economics professor who was then AID administrator in India. I thought it a capital idea and I assumed the Indians would react to it eagerly. The intent was that the U.S. government would place in the hands of a joint Indian-American board this large rupee endowment to be used for the purpose of supporting unusual men and unusual ideas in India for the social good. We proposed that the Indians have a majority of the members of the board and that the American representation be limited to the number necessary to give guidance from the experience in this kind of organization that America almost alone among countries could furnish. The proposal had enthusiastic backing by Indian educators, but the governmental bureaucracy pointed out that India had a planned society and to inject support for unusual ideas and unusual men would upset the careful planning. Thus the government countered with a proposal that the money simply be turned over to the Indian government as a gift to be used by the government agencies for social and economic development and improvement. Regrettably, in my view, during the Moynihan ambassadorship to India we finally capitulated and turned the funds over to the government. At the time of my mission there, the only high-ranking officers I found in favor of the EWA proposal were the minister of education and Indira Gandhi, who was then minister of communications. She enthusiastically backed the idea saying it was exactly what India needed then to break through the heavy layer of government-planning red tape. The reaction of the Indians was shocking to me because foundations at the time were still viewed with so much favor in America that it did not occur to me that anyone could consider them undesirable. But such was to be the turn of thought even in America in the 1970s. Several voices in Congress and outside decried the power of foundations and asked that they be curbed on the grounds that the power inherent in such large sums of money upset government plans and programs; therefore, it would be preferable to reduce the sums by taxation and let the money be spent by government agencies.

Another activity in which I had a direct part was the study of the international role of the U.S. Office of Education. In mid-1963, EWA was asked by Commissioner Francis Keppel to study the policies, programs, and internal organization of the office with reference to its international educational responsibilities. This report was published in 1964 and the office was reorganized in the early summer of 1965. It used the EWA report on the international dimensions of the office as a guideline for restructuring its handling of international activities.

My involvement in the Office of Education study (I chaired the committee) led logically to another line of EWA’S endeavor in which I took an active part, namely, consultation with the Department of State and with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare on the development of a new federal program in international education. A call for increased activity and support in this field was made by President Lyndon Johnson in his Smithsonian speech of September 16, 1965, and legislation was prepared accordingly. This legislation was entrusted to a special task force of the education and labor committee of the House of Representatives, chaired by John Brademas of Indiana.

Congressman Brademas was deeply interested in the subject matter and, as this was the first major piece of legislation of which he had been given full charge, he felt his responsibility very keenly. Accordingly, he asked me as chairman of EWA to assist him during the hearings on this program. I spent most of two months in Washington in almost daily consultation, helping him to marshal the witnesses, prominent educators and scholars, to testify as to the need for the legislation and its benefit to American education. The bill was passed finally, largely due to his adroit generalship. I had already been an admirer of Brademas and this experience deepened my admiration.

By 1965 at Indiana University we began to be increasingly conscious of the fact that a significant milestone in the history of the university, its 150th anniversary, was only five years off and that it would be an excellent time for the Indiana University Foundation to launch a major capital gift campaign. Planning began for this campaign in which, of course, I had to take an active part because of my Foundation duties. However, with the resignation of President Stahr from his post in June, 1968, the trustees were caught unprepared for a change in leadership and as a result asked me to assume the office of university president again while they looked for a successor. Although President Stahr did not formally leave office until the first of August, from about July 1 on most of the problems of the presidency landed on my desk. For the next five months I had little time to give to outside activities until President Sutton was elected to take office December 1. In addition, with the enormous demands upon my time that the major fund campaign was beginning to make, it seemed to me necessary that I phase out of the work of EWA as rapidly as possible.

Meanwhile, because the Vietnam catastrophe and emerging domestic problem areas as well as shrinking resources had caused the foundations to feel that they must retrench, there was little likelihood that EWA could carry on at the level necessary for it to be effective in the role that it had played during most of the 1960s. As a consequence it was agreed that EWA would be merged into the International Council for Educational Development, which James Perkins, who had resigned as president of Cornell University, had launched in New York with modest financing from the Ford Foundation. The reorganization was accomplished on October 1, 1970. Although I could no longer devote time to EWA, I feel that the decision by the Ford Foundation in effect to liquidate the work of EWA was regrettable. The organization had great promise for future usefulness. Granted a few more years of life, I believe, it would have richly fulfilled early expectations, a substantial measure of which was already apparent. Moreover, had EWA been allowed to continue its operation, it might have helped avert the waning interest of American universities in international activities following the Vietnam War. Preoccupied during the 1970s with internal problems, financial stringencies, and the demand for academic programs adapted to the interests of minorities, women, and ethnic groups, universities abandoned or shrank their international curricular and research activities. The loss is regrettable because, as we see now, the necessity of the university’s international role has become more evident than ever before. As the nation’s international problems mount, many universities are caught ill-prepared to meet the need for scholarly manpower in international studies, languages, and research. Once more we academics learn that we cannot retreat within our own quarters but must continually interest ourselves in what is occurring beyond our borders.

I stayed on the board of the new organization briefly but soon had to devote full time to the Indiana University 150th Birthday Fund drive, which, happily, by mid-1972 had achieved more than double its goal of $25 million. EWA in its old form had passed out of existence by then.

EWA in its years left a rich legacy in the field of education and world affairs that will be useful for decades to come. I feel privileged to have presided over the deliberations of such a distinguished board of trustees, from each of whom I learned a great deal and for whom I have great admiration and respect. I am proud to have been associated with a talented group of staff members; all of those remaining continue to have a vital role in the field of American intellectual life. I hope that, while records are still available and while the personalities that played a part in this effort are still alive, someone will undertake a full-scale history of EWA and its activities and achievements.

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1. Other members of the Morrill Committee were Harold Boeschenstein, president of Owens-Corning Fiberglass Corporation; Harvie Branscomb, chancellor of Vanderbilt University; Arthur S. Flemming, secretary of HEW; J. W. Fulbright, U.S. senator from Arkansas; John W. Gardner, president of the Carnegie Corporation; Franklin D. Murphy, chancellor of U.C.L.A.; Philip D. Reed, former president of the General Electric Company; and Dean Rusk, president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

2. At one time or another such men as Vincent Barnett, Jr., President, Colgate University; Edward Mason, Lamont University Professor at Harvard University; Frederick Seitz, President, National Academy of Sciences; Sol Linowitz, distinguished diplomat; and Robert McNamara, President, World Bank, served on the board.

3. The board of trustees, chaired by Sir William Hayter, Warden, New College, Oxford, consisted of Frederick H. Burkhardt, President, American Council of Learned Societies; W. A. C. H. Dobson, Chairman, Department of East Asiatic Studies, University of Toronto; John Scott Everton, Executive Director, Overseas Educational Service; Maurice Freedman, Department of Social Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science; Robert F. Goheen, President, Princeton University; John M. H. Lindbeck, Associate Director, East Asian Research Center, Harvard University; Lucien W. Pye, Professor of Political Science, Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; William Marvel of EWA; and Schayer.

4. My duties as chairman included participating to some degree in all aspects of EWA’S work, from money raising to decision making.