CHAPTER FIVE

The Committee and the Department of State

The relationships between the scholar and the university, on one hand, and the government, on the other hand, are different in the United States than in other democratic countries because of ancient and honorable American beliefs and practices. Americans since the early 1930s have turned more and more to our central government for services that earlier generations believed were the responsibility of individual citizens or of private organizations. However, the skeptical, critical intellectual and his fellow citizens in all walks of life believe that the influence of government over intellectual life and over individuals should be limited, because each of us has “an ethic of individual independence and idiosyncracy, a distrust of ideas and rulers, and an inbred suspicion of too close an association with governments.”¹ On the other hand, anti-intellectualism has often played a profound role in American life, and some have sought to direct government pressure against scholars and other intellectuals. Even today, when most people understand the contributions scientists have made to the quality of American life and to our role in world affairs, the public attitude toward the highly educated and toward those who engage in intellectual activities retains a strain of suspicion. The outbursts that have marked our public life since the end of World War II, in particular the crusade Senator Joseph McCarthy led, simply reflect this deep-seated popular feeling.

The relationships between the scholar and the government have changed considerably in the twentieth century as the scholar has provided a growing number of services to the government and has also relied upon it increasingly for financial aid and other forms of support. Members of the academic community began to serve the government more frequently as our economic and social life became more complicated and as our involvement in international politics increased. While educated men and women have always constituted a high percentage of government employees and of elected officials, the service in Washington of scholars began only during World War I. Their participation in federal government service increased rapidly in the early years of the New Deal and again throughout World War II. During the administration of President Kennedy, the visible role played by intellectuals leaped significantly. In short, in the last fifty years scholars from colleges and universities and other intellectuals have served in increasing numbers as consultants and officials in many government agencies. Indeed, probably the majority of today’s faculty members in major universities have worked in government agencies or have served as consultants at one time or another.

Our institutions of higher education have remained closer to public service than have those in other Western countries. At the same time, both our scholars and our universities are suspicious of government and are eager to restrict its influence, though not its financial aid. Universities consider themselves privileged sanctuaries of freedom and are accustomed to their own ways. Small colleges and great centers of learning, private institutions and state universities all believe they must conduct research and instruction as they see best, inviolate against all outside interference.

Thus, everyone agrees, first, that the university cannot be removed from the society in which it functions and which it serves and, second, that it must remain true to its primary educational goals if it is to remain truly independent and serve society effectively. Neither the universities nor the government wants Washington to become St. Petersburg-on-the Potomac.

The reserved relationship between the universities and the federal government began to shift during World War II and has changed considerably in the past thirty years. During that war, when the country sought to mobilize its resources and when most young men were in the armed forces, our colleges and universities provided special training programs, preparing young men and women for service overseas in different cultures. They also contributed the work of their scientists and laboratories to increase our military capabilities. The development of the atomic bomb is just one indication of this effort.

Since the war, our universities have become an ever-growing resource for the federal government, particularly in research. Practically all government agencies, in particular the Departments of Agriculture and Defense, support research on our campuses. Most government agencies involved in work overseas, particularly the Department of State, turn to universities for training institutions, administrators of programs, advisors, and consultants. The various agencies that have brought thousands of foreign students and scholars here rely upon universities for educational services.

Moreover, the funding of higher education has changed considerably in the last three decades. Federal funds now constitute an important percentage of the resources available for research in the sciences in many major universities. The government has also provided massive financial assistance in the humanities and social sciences. Indeed, fellowships provided by the National Defense Education Act of 1958 and other programs directed and administered by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and other direct grants from the Office of Education helped continue the rapid expansion of Russian and East European studies, and of instruction on other foreign areas as well. However, while our universities have welcomed government financial support and indeed plead for more, they want government influence reduced or even eliminated. In short, since World War II the assistance the universities provide the government and government financial support for the universities have drastically changed the nature and character of the relationship.

Even so, the universities themselves have provided the great bulk of the financial support for our foreign area programs, with private foundations the second largest contributor. The most complete analysis of the growth of foreign area studies in the United States concluded in 1973 that universities contributed about eighty percent of the total costs in 1971.² The government had contributed less than thirteen percent of the funds for the major university Russian and East European area programs through 1969, when both foundation and Department of Health, Education, and Welfare support dropped sharply. Thus, the Ford Foundation between 1952 and 1969 spent almost $300,000,000 to expand international studies in this country and abroad, almost double the amount the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare awarded all language and area centers between 1958 and 1969 under the National Defense Education Act, the main source of government funds in these fields. Moreover, the Ford funds were available early in this period and were essential for launching these programs, while NDEA funds began later and supplemented programs already under way.

Ford Foundation support for the Inter-University Committee and for IREX has also exceeded that from the Department of State and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the government agencies that have provided financial assistance. Thus, between 1953 and 1974 the Foundation gave the Committee and IREX almost $7,000,000, while at the same time awarding the ACLS and the National Academy of Sciences smaller totals. Department of State funding for the same period amounted to somewhat less than $5,000,000, and generous National Endowment grants from 1971 to 1975 to IREX amounted to less than $2,000,000. Moreover, Department of State support began at only $10,500 for 1958-59, rose to $64,500 and $101,000 the following two years, and then averaged about $200,000 annually throughout the 1960s. It then leaped to $400,000 for each of the following two years, to $460,000 for 1972-73 and 1973-74, and to $614,730 for each of the subsequent years. Thus, the Department contributed about four percent of the Committee’s total budget in 1958-59, twelve percent the second year, twenty-four percent the third year, and approximately thirty-three percent for subsequent years until 1974. However, the Ford Foundation after a quarter of a century of constant support is withdrawing all but token aid for foreign area programs and may end its aid to IREX, or reduce it very drastically, when the grant for 1975-76 expires. The Department of State may therefore contribute more than $1,000,000 for 1976-77, more than half IREX’s budget. IREX may soon become completely dependent upon government funds to maintain the academic exchange programs. It would then in fact become a government instrument.

The flow of publications between the United States and the Soviet Union is another element in the relations between our government and universities. Neither has been able to overcome the blockade against the flow of Western publications into the Soviet Union, but they have combined to expand that from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe into the United States. In the early 1950s, in particular, the universities were annoyed when customs and post office officials occasionally interfered with their efforts to acquire Soviet and East European publications. Ironically, government officials conducted these actions under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, passed in 1938 to require registration of foreign agents and identification of propaganda materials distributed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Similarly, in the mid-1950s, the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952, as amended, raised difficulties when it required that scholars invited from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe be fingerprinted when applying for visas. The Department of State in September 1957 succeeded in having this act waived for those who came at university invitation.

The beginning of the exchange program with the Soviet Union and the surfacing of these problems led the Joint Committee on Slavic Studies in December 1958 to establish a subcommittee on relations between universities and the government. Paradoxically, Soviet officials interpreted this group, established to increase the flow of materials essential for scholarship, as a conduit through which our government exercised control over Russian studies.³ However, the sessions between scholars and senior government officials improved the flow of research materials and of government-financed translations to university libraries and helped educate both groups concerning the problems any kind of relationship with the Soviet Union created.

For the Inter-University Committee, IREX, and the universities they serve, the Department of State is the most important government organization. Their relations have been remarkably amicable and effective, because all involved have so well understood each other’s purposes and qualities. In fact, the skill and candor with which the Department and the universities have defined their positions, respected each other’s responsibilities and privileges, and cooperated to preserve the special qualities of our system and to advance the national interest have been a tribute to both. However, some tension concerning specific issues and procedures was inevitable, particularly in the early years when both sides were dealing with new problems and were especially sensitive.

From the beginning, both the Department and the universities have been anxious to establish a free flow of scholars and publications. Both were reluctant to participate in a formal exchanges agreement because they saw that it allowed some flow of scholars, but also controlled it. Both were fearful, and with reason, that the principles of the 1958 agreement would survive and would restrict rather than encourage the kind of relationships familiar to Western society. At the same time, the Department’s relative inexperience in cultural relations with other countries and its dealings with authoritarian states in the previous two decades persuaded it to seek some influence over such explosive matters.

The United States had paid almost no attention to cultural exchanges until just before World War II. The Smithsonian Institution’s activities abroad and the use of reparation funds from the Boxer Rebellion to bring Chinese students here constituted the only federal government activities in the cultural exchange field before 1938, when the Division of Cultural Affairs was established in the Department of State, largely to combat Axis propaganda in Latin America. During World War II, the Office of War Information emphasized countering Nazi propaganda. After the war our interest in cultural affairs and educational exchanges increased enormously. We helped to organize, and joined as well, a number of international organizations, such as UNESCO, UNICEF, ILO, and WHO. The Fulbright Act, passed in 1947, and the Fulbright-Hays Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act, enacted in 1961, enabled more than 100,000 intellectuals, of whom approximately two-thirds were from 110 other countries, to visit the United States or other countries. In 1968 alone, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs enabled 8,500 men and women to travel abroad or to visit the United States for educational and cultural purposes. The Department of State has established enormously successful programs in other countries to increase and improve the teaching of English, to expand American studies, and to establish libraries and schools, while the United States Information Agency, its Voice of America, and its information centers and libraries have become known throughout most of the world. The onset of the cold war and the necessity to create defenses against Soviet propaganda and to advance the democratic cause in other parts of the world have led to increased attention to forms of cultural relations in which the shared advantages envisaged in the other programs were not so visible. USIA in particular has concentrated on spreading news and information concerning this country and the West in general through radio and television programs, publications, and other accepted mass media forms.

Our government seeks to encourage the free flow of people and ideas across national frontiers, as a matter of vital principle and of mutual or shared advantage. We believe that this free exchange will advance our foreign policy and will contribute toward establishing peaceful conditions everywhere, which is profoundly in our national interest. We seek to learn about and from other people, as many others seek to learn about and from us.⁴

In the 1950s our foreign policy sought to slow down the Soviet effort to expand, to reduce Soviet forces in and Soviet control over the peoples of Eastern Europe, to strengthen and unite the other peoples and countries concerned about Soviet power and policy, and to move the Soviet Union from an intransigent position into one accepting a peaceful framework of international politics under the principles posed by the United Nations for resolving international disputes.

Department officials consider academic exchanges a significant element in this total relationship with the Soviet Union, particularly because they maintain ties at times of great tension and hazard as well as in more calm periods. In the Department’s view, this opportunity for dialogue reinforces the tendency within the higher levels of the Soviet government to engage in relationships on peaceful grounds under conditions of mutual advantage, a practice that is regularly condemned in the Soviet Union as “ideological coexistence.” Department officials also appreciate that academic exchange programs advance the national interest by increasing Soviet understanding of the United States. Thus, in the long run they contribute to reducing misunderstanding and fear on both sides, and they help the Soviet elite to see more clearly and appreciate the wider world in which we all live.

In addition, identifying or defining Soviet policies and the considerations underlying them is a difficult task, complicated by lack of information and by the difficulties we encounter in penetrating the Soviet mind. The Department therefore considers the exchange program a kind of index or barometer of larger Soviet policies and of the atmosphere in which Soviet decisions are made. Thus, decreasing KGB harassment of American scholars reveals a change of the temperature or atmosphere within which all Soviet policies are decided.

Department officials, like all informed observers, see foreign affairs as “a complicated and disorderly business, full of surprises, demanding hard choices that must be based on judgment rather than analysis.” In part because foreign relations are their responsibility, in part because the Department considers academic exchanges important, and above all because the exchanges are conducted under an intergovernmental agreement, some tension arose between the Department and the Committee and exists between the Department and IREX. On their part, the universities were determined to retain control of university programs and to remain independent of politics. They were therefore eager to defend their own interests against all outside influence. They feared that the Department might not be capable of protecting their concerns against critics and Congressional pressures.

Department of State officials naturally believed they possessed the professional competence required for conducting our foreign policy and defending the national interest in all the country’s undertakings abroad. They had access to far more complete information than scholars. The Department’s responsibilities involved our relations with all countries throughout the world, and policies on many issues and toward many countries were closely interrelated. Our relationships with the Soviet Union were particularly complicated and delicate, involved many interests and government agencies, and inevitably affected our relations with other parts of the world.

From the Department’s point of view, the Committee and IREX represent a special interest group, similar to businessmen whose main concern in trade with other countries is their own profit. The Department recognized that both scholars and businessmen have a sense of the national interest, but it believed that these groups tend to place their own interests first and often confuse personal or professional ambitions with national objectives. Its officials almost inevitably saw university representatives as ivory tower amateurs, poorly informed and inexperienced in dealing with the Soviet Union. In the early years in particular they were concerned lest one mistaken judgment by the Committee or even by a participant should wreck the academic exchange program, throw into disarray the entire exchanges agreement, and significantly affect Soviet-American relations.

Relations with the Soviet Union were so central, and cultural exchanges so sensitive, that President Eisenhower, in establishing the Office of East-West Contacts in the Bureau of European Affairs in 1955, also appointed a special assistant to the Secretary of State for East-West Exchanges, Ambassador William S. B. Lacy, and a special assistant to the President, William H. Jackson, whose assignments included reviewing cultural exchanges with the Soviet Union. He gave the new office responsibility for coordinating the Department’s position on all exchanges with the Soviet Union: negotiating with the Soviet government, with the aid of other interested agencies; administering and monitoring the exchanges programs; and locating and persuading private organizations and institutions to participate. Its officials worked very closely with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, created in 1961 from a number of organizations within the Department that had dealt with such issues since 1938. Committee and IREX administrators handled these two offices so harmoniously that they considered them one. Departmental financial support to the Committee and to IREX comes through the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs after informal and amiable discussions, and the scholars’ organizations also deal with the Bureau on proposals for revised or new programs.⁵ When Committee and IREX representatives have discussed proposals with Department of State officials, they have been completely candid and forthright and have accepted or rejected Department advice as they have that of members of the academic community.

From the very beginning, the Committee and the universities and scholars it represented sought to maintain their independence from the Department of State and all government agencies, just as the Department remained aloof from the Committee’s work. No government officials at any time saw any applications to the Committee or to IREX. In 1957, when the Committee was making grants for thirty-day trips to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, it declared highly competent applicants from the RAND Corporation ineligible, because they had a substantial connection with the government.⁶

However, because they recognized the nature of the Soviet system and the political significance of sending scholars to the Soviet Union, the founders of the Committee from the beginning informed Department officials of its plans and programs. Thus, Dean Wallace sent a copy of the application for funds submitted to the Carnegie Corporation in October 1955 to the Department of State. He invited it to send representatives to the meeting reviewing the work of the Committee in November 1956, a tradition that later administrators of the Committee and IREX have since followed. Department officials have attended these annual meetings since November 1960.

After the cultural exchanges agreement was signed in January 1958 and the Inter-University Committee accepted responsibility for the first academic exchange program with the Soviet Union, the chairman sent to the Department of State an information copy of each of his letters to the Soviet Ministry of Higher Education. He also sent a copy to the American Embassy in Moscow, as well as to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, largely on the assumption that the American Embassy would often represent the Committee’s interests in Moscow when no Committee representative could be there and when the Ministry seemed slow in responding to its queries, and that the Soviet Embassy in Washington would often represent the Ministry’s interests. IREX has continued the practice of sending copies to the American and Soviet Embassies, although probably not systematically to the Department itself. Moreover, IREX now has direct telex contact with the American Embassy in Moscow and often communicates with the Ministry of Higher Education through the Embassy.

The establishment of the Committee in 1956 was a blessing for the Department because the universities and scholars involved by 1958 had had experience in directing a complicated national program and had some understanding of the difficulties involved in dealing with the Soviet system. Indeed, the Committee constituted an ideal private, autonomous, and independent agency to undertake administrative responsibility for one of the essential elements of the entire exchanges agreement. Similarly, the Committee was deeply grateful to the Department for the essential services it provided. The principles and pattern their offices together established in the early years survived. Thus, the Department negotiated the original agreement with the Soviet government, identified a responsible instrument for administering academic exchanges, and gave it full responsibility. After the November 1959 renewal of the first agreement, the Committee and, later, IREX officers joined Department officials in negotiating the section of the exchanges agreement that concerned them.

On the other hand, a number of important issues have disturbed relations between the universities and the Department. The basic problem, one that sensible and skillful action has kept within bounds, has been the determination of each party to maintain its independence and integrity and to achieve a satisfactory division of responsibilities. In the early years, Committee representatives sometimes felt that the Department used the academic exchange program, which they believed of particular value to the Soviet Union, as a lever for obtaining advantages in other parts of the exchanges agreement, particularly national exhibits, in which the Department had a special interest. The Department and the universities have also disagreed on occasion concerning the nature and size of the programs and the most effective way to negotiate with Soviet officials. The first disagreement rose in December 1958 when the Committee realized that most Soviet participants would be in science and technology, and so encouraged young American scientists to participate. It therefore sought to add the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to the seven original member institutions. However, the Department urged the Committee to limit the number of universities to seven until the Soviet government had allowed American participants to study outside of Moscow and Leningrad. In this case the Department yielded, and the Committee surrendered advantages to the Ministry without reciprocal benefit.

The next disagreement arose because of the euphoria of “the spirit of Camp David” from the fall of 1959 until the early summer of 1960, when the Department was under considerable pressure from President Eisenhower and other political leaders to expand exchanges. It also sought increased numbers of exhibits. The Department in the fall of 1959 therefore proposed to the Ministry that the two countries exchange eighty-five scholars each year. The universities through the Committee sought to delay expanding the program until Soviet performance had improved and had helped stimulate increased interest among qualified candidates. They believed expansion “could be achieved only by taking a firm line,” preventing the Ministry from exploiting our facilities while restricting our participants’ access to archives and travel. The Department then considered establishing a noncompetitive program of its own, designed to attract young men and women who would choose careers beyond the academic community, perhaps as Foreign Service Officers. Some officials thought this especially attractive, because fewer than half of the Department’s fifty-six specialists on the Soviet Union in 1961 had received any graduate training and because the British Council was sending young men and women to the Soviet Union who had no interest in Russian studies or in an academic career. Moreover, the Department thought such a program might enjoy broad geographic representation and help soften Congressional criticism.

This deeply divisive issue died quickly after the U-2 flight, cancellation of the invitation to President Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union, and continuing tensions over West Berlin. However, the Department in March 1962, over university opposition, again sought to raise the number of scholars exchanged, this time to seventy-five each year.

Another problem arose when important public leaders and Congressmen became deeply critical of the Department of State over academic exchanges. Thus, in August 1962 George Meany of the AFL-CIO ridiculed the Department for believing cultural exchanges could bring progress toward peace. Congressman Michael Feighan of Ohio, a member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee, and Congressman John Rooney of Brooklyn, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Appropriations for the State Department, often denounced the Department because “the Soviets send scientists who work on important problems in American laboratories, while we send scholars to work in ancient Russian history in Soviet libraries.” Feighan also suggested that “for all practical purposes our students are confined to a sanitized vacuum and tolerated as the price which must be paid for the training of Russian scientists by the United States.” He urged that the exchange program should be curtailed or abolished because he thought the Soviet Union obtained great advantage “by penetrating into the vitals of our scientific life.”

The Department of State, accountable to Congress for its appropriations, was sensitive to these criticisms and pressed the Committee to increase the number of scientists sent to the Soviet Union. In fact, it urged that fifty percent of our participants and no more than fifty percent of the Soviet participants be scientists. The Committee rejected this because quotas were a violation of its principles, few American scientists were qualified for or interested in research in the Soviet Union, and the Ministry would use such a proposal to place additional restrictions.

The Department and the universities on occasion also collided over the Department’s decision to deny visas to Soviet scholars whom the Ministry of Higher Education nominated and whom the universities were willing and able to assist. When the Department’s denials were based on national security grounds that specialist members of the Committee understood and accepted, the denial stood. However, on some other occasions, when Department of Defense explanations were not convincing, the Committee and the universities were able to persuade the Department to admit the Soviet scholar.

The Department, the Committee, and later IREX were in agreement in many instances, that were often reiterated for several consecutive years, in which the Ministry nominated scholars in fields then considered sensitive to the military security of both countries, such as gas dynamics at very high speeds, high energy physics, computer technology, and micro-miniaturization in radio-electronic microwave solid state devices. In the first year the Department issued a visa to a Soviet scholar whom the Committee placed at the Livermore Laboratories at the University of California in Berkeley for work in high energy physics. The following year the Soviet Union denied a visa to a young scholar from that laboratory who wished to work in the Soviet Union in the same field. The Department in an aide-mémoire on August 7, 1961, then offered to accept Soviet nominees in that field if the Ministry would provide assurances of placement for a similar number of our nominees. The Ministry failed to respond, so the Department maintained a denial, with full support from the universities.

In addition, the Department on occasion has denied visas to Soviet scholars when the Ministry has sought to use the academic exchange program to bypass another part of the exchanges agreement that it was refusing to honor. For example, in 1962 the Department denied admission to a Soviet scholar in the field of computer technology after the Soviet Union had refused to fulfill a part of the agreement that provided for the exchange of delegations in that field. Finally, on occasion the Department has denied visas to Soviet nominees whose past activities as intelligence agents or political officers indicated that they were not genuine scholars or that their activities within the United States might extend beyond the academic world.⁷

After the Department had issued a visa, the Committee and the Department only rarely had disagreements concerning placement of Soviet participants on particular campuses. The Department sometimes sought to dissuade the Committee from placing a Soviet scholar in a department where important classified research was under way. The Committee and IREX have both given careful consideration to these protests, and they have on occasion decided then to place the Soviet scholar in a department of equal quality about which the Department of State had no concerns.

Similarly, little friction occurred concerning access of Soviet participants to closed areas and to travel throughout the United States. Since 1937 the Soviet government has closed most of its territory to travel by foreigners, and it has placed very tight restrictions on travel even within the other areas. Its restrictions on Americans, particularly diplomats and journalists, were so severe that the Department of State in 1955 closed (that is, listed areas that Soviets could visit only with the Department’s permission) a number of areas to Soviet officials and journalists and to representatives of other communist regimes as well. On occasion the university most qualified to assist a Soviet nominee was located in a closed area. Ordinarily the Department of State accepted placement in that institution.

The travel of Soviet participants constituted a minor problem because most of our scholars understood and supported the Department’s policies. In 1958 the Department of State waived all travel restrictions for Soviet participants within a twenty-five mile radius of the university in which they were studying. It allowed travel elsewhere after the Soviet scholar had requested permission in writing from the Department four working days before his travel was to begin and described his itinerary, mode of travel, and overnight places of residence. The Department in August 1957 and twice in 1958 offered to reconsider its restrictions if the Soviet government would liberalize its travel controls and the arbitrary manner in which it administered them. On January 6, 1961, the Department again proposed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs mutual abolition or reduction of travel restrictions. On July 6, 1962, the Department eliminated closed areas for tourists and Soviet exchange participants, reduced them for other Soviet citizens, and again offered to end all restrictions if the Soviet Union would reciprocate. No response has been received to this offer, which has been frequently reiterated. Thus, Soviet scholars travel with remarkable freedom and regularity throughout the United States, and they are denied access only to industrial and scientific installations and conferences that the Department of Defense declares sensitive. In fact, a good number of Soviet participants have purchased secondhand automobiles and toured the United States. Thus, American security restrictions have gradually faded and their administration has progressively relaxed—to the consternation of some appalled by the hundreds of Soviet officials and commercial representatives who flood our research and industrial installations in the 1970s.

Our scholars and officials both regret restrictions of any kind on travel by Soviet participants, because lessening the rights of a visitor weakens the rights of all. Moreover, we all regret the impression that limitations produce upon Soviet visitors. On the other hand, the extraordinary control over American travel in the Soviet Union and the inability of the Committee, IREX, and the Department to persuade the Soviet government even to allow easy study-related travel creates support for these limitations. The alumni of the various exchange programs, whom the Soviet government has often prevented from making even short trips essential to their work and for whom all but a tiny fraction of the Soviet Union has been a closed area, generally believe the Department of State should place some restrictions on Soviet travel in this country.

However, some scholars, who are generally scientists not informed concerning Soviet practices or the larger framework of which academic exchanges are a part and who are often personally interested in a particular Soviet scholar, have protested bitterly concerning these simple rules and the occasional denials of travel to security areas. Some, ordinarily with some fanfare, denounce the Department for policies that seem to them “petty and senseless.” One eminent scientist even criticized the Department for denying a Soviet scientist permission to visit sensitive industrial installations, although the scholar from September through March had already completed thirteen trips, one of three weeks’ duration, and had planned another of sixty-nine days’ duration.

Cooperation between the Committee, IREX, and our government is best illustrated by the relationship between officers of our Embassy in Moscow and the hundreds of participants in the exchange programs. Throughout the first year, Committee officers and Department officials agreed that participants should visit the Embassy on their arrival and then avoid it as much as possible and that our officials in the Soviet Union should maintain a similar reserve. Munford instructed the first participants that they rely on the Embassy for no assistance whatsoever. After he visited the Soviet Union in December 1958, all again agreed that the Embassy should play no role.

By the summer of 1959, new policies and new relationships were established. The participants had learned that Soviet officials opened some of their mail. They felt reluctant to mail reports to their professors or private letters through what they came to call the “opened mail.” They also learned that Soviet officials assumed they had close relations with the Embassy and that nothing they could do to establish an aloof or reserved position influenced that view. Finally, when Munford visited the Soviet Union again to negotiate with the Ministry of Higher Education, the Embassy was so helpful in providing transportation, interpreters, typing services, and general assistance that the reserve of Committee officials quickly broke down.

Since the summer of 1959, American scholars have benefited enormously from assistance Embassy officers provide. They make extensive use of the Embassy reading room, where they find current American newspapers, journals, books, records, and films. The snack bar, where they can purchase familiar American food, has become a meeting place. Indeed, some scholars have spent too much of their precious time every day in the snack bar, and have made it a kind of clubhouse. Participants use the Embassy commissary to purchase food, except perishables, and staples difficult to obtain in the Soviet Union. They are allowed to receive mail and to mail private letters, notes, and draft manuscripts through the diplomatic pouch, a practice that all Western governments have followed for their citizenscholars.

The Embassy has also proved enormously helpful in advising and assisting participants during times of emergency—when they need an exit visa quickly or the advice of the Embassy doctor, or when they are provoked or harassed by Soviet agents. Indeed, the marked good sense and generosity with which Embassy officers have assisted American participants constitute a shining page in the history of this program. As one cultural affairs officer wrote, “The Embassy was a firm but kindly uncle who has a genuine interest in their well being, who stands ready or willing to offer assistance if requested, but who would be very pleased to have them solve their own problems and make their own decisions in the Soviet Union independently and intelligently.”

This relationship and life in the Soviet Union have helped American participants acquire a high understanding and appreciation of the qualities of Embassy officials, of the difficulties the Department has in dealing with the Soviet Union, and of the nature of Soviet-American relations. They have considerably affected our scholars’ view of the Soviet system and reduced the likelihood of a gap in understanding and approach between the Department and American specialists on the Soviet Union.

Problems have inevitably occurred, particularly in the 1970s, as American Embassy officials and Leningrad consulate officers have been overwhelmed by the relative flood of businessmen seeking advice and assistance. A few participants have resented occasional advice Embassy officers have given concerning behavior. Some complained about early limitations concerning purchases in the commissary. Others “seemed to feel that the United States established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1933 in order to prepare for and facilitate the student exchange program.” This led one wise officer to suggest that “the participants should simply ask themselves where else in the world an exchange student could expect an official of the United States government to travel several hundred miles [to Leningrad] specifically for the purpose of delivering their mail and a new supply of peanut butter, Kleenex, bouillon cubes and Finnish chocolate.”

The simplest but at the same time the most delicate problem facing institutions of higher learning in their relationships with the federal government is that posed by security and intelligence agencies, which exercise important responsibilities in the Soviet-American contest. The Committee’s administrators and the universities from the beginning were convinced that they must retain their independence and integrity and that the contamination of one scholar or institution by improper relationships with security and intelligence agencies would taint the integrity of all. In addition, they were aware that the personal safety of any American who served one of these agencies would be threatened while he was in the Soviet Union. Finally, scholars and government officials agreed that any relationships between organizations such as the Committee or IREX, or any of their participants, and intelligence and security organizations might destroy the entire exchange program, thereby denying future generations of scholars the opportunity to study in areas of their special interest, substantially reducing our knowledge and understanding of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and, of course, throwing a shadow on the total Soviet-American relationship.

Many American scholars are deeply critical of our security and intelligence organizations, in part because they do not accept their importance in this unsettled world. Moreover, these agencies are relatively new in our life, involve great secrecy, and have on occasion acted most improperly. This attitude became increasingly censorious in the late 1960s and 1970s as views and moods changed, as the nature of the contest between the rival states and systems seemed to shift, and as some of these agencies’ less-scrupulous means of collecting information and influencing affairs in other countries became known.

Relations with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have constituted no problem. Before September 1958, when the first academic exchange program began, the FBI, alerted by the success of men such as Klaus Fuchs and by the skill of Soviet agents in subversion, paid particular attention to the few Soviet scholars who visited our campuses. It carried out obvious surveillance of Soviet employees of the United Nations or representatives in the Soviet Mission to the United Nations who attended classes on the campus of Columbia University. In 1957 it persuaded the newly established Office of East-West Contacts in the Department of State to request that the universities meet the first few East European scholars at the airport, keep a record of their residences, and report their travel plans. The universities rejected these requests emphatically, refused to play any role in surveillance, and urged the FBI to stay off their campuses. These vigorous decisions were immensely important in establishing policies both for the universities and also for the government agencies.

The institutions involved in founding the Inter-University Committee agreed that it should undertake no activities for the FBI, which ended surveillance of Soviet scholars on university campuses in August 1958. To ensure that no connection whatsoever existed with the FBI, the Committee discouraged FBI inquiries concerning either Soviet or American participants or Committee activities. Whenever consultation was necessary because of KGB interventions against American participants in the Soviet Union, or on the two or three occasions when the FBI had evidence that a Soviet participant was not a genuine scholar and was engaged in improper activities, the chairman of the Committee discussed that incident with responsible security or intelligence officers. The Committee’s decision and experience helped persuade IREX to establish a policy under which no member of the staff except the executive director may discuss any IREX matter with either the FBI or the CIA. Both of these organizations have thoroughly understood this position and have sought information only in these restricted circumstances.

The founders of the Committee probably exaggerated the interest that intelligence officers would have in the exchange programs. They believed that the relationships of the Committee and its participants with the CIA would be more difficult to control than with the FBI, largely because the FBI is generally restricted to the United States while the CIA has worldwide responsibilities. Moreover, the CIA was established only in 1947, it grew rapidly, and its procedures and controls were not so clear and tight as those of the Bureau. Above all, it was eager to obtain information concerning the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, about which its knowledge and understanding were much less profound than now.

The Committee’s administrators in the early years understood the desperate need at that time for reliable information concerning the Soviet Union, and they had some knowledge of how intelligence organizations operate because many of them, like me, had served in the Department of State, the Office of Strategic Services, or some intelligence service during World War II or the Korean War. They showed great foresight in prohibiting all contact with all intelligence agencies and in announcing the automatic rejection or recall of any participant who engaged in intelligence activities. Their major concern was that an unwary or foolish young scholar might agree to collect information or to carry out some other function for an intelligence agency while in the Soviet Union.

Throughout their history the Committee and its successor organization have remained exclusively interested in scholarly activities and have had no ties with the CIA or any other intelligence or security organization, except when discussing KGB interventions and activities with responsible intelligence officers. They have received no funds from any such organization, they have provided them no information, and the CIA has had no influence whatsoever on their policies or actions. Because of their determination to prevent any improper contacts, the Committee and IREX have warned every applicant not only to reject any approach that intelligence or other government agencies might make, but to report any incidents that occur. The selection committee interview teams asked each applicant specifically if he had had any government employment, particularly in intelligence, as well as one or two other questions designed to test his integrity and sophistication in handling an attempt by American or Soviet intelligence agencies to engage him in improper activities.

Every participant in the main programs administered by the Committee and IREX signed a pledge that he would undertake no activity other than the scholarly one for which he was selected. From the first year of the program, this pledge read: “Participation in this program carries an obligation for full-time graduate study during the tenure of the participant. This precludes any work for others, with or without pay, except as is called for by virtue of your undertakings with your degree sponsor in your university.” The Committee was so convinced of the centrality of this issue that the universities reviewed it in detail at each of the annual meetings until 1965, when it apparently had faded away.

The senior administrators of our security and intelligence agencies shared our scholars’ concern about the need to protect the integrity of the academic exchange programs. As a matter of policy, the CIA and these other organizations have refrained from trying to use the institutions that administer the exchange programs or the participants themselves for intelligence purposes. These intelligence officers quickly understood the long-term national need for a program which increased the number and quality of those engaged in research concerning the Soviet Union and that an effort to use this program for clandestine activity would jeopardize an essential educational function. Moreover, they appreciated that most young Americans are skeptical of relationships with the government and would not only refuse to serve an intelligence organization but would probably publicize any approach to them. In addition, humanists and social scientists in Soviet dormitories for a semester or an academic year would learn little, if anything, of value to the CIA. Moreover, intelligence officers no doubt considered both hazardous and unproductive the use of unskilled young scholars resident in the Soviet Union for a prolonged period for some kind of subversive activity. They must believe, too, that the KGB would quickly identify any young scholar who unwisely accepted intelligence functions.

The interest of the universities and of the CIA in avoiding contact was sharpened in 1956, the first year in which scholars were sent to the Soviet Union for thirty days as tourists, when a new and ambitious West Coast employee of the CIA sought to persuade one of these scholars to be alert for information of interest to intelligence officers. The scholar not only rejected the suggestion, but he informed the Committee chairman. Wallace arranged that a senior scholar explain to Allen Dulles, then Director of the CIA, the necessity that there be no relationships whatever between the CIA and participants. Dulles quickly agreed that the Agency would under no circumstances seek to use scholars on this program. This agreement was renewed in 1960, and it was reviewed and renewed annually thereafter until the need for it had ended.⁸

The Committee knowingly nominated young men and women who had worked in military intelligence or for the National Security Agency, the CIA, or other such organizations while fulfilling their military obligations. The selection committees judged these applicants as they had any other and concluded after careful review that the service had been open and honorable and that it had ceased. They saw no reason to discriminate against a young man or woman who had served his country creditably, even though they recognized the interpretation Soviet officials, especially the KGB, would inevitably reach.

The Committee and IREX have been so scrupulously careful that no participant has engaged in intelligence activities in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe, so far as anyone engaged in the Committee or IREX has been able to determine. It is reassuring that the Soviet government in its attacks in the press has produced no evidence to demonstrate that the Committee, IREX, or any of their participants did in fact serve any intelligence purpose, or that the CIA sought to use any of the organizations engaged in the academic exchange programs. Moreover, so far as I have been able to determine, the Soviet Union has never complained that any American intelligence organization sought to subvert a Soviet participant.

I did learn years afterwards that the Committee in one of its first years had sent to the Soviet Union a young man who had concealed from the selection committee that he had worked for several years for an intelligence organization. His dishonorable action in suppressing information he knew to be significant casts doubt on his good sense and integrity. The Soviet press later attacked him, suggesting that his trip to the Soviet Union was made “at the instigation of the CIA.”⁹ However, many scholars have been similarly attacked, and we have no evidence he acted improperly while in the Soviet Union. Moreover, he has since traveled to the Soviet Union on a number of occasions and maintains excellent relations with leading Soviet intellectuals. It seems unlikely that he would have returned to the Soviet Union if he were or had been an agent, or that the Soviet government would have admitted him and then allowed him to leave if it believed so.

Annually, through 1965, an applicant each year reported an inquiry by a CIA employee. The Committee after careful study concluded that each incident was the responsibility of an over-eager officer whose function was interviewing Americans who had traveled to parts of the world on which intelligence is limited. These new officers, located far from Washington, were unaware of the agreement made by Dulles and renewed later, and they were often not well informed concerning the Committee. The CIA immediately reprimanded them. So far as I can tell, these incidents ended in 1965.

One incident, an applicant’s report that a fellow graduate student had asked her to serve the CIA while in the Soviet Union, illustrates the fascination with secret intelligence, the Committee’s determination to defend its integrity, and the alacrity with which applicants reported improper approaches by intelligence officers. The Committee, university administrators, the FBI, and the CIA conducted independent inquiries. We all learned that the graduate student had no connection with any government organization and was simply trying to impress the young lady with his importance. I have been told that such incidents are not rare and that self-appointed agents are a common plague for intelligence agencies.

Participants, particularly those who expect to return for further study, face a quandary after they have returned from the Soviet Union. The Committee’s information was not precise or complete, simply because it did not inquire concerning the activities of participants after their return. However, in the early years, when knowledge concerning life in the Soviet Union was less common than now and when judgments concerning insights participants could acquire were exaggerated, intelligence or security officers sought to interview some participants after they had returned. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other national security organizations have also interviewed some of their nationals, presumably concerning political, social, and economic developments and perhaps concerning friends and acquaintances. The Committee informed participants that this might happen and explained the dilemma this raises for some scholars, who are tempted to assist a responsible government agency engaged in an important function but who are determined to preserve their integrity to shield Soviet friends and the program from contamination, and to return to the Soviet Union with their record and conscience absolutely clean. My impression from random, informal conversations with some participants is that such interviews were quite infrequent. Some participants responded, others refused.

Some of the CIA’s other activities that became public knowledge in the mid-1960s, and that then ceased, led the Committee to protest because they threatened the fundamental integrity of all study of the Soviet Union and the relationships on which the Committee’s work was based. Moreover, they strengthened Soviet suspicion of all organizations engaged in cultural exchanges. Thus, in the late 1950s in particular, the CIA persuaded some youngish Americans to travel to the Soviet Union as tourists, to take photographs, and to obtain information in other discreet ways. The Soviet police apprehended some, if not all. Some were students or graduate students, and their activities threw suspicion upon all students and universities, and upon the exchange program.

Some other CIA activities also threatened to poison the academic well. For example, American newspapers disclosed in 1967 that the CIA had covertly subsidized extensive research and publication in the social sciences on a number of campuses, without its role being known in many cases, even to many of the scholars assisted. For example, it provided a substantial part of the financial requirements of the Center of International Studies at MIT from 1951 through 1966. They also revealed that the CIA had provided financial support to the National Student Association, which from 1959 through 1963 exchanged two young scholars with the communist youth organizations of the Soviet Union and of Poland and which in 1966-67 administered a small exchange of graduate students with Poland.

Finally, in the late 1950s and early 1960s the CIA established several temporary phony foundations, such as the Northcraft Educational Fund and the J. N. Kaplan Fund, which made available a small number of grants to “students” for travel in the Soviet Union as tourists. The Program for Inter- cultural Communications, designed to assist young scholars to visit the Soviet Union and converse with Soviet students, was so skillfully established in 1962 that the official organization of scholars interested in Russia and Eastern Europe published its advertisements. It also fooled two senior political science specialists on the Soviet Union, who served on its board of directors. Later, the CIA apparently acquired control of one or two organizations that private individuals began and which foundations then helped by providing scholarly books to Soviet visitors and by mailing additional volumes after they had returned to the Soviet Union. Corrupting a thoroughly good cause with clandestine financing thus enabled the Soviet government, which considers even scholarly books instruments of ideological aggression, to denounce all efforts to improve the flow of information as an intelligence plot.

The history of American academic exchanges with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe helps identify some of the new challenges to the independence and integrity of our educational institutions which Soviet-American relations have created. They also illumine the changing role of our institutions of higher education in international politics and the complexity of the relationships this enlarged function creates for these institutions in their relations with agencies of our government, which are facing problems new to them. Finally, it reveals the ways in which these changes involve our educational institutions in negotiations with the Soviet government and its instruments, which again complicates the relations between American universities and the American government.

¹Charles Frankel, The Neglected Aspect of Foreign Affairs. American Educational and Cultural Policy Abroad (Washington, 1966), 39.

²Richard D. Lambert, Language and Area Studies Review (Philadelphia, 1973), 299-311, 345-49.

³Ivan M. Krasnov, “Izuchenie istorii SSSR v SShA. Nekotorye tsifry i fakty” iThe Study of Soviet History in the USA. Some Figures and Facts], Istoriia SSSR, Number 6 (November-December, 1964), 166-83; Pravda, March 1, 1967.

⁴American purposes in cultural exchanges are perhaps best expressed in the Fulbright-Hays Act: “to strengthen mutual understanding ... ; to strengthen the ties which unite us with other nations by demonstrating the educational and cultural interests, developments, and achievements of the people of the United States and other nations, and the contributions being made toward a peaceful and more fruitful life for people throughout the world; to promote international cooperation for educational and cultural advancement; and thus to assist in the development of friendly, sympathetic, and peaceful relations between the United States and other countries of the world.”

⁵The Office of East-West Contacts, later the Soviet and East European Exchanges Staff, was disbanded in 1974, when its personnel and functions were transferred to the Office of USSR Affairs, which has responsibility for advising the Secretary of State on all our relations with the Soviet Union, and to the desks that deal with each of the East European countries.

⁶IREX in 1975 made travel grants to RAND employees, thus reversing this long-standing policy and revealing how much it has drifted into the government sphere.

⁷Soviet nominations of graduate students and young scholars for 1964-65 represented this problem at its most acute stage. The Department that year rejected sixteen of forty-six Soviet applicants. Six were engaged in nuclear research; the State Committee for Utilization of Atomic Energy should have proposed them to the Atomic Energy Commission, but the Soviet government, which allowed the atomic energy exchange to lapse the following year, apparently wished to bypass that program. Five wished to study advanced computer technology and automatic control systems, very sensitive fields at the time and areas in which the Department had denied opportunities in previous years. Five others were in areas of electronics that were also sensitive and in which the Department had also rejected Soviet applicants in earlier years. Some of us concluded that the Ministry nominated these men with the assumption they would be rejected, but hoping that the Department for one reason or another would accept one or two. The Ministry may also have been creating justification for its rejections of American nominees: it rejected twelve that year.

⁸After 1960 this commitment by the CIA applied only to the exchange of graduate students and young scholars and to the summer program for language teachers. The former of these has always been the principal activity of the Committee and IREX, and it remains the most important single element in the academic exchange program. The CIA has refused to commit itself from contacting senior scholars. However, I have no evidence that the CIA has in fact asked any senior scholar to undertake activities of any kind. Moreover, the reason against the CIA’s asking a senior scholar and against his accepting any assignments are at least as impressive as those against a younger scholar’s doing so. Both the Committee and IREX have obliged all scholars to report any attempt by an intelligence agency to contact them.

⁹Pravda, March 1, 1967.