Selling Americanism, Combatting

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Selling Americanism, Combatting
Anti-Americanism: The Historical
Role of American Foundations
I N D E R J E E T P A R M A R
© Central European University
The views in this report are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for
Policy Studies, Central European University or the Open Society Institute.
CENTER FOR POLICY STUDIES
CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY
Nádor utca 9
H–1051 Budapest, Hungary
cps@ceu.hu
http://www.ceu.hu/cps
Inderjeet Parmar
Department of Government
University of Manchester
Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK
Msrgsip@fs1.ec.man.ac.uk
2004
Typesetting • Tamás Dombos
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CONTENTS
1. Introduction 5
2. Anti-Americanism, Americanism and Un-Americanism 5
3. Introducing the Big Three Foundations: Origins, Aims and World-View 7
4. The Foundation Elite 11
5. Combating the Un-Americans 14
6. Selling Americanism at Home 16
7. Selling Americanism Abroad 18
7.1 BAAS and EAAS Formation and Conferences 18
8. Combating Anti-Americanism Abroad 23
8.1 The Case of Indonesia 23
8.2 The Ford Foundation and the Congress for Cultural Freedom 25
9. Foundations and the Functions of Anti-Americanism: Conclusions 26S E L L I N G A M E R I C A N I S M , C O M B A T T I N G A N T I - A M E R I C A N I S M ??
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1 . I n t roduct ion
Philanthropic foundations played key roles in combating “anti-Americanism” both positively and
negatively. On the positive front, the foundations promoted the most attractive aspects of American
life, values, methods and institutions. More problematically, however, American foundations fought
“anti-Americanism” by challenging those tendencies within the United States and globally that
opposed “Americanism”, for example third world and other leftist-nationalist movements. In both
sets of activities, which took place over several decades of the twentieth-century, the foundations were
acting in accord with the expansionist objectives of the American state and of the broader grouping of
which they were a key part, the east coast foreign policy establishment. In that regard, therefore, the
foundations’ activities may best be understood as a part of the hegemonic, expansionist, imperial
impulse of mid-twentieth century America.1
With large-scale financial resources that were deployed through national and global networks of
influence, their efforts on behalf of their definition of anti-Americanism were highly influential.
Controversially, as this was, and is, an intensely political and ideological activity, it violated the oftpublicized
non-political, impartial, objective and scientific mission of the Ford, Carnegie and
Rockefeller Foundations.2 Their more or less open collaboration with agencies of the American
state—such as the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency—further highlighted their
effective, and enthusiastic, incorporation into the machinery and objectives of successive
administrations.3
This research article is structured so as to demonstrate the political-cultural-ideological roles of
US foundations at home and abroad during the Cold War, with special reference to promoting their
concept of Americanism and combating dissenting forces. First, the article briefly examines the
concept of “anti-Americanism”, which is central to the project of which this article is a small part;
secondly, it provides an introduction to the origins, aims and world-view of the foundations and their
broad ideas and definitions of “Americanism” and “anti-Americanism”, both controversial concepts
subject to great debate within the United States particularly in the ideologically-charged atmosphere
of the twentieth century; thirdly, it considers the foundations’ social composition; fourthly, the paper
considers the numerous and varied activities of the foundations in selling “Americanism” and
combating “anti-Americanism”, inside and outside the USA. Finally, the paper closes with a
discussion of the purposes of “anti-Americanism” in the life of the foundations and how those
purposes and activities may best be theoretically understood.
2 . Anti-Americanism, Ame r i canism and Un-Americanism
Given the focus of the overall research project, it is important at the outset to recognize that anti-
Americanism is a contested concept—there is no consensus on its meaning and usage. As with all
definitions, it really depends on who is doing the defining. The struggle over definition is concerned
with the power to determine how “anti-Americanism” is generally viewed and acted upon; potentially,
1 It cannot be argued, however, that combating anti-Americanism was part of the foundations’ core mission. At root, the
foundations were positive and proactive promoters of “Americanism”—i.e., in encouraging the spread of certain values,
methods and institutions inside and outside the United States.
2 Foundations’ annual reports.
3 Ben Whitaker, The Foundations: an Anatomy of Philanthropy and Society (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974).
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the definition that is favored could be used coercively against those defined as “anti-American”. The
struggle over definition is not without consequences.
Some consider anti-Americanism as a form of racism, “the anti-Semitism of the [European]
intellectuals,” as Andre Glucksmann argued.4 That is, Americans are viewed with “racial” prejudice in
a manner identical to that utilized by anti-Semites in relation to Jews: Americans rule the world,
determine all political and economic outcomes, and promote their own interests at the expense of
everyone else. They are therefore to be openly criticized, vilified, and exposed and, indeed, cast out as
unworthy and illegitimate. The problem with this particular argument, however, is that it is often
made by critical Americans themselves, of their own country (although American radicals usually
permit the possibility of radical power redistributions).5 The venerable “Bard of Baltimore”, H.L.
Mencken, noted, for example, that his fellow-Americans were “the most timorous, sniveling,
poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose steppers ever gathered under one flag in
Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages.”6 Clearly, this is not anti-American prejudice akin to
anti-Semitism, given it comes from one of their own number. Yet such labeling of America’s foreign
critics has great coercive power: it may easily be used to silence legitimate criticism of America’s
domestic conditions or its foreign policies.7
Another way of considering anti-Americanism is as a form of cultural snobbery on the part of
European and other older civilizations, resulting, in part, from the loss of European power after 1945;
that is, European anti-Americanism is just plain resentment and envy.8 Clearly, snobbery and
resentment are a part of the cultural prejudice against American power, but it must also be stressed
that anti-American feeling may be caused by anti-foreigner xenophobia in the United States, which
sees other nations and peoples as inferior and suffering from inexorable decline and decay.9 Relatedly,
some contend that anti-Americanism is an unjust label, applied by American elites and pro-
Americans, for justified criticisms of American corporate, governmental or military behavior abroad.10
Still others suggest that anti-Americanism is a psychological disorder, a rejection of the father/leader by
the son, an infantile response by dysfunctional individuals.11
A more historical-sociological view suggests that what often manifests itself as anti-Americanism
may actually more accurately be termed “anti-modernism”—a rejection, or anxious reaction to, rapid
social, cultural and economic change which frequently occurs when societies permit American
4 Cited in Marcus Cunliffe, “The Anatomy of Anti-Americanism,” in R. Kroes and M. Van Rossem, eds., Anti-Americanism in
Europe (Amsterdam: Free University Press, 1986), p.20.
5 One could look at any number of radical critiques of American power: see for example, Noam Chomsky’s, Necessary Illusions.
Thought Control in Democratic Societies (London: Pluto Press, 1989); and the more “academic” work of C. Wright Mills, the
Power Elite (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), and of G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? (London; Mountain
View, Calif.: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1998); Chalmers Johnson, Blowback. The Costs and Consequence of American Empire
(London: Little, Brown, 2000); see also, Paul Hollander, Anti-Americanism: critiques at home and abroad 1965–1990
(Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
6 From Cunliffe, p.27.
7 For the powers of labeling as part of the process of social stigmatization, see Howard S. Becker, Outsiders (New York: The
Free Press, 1963).
8 Such an understanding of anti-Americanism is frequently used by US leaders. President George W. Bush, for example, often
refers to dissenters against US power as people who “resent our success and hate our values”; in Bush’s, A Charge to Keep
(New York: William Morrow and Co., 1999), p.239.
9 Cunliffe, pp.28–29.
10 David Strauss; cited in Cunliffe, p.20.
11 See for example Brian Appleyard’s scathing attack on critics of US foreign policy in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001, “Why Do They Hate America?” The (London) Sunday Times (News Review), September 23, 2001.
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influence to become pervasive.12 What is generally agreed upon, however, is that the label is a
pejorative one: few appear to wear the badge of anti-Americanism as a positive expression. Anti-
Americanism is, therefore, a multifaceted and complex phenomenon and it is important that its varied
meanings are explicated. Attitudes that may appear, at face-value, to be based on prejudice could
mask a deeper set of critiques about the nature of American society and its foreign and military
policies around the world.
Relatedly, of course, anti-Americanism is a variant of un-Americanism. Domestically, political
forces/movements tend to apply the label “un-American” to their opponents, who are said to be
unpatriotic violators of American traditional values. Just as the 100% Americans—such as the Ku
Klux Klan, American Legion, Daughters of the American Revolution, and the McCarthyites - label
liberal-leftist forces un-American so do, in a subtle way, the Foundation-liberals label their enemies on
the Left and Right as “un-American”. This suggests, of course, a central truth about the United States:
it is in itself an ideology, a set of core values that holds together a heterogeneous, multi-ethnic, multilingual
immigrant population in times characterized by industrialization and urbanization.13 The
society is held together by a set of values –Americanism—that uphold the virtues of private property,
individualism, modernity, equality, freedom, and limited government.14 The precise interpretation of
Americanism at any one period of time, however, is politically contested. While most Americans share
a set of core values, their application in everyday life, politics and government, involves fierce partisan
debate.15 In that contest, the forces that can most effectively wrap up their policies within the context
of core values carry the day. Broadly, practically all political tendencies in the United States justify
their programs within the context of the core values outlined above. The civil rights and women’s
rights movements, opposition to America’s war on Vietnam, and its current military occupation of
Iraq, were or are justified in relation to core values such as freedom, self-determination, and
egalitarianism. Liberal east coast philanthropic foundations, therefore, defined the world through the
lens of their particular definition of Americanism, and it is to these institutions that attention now
turns.
3 . I n t roducing the B i g T h ree Founda t ions : O r i g i n s , Aims and World-View
Philanthropic foundations are key institutions in American society. The largest of them, in the 1940s
to 1960s period—Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller - form the subjects of this paper. They generally
bolster American (right-of-centre) liberal values and institutions, and are intimately connected with
the promotion of modernization and reform. They are key agencies for problem-identification,
solution-finding and relevant change-promotion. They place large, strategically-targeted funds behind
innovative techniques to solve age-old problems both within and without the United States—poverty,
slums, public health, population booms, economic under-development, and so on.16
12 Rolf Weitkunat, “The Philosophical Origins of European anti-Americanism,” Contemporary Review July 2002; Peter W.
Rodman, “The World’s Resentment,” The National Interest, Summer 2000.
13 Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism. A Double-Edged Sword (London: WW Norton, 1997), p.18.
14 Lipset.
15 Michael Foley, American Political Ideas (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991).
16 Robert F. Arnove, ed., Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism. The Foundations at Home and Abroad (Boston: GK Hall,
1980); E.C. Lagemann, The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public Policy (Middletown,
CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989).
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Founded in the main at the turn of the twentieth-century17, the Big Three foundations owe their
origins to massive industrial fortunes of the respective families or “robber barons” as they are
sometimes known.18 Modern American philanthropy is fundamentally a phenomenon of the
Progressive era, a period of rapid social change in American society: mass immigration, urbanization
and industrialization. The United States was being transformed into an industrial, urban, and
ethnically-mixed society, rapidly losing its agricultural, rural, and White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
(WASP) character. Such change frightened American elites who sought to develop institutions
(private and public) that would be able to manage change in order to preserve the capitalistic and
liberal character of American society—especially to avoid social chaos and the threat of left-wing
ideologies, as espoused by the Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World.
Additionally, America’s rapidly expanding population, status in the world economy, and victory
over Spain in the 1898 war, turned east coast elites’ attention to world affairs and a growing awareness
of the need to develop political and executive institutions capable of exercising power in international
relations.19
Progressives proliferated a variety of educational, professional, scientific and reform organizations
dedicated to “public service” and the “national interest”. Such organizations were “para-states”—
private institutions that were simultaneously “state-oriented”. Consequently, they built alliances with
the federal executive branch—the state—and also sought to mobilize public opinion behind their own
world-view. Effectively, they bypassed electoral processes, the main political parties, and legislatures at
state and national levels, because progressives considered them backward, parochial and corrupt.20
The Carnegie Corporation owes its inspiration to Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-American steel
magnate, who dedicated a large part of his wealth to the promotion of education (especially adult
education) and libraries.21 Carnegie made his wealth in the steel industry, establishing the forerunner
corporation of United States Steel, the world’s first billion-dollar company.22 The Carnegie
Corporation was formed in 1911 as a tax-exempt, non-political organization that was prohibited from
“propaganda” and empowered only to provide “information and understanding”.23 It had an
endowment of $135 million. Corporation trustees claimed that they were mere suppliers of
“fertilizer” to the men of ideas—particularly in the universities—rather than an organization that
sought to set the agenda of academic research in the United States.24 At the same time, however,
Corporation trustees were conscious of the extraordinary influence of public opinion in American
politics and, therefore, sought to “educate” public opinion to enable the nation “to play effectively its
role of leadership in world affairs.”25 The Rockefeller Foundation, founded in 1913, aimed to
promote nothing less than the welfare of all mankind, using scientific methods both to distribute its
17 RF in 1901; CC in 1911; FF in 1936, though it only assumed its modern form in 1951 after the deaths of Edsel and Henry
Ford.
18 Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons. The Great American Capitalists 1861–1901 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1962).
19 W.E. Leuchtenberg, “Progressivism and Imperialism,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 39 (1952–53), pp.483–504.
20 Inderjeet Parmar, Think Tanks and Power in Foreign Policy. A Comparative Study of the Council on Foreign Relations and the
Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1939–1945 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), especially chapter 3.
21 Preface, Index to Reports to Officers, Vol. 1 1921–51 (New York: Carnegie Corporation, 1953).
22 Isabel Moore, Andrew Carnegie (New York: Carnegie Corporation, 1995), p.5. Carnegie sold his company for $400 million
to J. Pierpont Morgan in 1901.
23 Inderjeet Parmar, “The Carnegie Corporation and the Mobilisation of Opinion in the United States’ Rise to Globalism,
1939–1945,” Minerva 37 (1999), p.356.
24 Parmar, p.356.
25 Carnegie Corporation Annual Report, 1952, pp.19–20.
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funds and to assist in solving America’s and the world’s most intractable problems.26 The Ford
Foundation, though founded in 1936, began its modern career in 1951, with an endowment—at $3
billion—that dwarfed its older counterparts.27 Despite its later emergence, Ford continued the
tradition of scientific philanthropy pioneered by Rockefeller and Carnegie.
All three foundations advanced a philosophy of human capital development, as Donald Fisher
notes, to explain and justify their activities.28 Briefly, this approach views human beings as educable,
and education as the means of constructing human capital, people with “brains” and potential for
leadership in solving social problems and guiding and assisting American foreign policy.29 The
foundations’ philosophy was generally practical, pragmatic, and utilitarian. They funded research
programs and universities that were empirical in approach and sought to generate knowledge for
practical use by policymakers, urban planners and others. They wanted to “put knowledge to work,”
as one official put it. For example, Rockefeller money re-established the University of Chicago, an
institution renowned for its empirical approach to society and economy. They championed
positivistic social science, the rational study of social problems, in order to apply the benefits of
modern physical science to society and politics, to solve the problems of poverty, crime and the urban
slum.30 The foundations were elitist, convinced of their superior wisdom and their duty to alleviate
society’s ills in the manner they saw fit—through certified experts—without the necessity of
consulting those upon whose behalf they claimed to be acting.31
These are the principles that motivated foundations’ behavior within the United States: elitist,
technocratic, utilitarian, “scientific”. These principles were realized by the investment of large funds
in a range of individuals, universities, think tanks, and policy research institutes from the 1910s
through to the 1960s. Practically every field of human endeavor was covered from the natural sciences
to the dramatic arts, from domestic social problems to the study and understanding of foreign affairs,
both within the USA and overseas.
Since the foundations’ attitude to the social sciences played such an important role in their
overseas efforts in the 1950s and 1960s, it is worth considering what they understood by “social
science”. From the very beginning, Rockefeller philanthropy defined social science largely as
atheoretical, empirical and fact-gathering, aimed at producing “realistic” studies by properly trained
researchers who were close to their subject matter. This, according to foundation officials, was social
science interpreted as “social technology” which could be used to ensure “social control”. Having thus
defined social science (and its ultimate aim of social control)—the study of problems by certified
experts - the foundation sought to disseminate the definition to the rest of the United States (and to
world-wide “centers of excellence”) via the universities. They aimed at building up a network of key
institutions connected to each other through fellowships and scholarships for advanced research and
training either at US universities, such as Chicago, Harvard and Yale, or at other key elements of a
26 Barbara Howe, “The Emergence of Scientific Philanthropy, 1900–1920,” in Arnove, ed., pp.25–54.
27 Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? (London: Granta Books, 1999), p.139.
28 Donald Fisher, “American philanthropy and the social sciences,” in R.F. Arnove, ed., Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism
(Boston: GK Hall, 1980), pp.233–268.
29 Inderjeet Parmar, “American Foundations and the Construction of Global Knowledge Networks,” Global Networks 2 1
(2002), p.16.
30 Arnove.
31 Edward H. Berman, The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy (Albany:
SUNY Press, 1983).
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nascent international network, such as the London School of Economics in Britain.32 Disciplines such
as economics, cultural anthropology, international relations, public administration and sociology were
developed in such directions by the foundations with important effects in academia and public
policy.33
It is clear, therefore, that the overall world outlook of the foundations—as reported in their own
documents and by academic observers—strongly favored a strategy of scientific, technical, economic,
political and administrative modernization at home and abroad, based on a vibrant university sector
that championed utilitarian conceptions of the practical role of knowledge in society. They were elitist
in their attitudes to the “masses” and sought to “educate” them to accept elite-led strategies that their
experts devised for the betterment of the “masses”. They were fiercely independent of the state in their
rhetoric, valuing the age-old voluntarist tradition of private, charitable and other action—public
service—yet completely state-oriented in their mind-set: they saw the problems of the state as their
own, and sought to assist the modernization of the state itself in order to meet the challenges of a
changing social and world order. In foreign affairs, foundation leaders were often referred to as
“liberal internationalists”: this actually meant that they were “nationalist-internationalists”, patriots
who believed that American national interests could best be pursued in the context of a world-system
of international institutions (UN, IMF, World Bank), under the enlightened leadership of the United
States. In that regard, foundation leaders’ critiques of European imperialism were self-serving
rationalizations of America’s growing global leadership ambitions.
Their “Americanism” is, therefore, broadly liberal: patriotic, reformist, modernizing, unafraid of
specific kinds of change but fiercely loyal to the idea of free enterprise capitalism, individual rights,
private property, limited (but effective) government. They were self-consciously “centrist”—saw
themselves as “moderates”, ploughing a line between extremists of both left and right. The latter
forces were seen, in effect, by the foundations as “un-American”—illiberal, statist, anti-individualism,
as either too or anti-intellectual, violent, lawless, opposed to secularism, “ideological”, alien, and
backward. The foundations played key roles in combating and more or less eliminating their main
American enemies, the isolationists, who would have America turn its back on the world and return
to an era of protectionism, insularity, economic nationalism and, the foundations argued, global
insecurity. Isolationists, such as Senators Joseph McCarthy (Wisconsin) and Gerald P. Nye (North
Dakota), often, in turn, labeled foundation leaders as “un-American” and as suffering from
“globalitis”.34
As champions of American liberal values, foundations inevitably promote favorable images of the
United States abroad. American economic methods, business schools, liberal education, political
pluralism, and their underlying values of capitalism, individualism, private property, competition, and
limited government, form the staple of foundation-favored products for export. In some instances the
promotion of America takes the explicit form of financing American Studies programs around the
world, in Germany and Britain, for example. Usually, at least in the early phases—the first 20 years or
32 In fact, Britain was seen a key strategic investment by Rockefeller Foundation, as it was at the centre of a world-wide Empire
that was “the centre of a common culture, political control, financial and commercial activity, educational ideas, social
prestige, and family ties…” From London, it was seen, would spread the philosophy and practices of the Rockefeller
Foundation, in an influential international network (Fisher, 1978, 129).
33 E.C. Lagemann, The Politics of Knowledge (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989).
34 Un-Americanism, the disparagement of which appears to be a monopoly of the American Right, has certain affinities with
anti-Americanism, some of which this papers seeks to explicate. Historically, it is the Right which has more readily wrapped
itself in the US flag—100% Americanism—and branded their opponents—liberals, socialists and others—as un-American.
On the other hand, both liberals and conservatives are equally prone to applying the anti-American label to overseas critics of
US policies, institutions and culture.
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so—those programs focused on American history and institutions and literature, rather than the more
critically-oriented social sciences. More frequently, however, selling Americanism takes the form of
promoting programs of study, teaching, research and institution-building whose very
ideology/philosophy and life-force is Americanism, even though their promotion takes place under the
banner of “neutral” and “impartial”, “scientific” and “objective”, “development aid” and/or
“development strategies”.
With the reality, rather than the specter that Karl Marx had noted a century earlier, of rising
communist power in the world, post-1945 foundation leaders developed a crisis mentality mirroring
that which was being constructed within the American state and broader society. This is unsurprising
since there was much overlap and circulation of state and foundation personnel. With the developing
“communist threat” or threat-perception, foundation leaders began increasingly to see the world in
stark terms: America’s friends and foes, the forces of freedom versus the “evil empire” or the “slave
state”, as the infamous NSC-68 (National Security Council paper 68) put it in April 1950.35
Foundation leaders increasingly defined the world as either for or against the United States, for or
against freedom. They saw “anti-Americanism” as a rising global force, a fundamental part of the
communist threat or, at the very least, its fellow-traveler.36 While the more sophisticated among them
may have promoted a more nuanced analysis of communism, foundation trustees, as a whole, felt the
need to act to save “civilization” itself from the “savage red hordes” in Greece, Italy, Indonesia, Korea,
China and Iran, on the African continent and in India, and in Europe too. Criticisms of American
society, government or culture, within the mindset of the national security state, was seen as “anti-
American”.
4 . The Foundation E l i t e
This section of the article considers the social, economic and governmental composition of the three
major foundations in the Cold War—Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller—through analyzing the social,
educational, corporate, governmental, political, religious and other backgrounds of their boards of
trustees and leading permanent officials. It is argued that the composition of their leaders tells us a
great deal about the character of the organization, including its links with the wider society, especially
key sections of the American elite. Social background is also considered by political sociologists to be a
significant predictor of political attitudes and outlook, a key factor in examining the behavior of the
foundations.37 In addition, social background analysis tells us how representative of American society
as a whole the organs of philanthropy are at any one time.
According to Waldemar Nielsen, the Ford Foundation’s staff director, “…foundations are at or
near the center of gravity of the American Establishment. By themselves and also by their positions in
an intricate web of powerful men and institutions, they have a significance even larger than their huge
resources might suggest.”38 Neo-Gramscian scholar of US foundations, Robert F. Arnove, argues that
the foundations represent a class-divided and elitist society as their trustees are unregulated,
unaccountable and unrepresentative: in particular, Ford and Rockefeller foundations are
35 Melvin P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).
36 Paul Hollander, Anti-Americanism. Critiques at Home and Abroad 1965–1990 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1992), p.ix.
37 Thomas R. Dye, Who’s Running America? (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1979).
38 Waldemar A. Nielsen, The Big Foundations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), p.ix. Throughout his tenure at
Ford, Saunders claims that Nielsen was a CIA agent; Saunders, p.143.
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concentrations of wealth and power that “have a corrosive influence on a democratic society”.39
Berman argues that foundation trustees are relatively homogeneous in social origins, educational
background, and ideological outlook, and that they are a self-perpetuating elite.40 Below are examined
some statistics that demonstrate that foundation trustees are indeed recruited from sections of the
American east coast elite and are also intimately interconnected with other influential institutions—
large corporations, prestigious universities, the American state, and so on. This suggests that far from
being a part of a pluralistic system of interest group competition and independence from the state, the
foundations can justifiably be classified as part of the power elite of the United States.
According to Ben Whitaker’s analysis, over 50% of trustees from the thirteen largest foundations
were educated at Harvard, Princeton or Yale. Racially and ethnically, they were almost all white, aged
between 55 and 65 years, and members of either the Episcopalian or Presbyterian denominations.41
William H. Whyte found that “the median trustee … is a banker or a corporation president.”42 John
J. McCloy, President/Chairman of the Ford Foundation (1953-1965), indicated the mind-set of
trustees when they search for board new members: they seek out other men such as themselves,
though with the rationalization that they represent different perspectives. On that basis, McCloy
suggests possible new trustees, including J. Irwin Miller (head of Cummins Engines, a Fortune 500
corporation, and director of numerous other firms, banks and insurance companies, and trustee of
Yale University), and Stephen Bechtel (head of the world’s largest construction corporation with
global contracts with the US Defense Department). These are the “men from all walks of life” that
McCloy felt would broaden the trustees’ base of the Ford Foundation.43
Ironically, Dean Rusk who, as president of the Rockefeller Foundation, was forced to appear
before Congress to answer charges of foundations’ un-Americanism in the 1950s, appears here as a
witness further suggesting the elitist character of US philanthropy’s leadership. While he generally
denied that the foundations belonged to a monolithic establishment—especially in rejecting the
claims of an article entitled “The Power of the Establishment”, by Louis J. Halle—in his testimony
before Congress he noted the following, as evidence of the foundations’ respectable, patriotic
credentials: Rockefeller trustees have included “bankers and corporation executives, officers of leading
universities, eminent figures in medicine and the law, Nobel Prize winners, outstanding newspaper
publishers, occupants of high governmental office.”44
Mary Anna Culleton Colwell’s analysis of the boards of trustees of the foundations illustrates
further sources of unity among their leading figures. She examined the frequency of upper-class social
club membership among foundation trustees, finding that 33% have such memberships listed in
Who’s Who (which is based entirely on self-reported information and, therefore, understates the
position). Even more significantly, one-third of the trustees of Carnegie, Russell Sage, and Rockefeller
Foundations were members of the same New York City club, the Century Association. Colwell’s
39 Arnove, p.1.
40 Berman, p.32.
41 Ben Whitaker: The Philanthropoids. Foundations and Society (New York: William Morrow, 1974), p.90.
42 William H. Whyte, Jr., “What Are the Foundations Up to?” Fortune 52 (October 1955), p.260.
43 Berman, p.33.
44 Statement by Dean Rusk on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation and General Education Board to the Special Committee on
Foundations, p.45; Rusk Collection, Box 4, folder 53; Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, New York; see also, Rusk’s
comments on Halle’s article: letter, Rusk to Halle, May 16 1960; Rusk Collection, Box 1, folder 4; Louis J. Halle, “The
Power of the Establishment,” The Virginia Quarterly Review 36 2, Spring 1960, pp.195–204. In a rare instance of selfcriticism,
a RF official wrote to Rusk that, although Halle “exaggerates the ability of ‘the establishment’ to suppress a good
idea… it is clearly easier to hold down something new in the social sciences and humanities than it is in the sciences where
new facts or findings can be made to speak for themselves…”; internal memo, CWC to Rusk, May 27, 1960.
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research reveals that the Century was a prime location for informally discussing or conducting the
nation’s business—political and otherwise.45
Colwell also reports that between 40 to 47% of Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie trustees held high
positions within the federal government, including cabinet secretaries, assistant secretaries,
ambassadorships, presidential commissions, and agency heads. This clearly represents further
opportunities for the formation of a more cohesive world-view and the construction of ideological
and political consensus, regardless of the political coloration of the administration.46 Bipartisanship is
indeed one of the hallmarks of “establishment”, according to Godfrey Hodgson, an historian who for
many decades has charted its rise and demise.47
As foundations generally do not administer programs themselves, their overlaps and
interconnections with the policy and research organizations they fund become highly significant.
Colwell examined such interconnections and reports that the foundations were bound to their
recipients through cross-membership of boards of directors. One organization that is most thoroughly
interconnected with the Big Three foundations is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a think
tank that sits right at the very heart of the east coast foreign policy establishment. In 1961, the CFR
received 25% of its annual income from the big three foundations. At the same time, on the CFR’s
membership rolls were 10 of the 14 Carnegie, 10 of fifteen Ford, and 12 of 20 Rockefeller, trustees.
In 1964, John J. McCloy was simultaneously chairman of the CFR, of the Ford Foundation, trustee
of the Rockefeller Foundation, and chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank.48
The CFR was also interlocked with serving government officials, such as Allen W. Dulles,
director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1960s, and the secretary of the Air Force,
Thomas K. Finletter.49 Shoup and Minter in their close study of the CFR, show that from 1945 to
1972, 45% of top foreign policy officials were Council members. As Council member, Theodore
White noted, the CFR has been “for a generation, under Republican and Democratic administrations
alike.. the chief recruiting ground for Cabinet-level officials in Washington.”50 The boundaries
between the foundations, the CFR, and the foreign policy apparatus are blurred and vague: there is
indeed a “revolving door” between key elements of the establishment in the United States.
The social composition and world-view of the foundations, as outlined above, suggests something
of the flavor of their domestic and foreign activities and programs. The trustees were, and saw
themselves, as modernizing elites, armed with expert knowledge and understanding of American
society and the world and a sense of their destiny, in alliance with the rest of the establishment and
the American state, to lead a movement for reform and development. The promotion of their vision
of “Americanism” was, of course, central to their goals and strategies, as was the marginalization
and/or defeat of its antitheses: domestic “un-Americanism”, and foreign “anti-Americanism”. It is to
those activities that the following sections of the article are devoted.
45 Mary Anna Culleton Colwell, “The Foundation Connection: Links Among Foundations and Recipient Organizations,” in
Arnove, ed., pp. 413–452.
46 Colwell, pp.428–429.
47 Godfrey Hodgson, “The Establishment,” Foreign Policy 9 (1972–73), pp.3–40.
48 Berman, p.36.
49 Berman, p.36.
50 Lawrence Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust. The Council on Foreign Relations and US Foreign Policy (New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1977), p.59.
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5 . Comba t ing the Un-Amer i can s
Combating the un-Americans on the left and right of the American political spectrum was, in an
important sense, quite straight-forward: just deprive their organizations of funds, while funding their
opponents—in the universities—who were building the knowledge and training base for modernizing
and globalizing US foreign policy.51 As noted earlier in this article, the foundations invested millions
of dollars in establishing area studies programs at elite universities to spread the globalist message and
to train a new generation of students in world leadership. Very occasionally, however, the recording of
a conscious decision of a foundation not to fund a project illuminates their underlying assumption
about what is and is not acceptable. The case of Columbia University sociologist, Robert S. Lynd, is
instructive and involves the Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Lynd proposed a large-scale survey to consider ways of mobilizing for war—in 1940- that would
protect civil liberties, preserve democratic principles and “the objectives of a welfare democracy,”
including the rights of trades unions. His study—“A Proposed Study of the Potentialities of
Democratic Processes in a Period of Mobilization,” was projected to take place over 15 months and
cost $233,000.52 At heart, Lynd’s proposal was based on a fear that, in the absence of careful analysis
of the hysterical responses to German-Americans during World War I, history would repeat itself, and
the US society would become, once again, a pale imitation of a militaristic, bellicose enemy. Lynd
wanted to study people’s living conditions and their basic physical and informational needs as a
precursor to remedial state policies such that a war against fascism would strengthen, rather than
negate, democracy.
Carnegie officials rejected the proposal, despite the fact that 21 of the 26 anonymous referees
approved the project, including Charles Beard. The critics, however, carried the day, arguing that
Lynd’s was a “do-gooders” proposal and that it had missed the basic point of war preparations: to
prepare people “to kill other people”. Lynd’s “sociological fuddy-duddy” was irrelevant to that aim
and had, for that and other reasons, reached the “nadir of stupidity”. In short, Lynd’s proposal was
irrelevant, probably pro-communist as it had only considered Nazism as a threat to US democracy,
and plain stupid.53 The Rockefeller Foundation also rejected Lynd’s project on the grounds that it was
not a genuine research project and was, in ant case not “really doable (sic)”. Rockefeller officials urged
Lynd to write a series of magazine article instead of “an elaborate research project.”54
Another example of the foundations’ underlying conception of Americanism and un-
Americanism is provide by evidence of their racial assumptions. This involves the racist exclusion of
blacks, except Ralph Bunche, from membership of foundation boards, the prejudicial treatment of
African-American scholars, under-funding of black universities’ research and teaching programs,55 and
the kinds of vocational, as opposed to academic, education for black southerners favored by
51 Inderjeet Parmar, “Engineering consent: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the mobilization of American
public opinion, 1939–1945,” Review of International Studies 26 (2000), pp.35–48. This article shows the impact of
philanthropy of the development of the international relations discipline in US colleges and universities, a powerful
movement that gradually undermined isolationist thought.
52 Carnegie Corporation, Grant Files, 3 September 1940, Box 18; Rare Books and Manuscript Collection, Columbia
University, New York.
53 Report by Howard J. Savage, 13 November 1940, Box 18, Carnegie Corporation grant files.
54 Cited in Inderjeet Parmar, “ ‘To Relate Knowledge and Action’: The Impact of the Rockefeller Foundation on Foreign
Policy Thinking During America’s Rise to Globalism, 1939–1945,” Minerva 40 (2002), p.259.
55 Note the virtual exclusion of Howard University African studies programs from Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie support,
while simultaneously building African Studies at Harvard; Ford Foundation archives on African Studies, New York.
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foundations, so as not to destabilize the racially-segregated social order.56 Two of these instances of a
long-term attitude towards American blacks are outlined below.
In 1972, Mark Etheridge, a liberal southerner and Ford Foundation trustee, was asked why there
no blacks on Ford’s board. He replied that the issue had come up for discussion time and again but
that no decision was reached because trustees could not decide which black to appoint—the ones
associated with the NAACP were considered by trustees to be too radical while those associated with
Urban League were considered to be too moderate. So they did nothing.57
An additional example of the foundations’ underlying racialized “Americanism” is provided by
their attitude to black education in the US south. The educational policies that the foundations
favored accepted and did not challenge racial segregation; rather they perpetuated it. The most glaring
example of this was in the Jeanes project which, though criticized by intellectuals like WEB Du Bois,
was funded by the General Education Board (GEB)—a Rockefeller-funded and coordinated
philanthropy—and by the Carnegie Corporation. The GEB invested over $100 million in southern
black education, while CC invested around $1.7 million, from the end of the nineteenth-century to
the mid-1930s.58 The philanthropists involved, according to Anderson, “were more concerned with
black education as a means to economic efficiency and political stability than with equal rights for
southern blacks.” They were vitally interested in reconstructing the southern economy—organizing
the industrial market and increasing agricultural output; they took for granted that black education
would develop within a white-dominated southern power structure. As stated by Robert C. Ogden of
the GEB, the foundations mainly wanted to “ ‘attach the Negro to the soil and prevent his exodus to
the city…[because] .. the prosperity of the South depend[s] upon the productive power of the black
man.’”59 If that could be ensured, it was claimed, northern US investment in the south would follow.
Black education, therefore, was developed to produce such outcomes, despite liberal northern
philanthropy’s stated commitment to the American creed of equality.
In effect, in depriving Robert Lynd of funds for his pro-democratic project and by promoting an
inferior education for blacks, the foundations betrayed their underlying assumptions as to the
character of their Americanism and what they defined as beyond the American creed. Welfare
democracy and racial equality—both left- and center-left concerns—fell outside foundations’
Americanism. The foundations’ attitude towards racial equality does not appear to square with the
emerging view of several scholars who argue that America’s rise to globalism made US policymakers
highly sensitive to domestic racial segregation, harming the nation’s image in the newly-independent
Asian and African states, and at the United Nations.60
56 E.H. Berman, “Educational Colonialism in Africa: The Role of American Foundations, 1910–1945,” in Arnove, ed.,
pp.179–201.
57 Interview with Mark F. Ethridge For the Ford Foundation Oral History Project, May 8 1972, p.11.This do-nothing attitude
was also manifested in the foundations’ total failure to support the black civil rights’ movement of the 1950s and 1960s; see
R. Magat, The Ford Foundation at Work (New York: Plenum Press, 1979).
58 James D. Anderson, “Philanthropic Control over Private Black Higher Education,” in Arnove, ed., pp.147–177; P.
Rosenfeld, C. Sprague and H. McKay, “Ethical Dimensions of International Grantmaking: Drawing the Line in a Borderless
World,” (2004) unpublished paper in the author’s possession.
59 Ogden cited by Anderson in Arnove, p.154.
60 Azza S. Layton, International Politics and Civil Rights Policies in the United States, 1941–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000); Inderjeet Parmar, “ ‘…another group that needs more cultivation’: The Council on Foreign
Relations and the mobilization of Black Americans for interventionism, 1939–1941,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 27 5
(September 2004), pp.710–731.
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6 . S e l l i ng Americanism at Home
This section of the article considers some of the ways in which the foundations—specifically the
Carnegie Corporation - promoted American Studies at home, in the context of America’s rise to
globalism after 1945 and its increasingly conflictual relationship with the Soviet bloc. The evidence—
outlined below—shows how deep were the concerns of foundation officials and trustees regarding the
nature of the cultural, ideological and value-based cold war. They were particularly concerned that
America’s young people—students—appeared to suffer from a lack of conviction in America’s
heritage, in what America stood for, and how that might hinder the rising superpower in aggressively
facing down the challenges of European and third world nationalist dissent, and of Soviet power.
The Carnegie Corporation actively promoted the teaching and study of “American Civilization”
and values in colleges and universities across the country. A Corporation report of 1950, written by
vice-president John Gardner, noted that students were being educated in “a moral vacuum” in which
values were being learned in rote fashion, lacking the conviction needed to engage in superpower
competition.61 Gardner aimed to use Carnegie funds to explore how college students could be made
more conscious of their national values as they “may have to defend [them] tenaciously…. [due to
future] ideological, economic, and perhaps military conflict…. Wisdom of policy, economic vigor,
and military might can carry us far, but no one doubts that in the ultimate test we shall have to seek
our strength in the hearts and minds of the American people.”62 One of the problems Gardner noted
was the tendency in different aspects of American education to promote over-rationalist, and
positivistic, ways of understanding values; as something to be learned, through “value-neutrality”, and
not lived. In fact, “non-rational considerations are much closer to the heart of the issue” than rational,
reasoned and knowledge-based ones.63 In this regard, Gardner appears to have been unaware that the
Carnegie Corporation, and the other foundations, had been championing the virtues of positivistic
social science methods for decades.
In his careful analysis, Gardner conceded that the promotion of a narrow idea of America would
be dangerous and play into the hands of the McCarthyites. “We must insist that the term
‘Americanism’ does not achieve its greatest utility as a cloak’s for one’s own prejudices. We must
assert that irresponsible [i.e., McCarthyite] use of the term ‘un-American’ is intolerable” as it divides
Americans and “leaves them confused as to the identity of their true enemies.” Controversially,
Gardner argued that he was quite convinced that “there are indeed ideologies which Americans cannot
tolerate, and that there are political devices and points of view to which Americans must declare
themselves eternally hostile.”64 (Emphasis added). The only criticism Gardner received for this
conclusion, from the head of a “liberal” philanthropic organization, was from the pre-eminent student
of attitude-formation, Gordon W. Allport, for whom “the red flag of danger” went up; he enquired
whether there really are “thoughts that we can’t have as Americans?” Even Allport only suggested that
Gardner alter the wording, however, conceding that Gardner was “on the side of the angels.”65 In
response, Gardner conceded the point and decided to reformulate his conclusion thus: “ ‘There are
indeed ideologies which are incompatible with the system of values we would like to think of as
61 John W. Gardner, “Education in Values for Americans,” part 1, in CC Grant Files, “American Values 1948–50”, April 24
1950; in Box 40, folder 14, p.1. CC archives are located at the Butler Library, Columbia University, New York.
62 Gardner, part 2, p.1; in Box 40, folder 14.
63 Gardner, part 2, pp.3–4.
64 Gardner, part 2, p.9.
65 Letter, Gordon W. Allport to John Gardner, September 28, 1948; Box 40, folder 14.
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American’”. Gardner claimed that he certainly had not meant that America “ ‘go in for some kind of
thought control’”66, yet the implication is quite clear and was even to a “friend” of the Corporation.
Gardner’s report ended by calling for a renewal in America of the belief that, despite the
complexities of the large-scale forces that seem to determine the lives of individuals, people could take
control of their own destinies: “those societies which have in fact influenced or changed the course of
history have been supported by the conviction that their own efforts were effective in bringing about a
scheme of things in which they believed.”67 Carnegie wanted to ensure that, in America’s rise to global
economic power and military reach, it would help in any way it could.
Between 1949 and 1958, the Corporation invested over $900,000 in developing American
Studies in the United States, including courses in American Civilization and a vibrant American
Studies Association.68 The purpose was simple: to teach Americans to be more self-conscious, to
“Know thyself”, to understand their past achievements and to glory in them and, most importantly,
to be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in their defense. This was, it was hoped, to be achieved
by sponsoring the writing of popularly-accessible histories of the United States by distinguished
historians; the program was decidedly not for the promotion of “fundamental historical research” or
for a broader understanding of the “mysteries of historical scholarship”. Rather, it “will always be to
illuminate one or other facet of American Civilization.”69 At all times, however, it was the
contribution to meeting the “present historical crisis” by the study and teaching of American Studies
that was the litmus test for funding by the Carnegie Corporation.70 After a decade of the Cold War,
the Corporation concluded that its almost $1 million investment had created some excellent
American Studies programs at Brown University, Barnard College, University of Pennsylvania and
Colgate, as well supporting pre-existing high quality programs at Amherst and Princeton. Those
universities also featured strong student government and other voluntary activities, bringing to life the
civic virtues associated with Americanism and their educational curriculum.71
The Carnegie Corporation, therefore, was fighting un-Americanism at home as an effective part
of the Truman anti-communist campaign; the fears of disloyalty in the nation and federal government
had their counterpart in the academy with concern over the mental and emotional fitness of
America’s youth to take up the struggle against enemies, domestic and foreign.72 Far from being above
the fray of ideological and political turmoil, the Carnegie Corporation and the other foundations were
completely immersed in the principal currents of cold war politics.
This was further demonstrated once the McCarthyites called the foundations to answer charges of
un-Americanism to various congressional committees. Their self-defense arguments are instructive:
they denied being anti-American, un-American or pro-Marxist, stating categorically that they never
awarded grants to known communists. That is, they were of the same anti-communist mindset as
most of America’s political elite in the 1950s—they just used more subtle methods. Dean Rusk,
president of the Rockefeller Foundation, stated to congressional committees on un-American
activities that, “Our foundations refrain as a matter of policy from making grants to known
66 Letter, Gardner to Allport, October 19 1948; Box 40, folder 14.
67 Gardner, part 2, p.14.
68 CC memorandum, “Grants for American Studies,” September 1958; Box 411, folder 11.
69 CC, “A Program of Research Grants for Historical Studies in the Field of American Civilization”, 5 January 1949
70 John W, Gardner, “Preliminary Notes for a Survey of Programs in American Studies,” ca. 1948; CC Grant Files, Box 40,
folder 8.
71 CC memorandum, “Grants for American Studies, “ September 1958; Box 411, folder 11.
72 Athan G. Theoharis, Seeds of Repression (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971).
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Communists,” for two reasons. First, grants to communists would violate “the clearly expressed public
policies of the United States,” and because of “the increasing assaults by Communism upon science
and scholarship…”73 These remarks were made without a hint of self-doubt or irony. In relation to
ex-communists—or “repentant Communists”, as Rusk put it—the foundations were more
understanding though, naturally, “One questions whether there is particularly fertile ground for
foundation aid among those who have already demonstrated political naïveté, and have shown a
willingness to submit their minds and spirits to totalitarian discipline.” To err is human, but to
forgive was against foundation policy. Rusk also denied that any of the Rockefeller Foundation’s
activities could be described as “political” or as “propaganda”.74 In denying their support for left-wing
projects and scholars, the foundations were reaffirming their ideological and political commitments to
Americanism, the US government and free enterprise capitalism—all objectively considered to be
“good things”. Valuable enough, of course, as to be worthy of export.
7 . S e l l i ng Americanism Abroad
The major American philanthropies were always international in their orientation and internationalist
by conviction. Not only did this entail general sponsorship of world-wide educational and research
programs, it also featured a number of overt attempts to promote the study and appreciation of the
United States by the peoples of the world. Two ways that such appreciation was promoted are briefly
explored below:
7.1 BAAS and EAAS Formation and Conferences
The relationship between Britain and the United States has often been described as “special”,
especially due to cooperation during the Second World War but also because of shared cultural,
linguistic, and political traditions. In addition, Britain played a key role in American cold war global
strategy: she had a vast, though declining, empire replete with military, naval and air bases that the
United States did not, was a willing ally in the struggle against communism/nationalism, and could
deploy military forces with some rapidity. The cementing of this relationship—at the level of cultural
and educational exchange—was established US policy. Britain was, and is, a strategic ally. The
foundations were keen, as part of that overall approach, to make their contribution to strengthening
Anglo-American relations. This was particularly the case in the period up to and following the Suez
crisis of 1956, which starkly revealed the global power shifts away from European empires and
towards the United States that had occurred, causing concomitant alarm among champions of the
‘special relationship’.75
The Rockefeller Foundation provided essential funding for the initial conferences that eventually
evolved into the British Association for American Studies. In developing the initial meetings and
BAAS, the Rockefeller Foundation was acting in concert with agencies of the American state,
specifically the Fulbright Commission, the US Information Agency, and the office of the Cultural
Attaché at the American Embassy in London. That is, the American Studies projects in Britain—at
Oxford and Cambridge, Nottingham and Manchester, and elsewhere—were considered significant
73 Statement by Dean Rusk on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation and the General Education Board to the Special Committee on
Foundations, p.39; Rusk Collection, Box 4, Folder 53; Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, New York.
74 Statement by Dean Rusk, pp.43–44.
75 R. Pells, Not Like Us (New York: Basic Books, 1997).
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elements of American cultural policy. Indeed, Richard P. Taylor, of the Fulbright Commission, noted
that the latter and the Foundation were BAAS’ “twin godfather[s]”, so vital had their contribution
been to its formation and growth.76 According to Frank Thistlethwaite of St John’s College,
Cambridge, the initiative for the initial meetings had been Taylor’s.77
The origins of BAAS lie in a series of four Fulbright- and Rockefeller-funded “missionary
conferences” from 1952-1955 which brought together—for up to five weeks - a number of
academics, school-teachers and others interested in the United States.78 The conferences featured
numerous prominent American speakers, including Barry Bingham, publisher-editor of the Louisville
Courier-Journal, an ardent Anglo-phile, supporter of US intervention into World War II and leading
member of the Fight For Freedom, a hawkish pro-war organization led by the Council on Foreign
Relations.79 Bingham, who resided in halls during the Conference, “became the chief man on the
American side; astonishingly kind and cooperative; completely ungrand…” The most prominent
academic, at the same 1955 conference, was Richard Hofstadter who was reported to have been “the
most distinguished of the [American] group intellectually”. Other prominent American academics
included C. Van Woodward, William T.R. Fox, and Alfred Kazin.80
The aims of the Fulbright Conferences were several: to “counteract the lack of information” in
Britain regarding the United States, and “to correct misinformation and misunderstanding”; bring
together British and American scholars; promote the teaching of American subjects in British schools
and universities; and to create a community of independent scholars “spontaneously organizing
themselves into a corpus capable of carrying on the work of these conferences, as a response to an
indigenous demand rather than through super-imposition, e.g. the window-dressing of support from
some American foundation”! (Emphasis added). “Unpacking” that set of aims is beyond the scope of
this article but it is clear that neither Fulbright nor Rockefeller were really interested in a completely
independent or spontaneously established association—the supplying of “information” and the
correcting of “misinformation” are loaded with unquestioned assumptions and meanings: as a
“patriotic” organization that opposed the left inside and outside the United States, Rockefeller was
not amenable, especially in the McCarthy era, to funding any association that might challenge the
status and role in the world of the USA. The state-controlled Fulbright Commission was
institutionally bound to anti-communism, broadly defined as it was in the 1950s. The original
conferences, therefore, were part of a plan to promote pro-American and to combat anti-American
thinking in the world.81 Indeed, the original recommendation for the Fulbright Conferences came
76 Letter, Richard P. Jackson to E.F. D’Arms (Associate Director, Division of Humanities, Rockefeller Foundation), July 13
1955; Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG 1.2 series 401R, Box 52, folder 454; Tarrytown, New York. Jackson was
reporting to the Foundation on a recent meeting to draw up a BAAS constitution, at University College, Oxford, July 12
1955.
77 Letter, Frank Thistlethwaite to EF D’Arms (RF), 10 August 1955; RFA, RG 1.2 Series 401 R, Box 52, folder 454.
78 The conferences were: 1952, St. John’s College, Cambridge; 1953, University and Magdalen Colleges, Oxford; 1954,
Peterhouse, Cambridge; and 1955, University College, Cambridge; Final Report: The American Studies Conferences in the
United Kingdom 1952–1955; RFA, RG1.2 series 401R, Box 76, folder 646.
79 Mark Lincoln Chadwin, The Hawks of World War II (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1968). In 1957, Herbert Agar, another war
hawk and leader of the Fight For Freedom, joined BAAS’ Advisory Council; BAAS, Bulletin No.4, April 1957; RFA, RG1.2
series 401R, Box 74, folder 644.
80 Fulbright Commission, Final Report: The American Studies Conferences in the United Kingdom 1952–1955, p.7; RFA, RG1.2
series 401R, Box 74, folder 646.
81 In the extreme case of Germany after 1945, American Studies was promoted by the Cultural Officers of the US Military
Government and High Commission. Professor John A. Hawgood reports that much of the German interest in America in
the “difficult years 1945–48 tended to follow the dollar…. All sorts of people in Germany discovered a hitherto unsuspected
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from the State Department,82 impressed as they were by the results of the Salzburg seminar, an
attempt subtly to woo European and other elites during the Cold War.
The effects of the conferences were generally viewed by the Fulbright Commission to have been
very positive. Their Final Report presents excerpts of letters from numerous delegates from schools
and colleges across Britain. While many just enjoyed the esprit de corps and the social aspects of the
gatherings, others saw many other benefits. A headmaster from Wales noted that he had a vastly
“increased understanding of the American people,” from attending. A history master, David Kintoul,
from Fettes College, Edinburgh, the current (1997-) British Prime Minister, Tony Blair’s alma mater,
was most impressed and was “eager to continue the studies well begun.” There were also a number of
comments that would have warmed hearts in the State Department: an English teacher from
Penzance felt the conference was vital in building a “proper bond for [Anglo-American] security in
the future.” A teacher from Dorchester thought that “I cannot imagine any better way (short of
shipping large numbers of us over to the States) of promoting Anglo-American relations”. Finally, a
history teacher from West Lothian wrote that “The professors enabled me to acquire a more soundlybased
and sympathetic understanding of the development of the United States and of its present
position in world affairs.”83
Inspired by the success of the conferences, Thistlethwaite and a number of other prominent
Americanists—such as HC Allen, Marcus Cunliffe, Dennis Welland, Max Beloff, William Brock, and
Herbert Nicholas84—considered ways of creating a permanent academic association to promote the
study of the United States in British universities, hold an annual conference, produce an index of
American research materials available in Britain, and to launch their own academic journal. Its
proposed program required further financial aid which the founders hoped would be supplied by the
Rockefeller Foundation.85 A memorandum to that effect, by the Fulbright Commission’s Richard
Taylor, produced in 1955, hoped that such ideas would “spark your [British Americanists’]
imagination….”.Taylor indicated in this memorandum that “Assurances have been received from at
least one American Foundation that it would be interested in assisting financially such an Association
or Council. It is imperative, if advantage is to be taken of this concrete interest, that such an
Association should be formed forthwith with the appropriate active incorporation, officers both
honorary and at the working level…”86 Taylor was the Executive Secretary of the ad hoc committee of
what became BAAS, an officer of the Fulbright Commission, an instrument of the American state,
and a close confidant of the Rockefeller Foundation. His “advice” and suggestions, therefore, carried
great weight in the formative stages of BAAS and in extending American plans to promote the study
and understanding of the United States in Britain.87 BAAS was duly formed on May 12 1955.88
interest in the history and culture of the United States…”; BAAS Bulletin No.6, February 1958, p.14; RFA, RG1.2 series
401R, Box 74, folder 645.
82 Fulbright Commission, Final Report: The American Studies Conferences in the UK 1952–1955, p.10; RFA, RG1.2 series
401R, Box 74, folder 646.
83 Fulbright Commission, Final Report.
84 Pells argues that such individuals were attracted to American Studies, and identification with an egalitarian vision of America,
on the basis of their non-establishment social origins—they were Welsh or Scottish, working or lower middle class, or Jewish;
p.117.
85 Letter, Thistlethwaite to D’Arms, 10 August 1955.
86 Memorandum to the ad hoc committee on American Studies, Richard P. Taylor, Executive Secretary, “Proposed formation
of a Council or Association of American Studies,” April 18 1955; RFA, RG 1.2 Series 401 R, Box 52, Folder 454.
87 Taylor was replaced as executive secretary in 1956 by Dr W.L. Gaines, who had previously worked in the Intelligence section
of the US Embassy in London; Excerpt, EF D’Arms’s “diary of trip to Europe”, May 7 1956; RFA, RG 1.2, series 401R, Box
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Further advice was offered by EF D’Arms of the Rockefeller Foundation, who had been involved
in establishing the German Association for American Studies and the Salzburg Seminar, directly to
Thistlethwaite, as to the future activities of the fledgling BAAS. D’Arms feared that a BAAS journal
might prove difficult to launch, “given the difficulties which all journals face these days…” BAAS
went on to form the Journal of American Studies in 1967. Additionally, D’Arms recommended that
BAAS liaise with its American counterpart—the foundation-funded Association for American
Studies—regarding setting up an information service for British scholars to find out about research
opportunities and visits to the United States.89 D’Arms, in addition to proffering advice, was also
extending and strengthening the foundations’ own American Studies organizational network.
Without Rockefeller’s financial support, it was recognized that “it is doubtful if the Conferences
could ever have made the contribution [to bringing together British Americanists and initiating
BAAS] at all.”90
In addition to Rockefeller, and Fulbright, funding, BAAS also received funding directly by the US
Information Agency (USIA) for its catalogue of UK-based American research material. USIA
provided $20,000 for the purpose to hire researchers, pay travel expenses, a secretary, and office
materials.91 Due to the ambitious plans of BAAS officers, however, further funds or gifts were
required for possible new premises—the Commonwealth Fund offered some rooms rent-free in
Harkness House in London—new advisory services to British academics, and new publications—
possibly a journal. Thistlethwaite noted that BAAS had already gained 100 members that included 74
academics and 24 technical college and school-teachers. Thistlethwaite asked for more money from
Rockefeller to hold different types of conferences—a week long one for academics and researchers,
and another for a broader audience interested more generally in the United States—and for secretarial
expenses. BAAS wanted “in these formative stages [when] we are inhibited by lack of funds” funding
over several years in order to “put us on our feet”.92 At a later meeting between Thistlethwaite and
D’Arms in New York, while the former was a visiting professor in the American Civilization program
at the University of Pennsylvania, Thistlethwaite suggested that BAAS become a ‘gate-keeper’ for the
numerous British academics wishing to apply for Rockefeller funding.93
In its formal bid for Rockefeller funds, BAAS outlined its mission to “transform the knowledge of
scholars, educators and informed laymen in Britain about American history, literature and
institutions.” One year into its life, BAAS had acquired 117 members. It had the advantage, it
claimed,—in spreading knowledge and understanding of the US—over the Fulbright Commission
and the English-Speaking Union—as, unlike the former, “we are independent of the government”,
and as unlike the latter, BAAS is not a society for “propaganda”, the implication being that such
factors make the others appear suspicious to British eyes. Believing that the way to spread knowledge
was to begin at the top, an approach directly in line with Rockefeller thinking, BAAS would start by
52, folder 454. Gaines felt that BAAS was “on a sound basis and should prove a valuable means of promoting American
Studies…”.
88 Fulbright Commission, Final Report, p.14.
89 Letter, D’Arms (RF) to Frank Thistlethwaite, August 23 1955; RFA, RG 1.2 Series 401R, Box 52, folder 454.
90 Letter, Taylor to D’Arms, October 31 1955, RFA, RG1.2 Series 401R, Box 52, folder 454. Taylor was Executive Secretary
of the US Educational Commission (Fulbright Commission), UK, and treasurer the RF’s grant-in-aid to University College,
Oxford.
91 Letter, Thistlethwaite to D’Arms, 9 August 1956; RFA, RG1.2 series 401R, Box 52, folder 454.
92 Letter, Thistlethwaite to D’Arms, 9 August 1956; RFA, RG1.2 series 401R, Box 52, folder 454. By this time, BAAS was
effectively administered from the Department of American Studies at the University of Manchester.
93 Interview, EF D’Arms and Thistlethwaite, October 2 1956; RFA, RG1.2 series 401R, Box 52, folder 454.
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firmly establishing American Studies as a legitimate and respectable academic discipline in the
universities, causing ripple effects to be felt at the level of examinations at secondary schools, public
schools and sixth form colleges. “Only by exerting this kind of influence will a new generation of
British people grow up with a sensible understanding of American affairs,” BAAS argued. British
Americanists also needed research funding for visits to the United States, particularly for the purposes
of pursuing doctoral and other graduate training. “Without such a [Rockefeller] grant, we are in
danger of being ineffective. And our collapse,” BAAS threatened, “coming at this particular moment,
would set American Studies back a generation.” Underlying BAAS concerns, of course, was the Suez
crisis that caused a deep rift in Anglo-American relations in 1956. In all, BAAS asked for a total of
$150,500 over a five year period,94 to which Rockefeller agreed in 1957, much to the delight of
Gaines and the Fulbright Commission.95
Having recently been subjected to congressional enquiries about its alleged un-Americanism, the
Rockefeller Foundation checked the names of BAAS officers and committee members against 7 anticommunist
indices, including the “Cumulative index to publications of the Committee on un-
American Activities”, “Cox-Reece committee index”, and the “McCarthy Committee composite
index”. Only Max Beloff’s name appeared in any of those sources, but only to note that Beloff’s anti-
Soviet views had found expression in the publications of the McCarthy-hounded (eventually
destroyed), and Rockefeller-funded, Institute of Pacific Relations.96
Overall, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Fulbright Commission contributed strongly to the
formation of a vibrant and energetic BAAS which promotes American Studies as a university
discipline, publishes an academic journal, among other publications, of high standing, and holds an
annual conference. Its “pump-priming” sponsorship—especially the fellowship programme built the
future of American Studies by funding young scholars, some of whom became leaders in the field.97
Whether it achieved the aims originally attributed to the initiative is very difficult to tell; that it
cemented Anglo-American relations at a particularly difficult time in the Cold War is clear from the
reports of the conferences and from the BAAS Bulletin.98
At the Pan-European level, the Rockefeller Foundation provided vital funding to the European
Association for American Studies (EAAS) which was founded at the foundations-funded Salzburg
Seminar in American Studies, in 1954. The role of EAAS was to coordinate the promotion of
American Studies in Europe, especially since the formation of the German, British and other
associations.99 The immediate result of Rockefeller funding of EAAS was the conference decisions of
1957: for European scholars to focus research on “transatlantic influences and comparative studies of
the two continents.” Further, EAAS, with specific research monies from Rockefeller, agreed to
encourage scholars to research “The American Image in Europe”, subdivided into “the political image
of America in different European countries,… the impact of American educational theories in
Europe…. and the activities in Europe of American writers” after World War I. The Rockefeller
94 BAAS memorandum (By Thistlethwaite), “Memorandum for the Rockefeller Foundation on the Needs of the British
Association for American Studies,” n.d. but circa 1956; RFA, RG1.2 series 401R, Box 52, folder 454.
95 EF D’Arms Diary Note, February 27 1957; RFA, RG1.2 series 4021R, Box 52, folder 454.
96 RF Inter-Office Correspondence, “Official Indices Check,” January 4 1957; RFA, RG1.2 series 401R, Box 52, folder 454.
97 Letter, Marcus Cunliffe to John H. Greenfieldt, Asst. Comptroller, Rockefeller Foundation, February 1 1965; RFA, RG1.2
series 401R, Box 52, folder 457.
98 For the negotiated character of the founding of BAAS, see Fisher, Ali, and Scott Lucas, “Master and Servant? The U.S.
Government and the Founding of the BAAS,” European Journal of American Culture 21 1 (2002), pp.16–25.
99 “Grant-in-Aid to the EAAS towards its general support and conferences”; RFA, RG1.2 series 700, Box 17, folder 148. $6000
was awarded in August 1956.
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Foundation noted that the proposed $20,000 grant would provide leverage against more “traditional”
scholars in Europe who tended to suggest to younger scholars projects that were “unimaginative and
traditional in character.”100
The effect of EAAS, according to Robert Spiller of the Fulbright Commission, who conducted
informal enquiries on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation, was to provide the smaller European
countries—Switzerland, Benelux and Scandinavian nations—“an outlet for their interest in American
Studies which they otherwise would not have”, and which helps “the American cause [in Europe] as a
whole.”101
The promotion of American Studies in the USA and abroad was aimed at promoting active
support of American values at home and understanding and respect for American culture and
institutions abroad. It was an attempt to export the foundations’ domestic values and assumptions to
the world, and led to the construction of a global network of American Studies centers, institutes and
associations. BAAS and EAAS were two such important aspects of the network, both encouraged and
financially-aided in their formative stages by collaboration between private American foundations and
the American state.
8 . Comba t ing Ant i -Amer ican i sm Abroad
The foundations actively supported organizations and pursued policies that combated anti-
Americanism on a global scale during the Cold War. It would be no exaggeration to argue that
foundation officers tended to define anti-Americanism in a very broad manner. In the first instance,
practically any foreign criticism of the United States—people or policies - was seen as “anti-
American”. This section of the article explores some examples of how the foundations combated what
they perceived as anti-Americanism. In so doing, it becomes clear that the “anti-American” and pro-
American aspects of foundations’ global roles were symbiotically connected; they represented two
faces of the central aim of promoting US power and undermining nationalism and/or leftism.
8.1 The Case of Indonesia
The Ford Foundation played an active role in Indonesia from the early 1950s, particularly in building
a “modernizing elite” that would examine national economic and political problems from a Western
perspective. In this area, Ford initiatives across the Indonesian university system dovetailed with more
aggressive policies of covert arms drops by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to rebels opposed to
the leftist-nationalist government of Sukharno. Both Ford and the CIA defined the Sukharno regime
and its nationalist supporters as “anti-American”, anarchic, and unstable. When attempts to
overthrow Sukharno failed in the 1950s, the considerably more subtle methods of the Ford
Foundation came to the fore.102 Interestingly, Ford records show that during the early years of his
rule, Sukharno was seen as Indonesia’s own George Washington, a national liberation struggle leader.
The shift in Ford’s thinking occurred in line with official US foreign policy’s increasing anticommunist
attitude to developments in Korea, Vietnam, and in India, particularly due to the rise of
the “non-aligned movement” that tried to provide a neutral path between the two superpowers. In
100 Paper attached to “Grant-in-Aid to the EAAS…”; RFA, RG1.2 series 700, Box 17, folder 148.
101 Letter, Robert Spiller to John Marshall (RF), 6 February 1959; RFA, RG1.2 series 700, Box 17, folder 148.
102 Unless otherwise stated, the material for this section of the article is drawn from Inderjeet Parmar, “American foundations
and the development of international knowledge networks,” Global Networks 2, 1 (2002), pp.13–30.
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line with official policy, Ford converted Sukharno from being identified with an authentic American
hero to an enemy of order, stability, rationality, and the United States. By 1964, Ford officers
considered Indonesia’s leadership as “unpredictable at best.”103
Ford initiated, with enthusiastic regime approval—due to the acute shortage of educated
Indonesians which Dutch colonialism left behind - the teaching of English as the language of
“development”, in order to improve Indonesian access to valuable Western development strategies.
Additionally, several universities, principally the University of Indonesia (UI) in Jakarta, received
funding for the reform of their economics faculty, development programs, graduate training, and for
research. In effect, Ford constructed, within Indonesian higher education, an elite cadre of pro-
American upper class economists wedded (quite willingly) to a world-view and to economic theories
that favored open economies, foreign investment, low taxation, investment incentives, foreign loans
and World Bank and IMF development strategies. This group was also, in effect, preparing economic
reforms and plans for the day when Sukharno would no longer be in power.104
The principal vehicle for the penetration of Indonesian academia was the small cadre of scholars
around Sumitro, a ‘socialist’ opponent of the Sukharno regime. In the late 1950s, Sumitro, who
headed the Faculty of Economics at UI, went into exile after an armed insurrection that he led ended
in failure. Dozens of leading Indonesian economists were identified by Sumitro’s group and sent to
University of California, Berkeley, on doctoral programs, returning thereafter to take up full-time
positions at home. In contrast to the “anti-Americanism” of the Sukharno administration, the Ford
Foundation viewed Sumitro’s group as patriotic, rational, technocratic and progressive modernizers.
Ford invested $2.5 million in the tie-up between the two universities, transforming the Economics
faculty into an American-style school of business administration, economics and statistics.
Ford invested large funds in developing south-east Asian studies in elite US universities—
especially at Harvard, UC Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Cornell. For
example, Ford financed the Modern Indonesia Project at Cornell in 1954 in order to examine its
social and political structures. Some of Ford’s American Indonesia scholars were in contact with the
Indonesian military—parts of which were actively opposed to the government, causing two American
academics to resign in protest. Professors Len Doyle (UC Berkeley) and Ralph Anspach refused to
participate in Ford programs they claimed were either a “rebellion against the government” or an
“American policy of empire”.105
Ultimately, the Sukharno regime gave way—after the bloody massacre of hundreds of thousands
of “communists” - to the pro-American administration of General Suharto in 1966. It came as little
surprise that the five-man Team of Experts for Economic and Financial Affairs was furnished by the
Faculty of Economics at UI, and that it suggested reforms that favored the United States, the IMF
and the World Bank. The New Order in Indonesia promised political stability, modernization and
economic development, and was decidedly not “anti-American”, in contrast to its irrational
predecessor.106 Thirty five years later, as John Pilger notes, the World Bank declared Suharto’s
Indonesia a “model pupil of globalization…”107
103 “Grant Request. International Training and Research. To: Mr. Henry T. Heald Via: Mr. Joseph McDaniel From: Clarence
H. Faust, April 14 1964”; in Reel 0836, Grant PA64-277; Ford Foundation Archives (FFA), New York.
104 D. Ransom, “Ford Country: Building an Elite for Indonesia,” in S. Weissman, ed., The Trojan Horse (San Francisco:
Ramparts Press, 1974), pp.93–116.
105 D. Ransom, “Ford Country: Building an Elite for Indonesia,” in S. Weissman, ed., The Trojan Horse: A Radical Look at
Foreign Aid (San Francisco: Ramparts Press, 1974), p.100.
106 H. Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978).
107 John Pilger, “Spoils of a Massacre,” The Guardian Weekend, July 14 2001, p.18.
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8.2 The Ford Foundation and the Congress for Cultural Freedom
Combating anti-Americanism and fighting communism were very closely related, given the breadth of
definition of both concepts, in the eyes of the Ford Foundation and of the US Department of State
and other state agencies. In fact, it is clear that communism represented the most stark version of anti-
Americanism—a coherent world-view that challenged the free market, private property, limited
government, and individualism. It should occasion little surprise, then, that Ford took a favorable
view of one of the most notorious CIA programs—the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF),108 seen
by its founders as “the cultural-intellectual equivalent to the political economy of the European
Recovery Program (ERP) and the security framework of NATO…”109 CCF received important
support from Ford’s board of trustees, which was packed with former CIA and OSS members, in
addition to Marshall Planners and members of the US High Commission in Germany. The
relationship with CIA, CCF, and numerous other opponents of communism and anti-Americanism
was close, enduring and smooth.110
From the growing literature on CCF’s ideological and political roles, it is clear that its overall
world-view was dominated by positivistic empiricism, rationalism, technocratic modernism, and a
general opposition to “totalizing” philosophies, i.e., Marxism, but also laissez-faire liberalism. The
CCF represented a form of intellectual rationalization of the political economy of the Marshall Plan
and the New Deal/Fair Deal of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman.111 It also shared the world-view,
broadly, of the Ford Foundation.
CCF’s anti-communism lost its edge, according to Scott-Smith, after the death of Stalin in 1953,
and it found its new mission in promoting the benefits and advantages of Western freedom, pluralism
and social democracy. They championed revolution-free welfare capitalism and the rise of the classless
society. As with Ford’s economists in Indonesia, CCF stalwarts promoted Keynesian economic
management. In Europe, this line of thought led directly to “end of ideology” thinking from a trio of
American social scientists—Daniel Bell, Seymour Martin Lipset and Edward Shils.112
The political impact in Britain of the CCF was felt primarily in the politics of the Labour Party
which, to many American observers, had too powerful a powerful left-wing and anti-American
element at all levels.113 Opposition to US foreign policy, the siting of US military and air bases on
British soil, and the Party Conference’s decision in 1960 that Britain should unilaterally disarm its
nuclear weapons, were indicative of Labour’s “anti-Americanism”. Therefore, CCF, funded by the
CIA, fostered the right-wing of the Labour Party and movement—including Hugh Gaitskell, Denis
Healey, RHS Crossman, Tony Crosland and Roy Jenkins. CCF’s Milan Conference of 1955
provided these Labour leaders—all MPs, and Gaitskell set to became Labour’s leader later the same
108 Giles Scott-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical Culture. The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and post-war American
Hegemony (London: Routledge, 2002); Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War
(London: Granta, 1999). Although Scott-Smith argues that the foundations were “bit players” in CCF in terms of funding,
the aim above is to show that Ford did provide some funding but, even more, that Ford, CCF and the CIA shared similar
outlooks, and personnel, in regard to fighting America’s enemies in the Cold War.
109 Giles Scott-Smith, “The Congress for Cultural Freedom in Retrospect,” Storiografia 6, 2002, p.183. CCF was formed in
Berlin in 1950; key founders included Michael Josselson, James Burnham, Sidney Hook, Arthur Koestler and Melvin Lasky.
110 Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta Books, 1999), p.142.
111 Giles Scott-Smith, “The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the End of Ideology and the 1955 Milan Conference: ‘Defining the
Parameters of Discourse’,” Journal of Contemporary History 37 (3) 2002, pp.437–455.
112 Ibid, p.442.
113 For the definitive study of this subject, Hugh Wilford, The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War (London: Frank Cass,
2003).
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year—a chance to build alliances with European “moderate” socialists and even with the “reformist
wing of the US Democratic Party as represented by …… such luminaries as J.K. Galbraith and
Arthur Schlesinger Jnr.” The aim, according to Scott-Smith, was to strengthen the reformist left and
maintain their “‘Atlantic alignment’”. Healey was a leading Bilderberger in the 1950s and 1960s.114 In
1961, of course, Gaitskell was able to reverse the “unilateral nuclear disarmament” decision.
A key player in the Ford Foundation, CCF and European labor politics was Shepard Stone.115 It
was Stone with whom Denis Healey conducted the preliminary negotiations, at a Bilderberg meeting
in 1954, that led to Ford’s funding the new London-based Institute of Strategic Studies. Ford
provided $150,000 over three years to the new think tank that supported the Atlantic Alliance,
boosted right-wing labor ideas favoring nuclear weapons and the American-led North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO).116 It therefore provided intellectual and political support to opposing the leftwing,
“anti-American” forces in the labor movement.
Although CCF was exposed as a CIA-front in 1967, the Ford Foundation decided, on balance, to
continue to support the organization. The only issue was over whether it ought to change its name,
given that it had become discredited in some circles and because some prominent former
supporters—such as Raymond Aron, the French sociologist, and the Labour theoretician, W. Arthur
Lewis—were unwilling to have anything more to do with it unless it changed its name, address, and
funding sources. According to Aron, the anti-Soviet role of CCF was no longer necessary. CCF
supporters agreed that “its functions in the Western world need new definition.” Francis X. Sutton,
Ford official and author of an internal appraisal of the CCF, noted that “Anti-Americanism is now an
important intellectual phenomenon in Western Europe. An American-financed organization cannot
readily cope with this phenomenon; either it is actively pro-American or it bends unnaturally and
awkwardly to be ‘fair’”. The Sutton memorandum noted that CCF publications—especially
Encounter, a significant magazine of current affairs, arts and literature—had been not been
“sufficiently critical of the United States,” excluding intellectual critics from its pages. In particular,
American policy in Vietnam had escaped censure in Encounter as had any thing “anti-American”.
Sutton concluded that CCF or something similar was an absolute necessity in “the modern world”,
especially in dealing “problems of irresponsibility [among intellectuals] and decay of purpose.” And if
there is “a certain tension” in Ford’s supporting a CCF-style semi-secret activity, it “ought to be
tolerated”.117 Sutton recommended that Ford award $4.65 million over five years to a revamped CCF,
to deal with the “disorientation and irresponsibility now common among Western intellectuals.” In
order to alleviate the suspicion that this is a pro-American organization, Sutton recommended that
Ford should urge on CCF “substantial internationalization of financial support…”118
9 . Foundations and the Funct ions o f A n t i-American ism: Conc l u s i o n s
Anti-Americanism is neither a Cold War nor a post-Cold War phenomenon. As William Appleman
Williams long ago noted, the United States has been fighting cold wars, mainly on an anti-American
114 Op. cit., p.449.
115 Volker Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
116 Militant Tendency, CIA Infiltration of the Labour Movement (London: Militant Tendency, 1982), p.30.
117 Francis X. Sutton, Inter-Office Memorandum to Messrs. McGeorge Bundy and David Bell, “Congress for Cultural Freedom,”
September 21, 1967; Report no. 002784, Ford Foundation archives, New York.
118 Francis X. Sutton, “Confidential: Information Paper, Congress for Cultural Freedom,” September 1967; report no. 002784;
FF archives.
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rhetorical basis, against all sorts of enemies, from left and right, from nationalist to communist to
conservative. The Cold War did not begin in 1917; it must be understood as “an ongoing
confrontation between modern Western capitalism and its domestic and international critics.” The
reason, according to Appleman Willams, that observers have mistaken America’s confrontations with
the Soviet Union and Communist China for “the real cold war is that they were the first large nations
to be successfully organized by the critics of capitalism.” 119 The United States has defined all
opponents of its expansionism as anti- or un-Americans.
The foundations have reflected the same or similar views, both at home and abroad. They
promoted American Studies programs to strengthen Americans’ emotional attachment to core values,
and denied funding to those they believed undermined Americanism—a right-of-centre liberalism
that promoted managed change and opposed anything to its left and right (including, until the 1970s,
racial equality). Globally, the major foundations constructed networks of American Studies scholars
and American Studies associations, especially in cold war Europe. Their promotion of pro-US
modernizing economists in Indonesia (and in other parts of the world) significantly impacted on its
economic and political development policies under the Suharto regime. More clandestinely, the
foundations backed the CIA-supported Congress for Cultural Freedom to combat anti-Americanism
and pro-communist forces.
Anti-Americanism—defined as opposition to Americanism, in turn defined as support for private
property, limited government, capitalism, modernism, etc… - is a core governing principle of official
US foreign and military policies, of the very core of the east coast foreign policy establishment, and of
the American state. In the context of the New Deal Order—which constructed a cross-class
hegemonic coalition of international banks, capital-intensive corporations, organized labor unions,120
and even including (albeit much later) the “moderate” elements of black civil rights activists, the role
of American philanthropy, elite think tanks and the US state in knitting together and maintaining
such a coalition becomes critical. The New Deal domestic settlement—of limited state intervention,
liberal social and welfare reform—united a heterogeneous coalition—an historic bloc - behind a
policy of American globalism and expansion: a global economy governed by US-led international
organizations—IMF, World Bank, and the United Nations—and buttressed by US military power
and alliances. This was post-Great Depression, liberal east coast establishment Americanism, and its
foreign opponents were de facto anti-Americans while its domestic critics were un-Americans. The role
of the foundations was completely bound up with the “globalization” of the New Deal Order after
1945.
Of course, the foundations did not always succeed in attaining their goals in regard to
Americanizing the world nor even neutralizing all anti-American sentiment. Yet, their influence
should not be underestimated. Their resources were strategically targeted, in coordination with
American state-led initiatives or policies, over a long period of time and helped generate modernizing
elites and cadres of Americanists who tended, at the very least, to take sympathetic views of America’s
global role. In addition, by targeting funds at particular groups of scholars the foundations were
effectively depriving other academics, with other perspectives, of resources—research grants,
fellowships, journals, funded chairs, and so on. The foundations engaged in a clear mobilization of
bias whose outcomes tended to favor pro-American outcomes, under the public guise of funding
“scientific” academic research and teaching.
In microcosm, the three big foundations represented the principal—non-popular—elements of
the historic bloc: representatives of the large private investment banks, such as Chase Manhattan, and
119 William Appleman Williams, Some Presidents, from Wilson to Nixon (New York: New York Review, 1972), p.22.
120 T. Ferguson, “From Normalcy to New Deal,” International Organization 38 (1) (1984), pp.41–94.
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capital intensive corporations. Absolutely vital to the achievement of their goal of global intellectual
network construction, was their centrality in the network of American and foreign universities, think
tanks and policy research institutes. They were also closely connected with the American state,
personally and ideologically. Anti-Americanism was, in part, the global “enemy”, around which at
least part of the efforts of the American state and of foundations cohered in order to promote,
strengthen and defend American global power.