THE DIRTY TRUTH ABOUT WHO CONTROLS AMERICAN UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM

The Growth of International and Area-Studies Programs after 1945

The Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller foundations played their leading roles in creating the major international and areastudies programs at American universities because, in the words of a Ford officer during the period, they recognized "the need to improve the capabilities of the United States in meeting its responsibilities in world affairs-more especially for maintaining the strength of the non-Communist nations and for assisting the social and economic development of the new emerging nations." The first major effort to this end was in 1945 when the Rockefeller Foundation granted $250,000 for the creation of a Russian Institute affiliated with Columbia University's new School of International Affairs. Other large Rockefeller grants to Columbia soon followed, as did several from the Carnegie Corporation, which in 1947 made a series of grants to enable several universities to further their efforts in international affairs and area-studies programs. The most significant of these was a $740,000 grant to Harvard University for the establishment of a Russian Research Center. By 1952 the two foundations had granted several million dollars to strengthen international and area-studies programs. Significant as these efforts were however, they were dwarfed by the subsequent Ford Foundation appropriations for the same purpose.


Carnegie Foundation History
Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered in 1906 by an act of Congress, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has a long and distinguished history. It is an independent policy and research center, whose primary activities of research and writing have resulted in published reports on every level of education. Eight presidents have guided the Foundation through its history, each bringing unique shape to its work.


The Ford Foundation was chartered on January 15th, 1936 by Edsel Ford and two Ford Motor Company executives “to receive and administer funds for scientific, educational and charitable purposes, all for the public welfare.” During its early years, the foundation operated in Michigan under the leadership of Ford family members and their associates.




Ford's interest in strengthening American competency in international affairs was first mentioned in a 1952 internal document that suggested possible program areas for the recently reorganized foundation. Although the study focused on Ford opportunities in Asia, it soon became the basis for most of the foundation's overseas activities. Carl Spaeth, the report's author, recognized that "America's power to overcome Asian misunderstanding and to contribute to the shaping of events in these areas can only be in proportion to the extent of her knowledge of the characteristics of the region in which she operates, and the availability of competent, trained personnel to carry out her intentions there." He concluded by noting that "the development of American knowledge about Asia and an increase in the number of men skilled in dealing with her problems could well prove to be the key to the of Asia and its relation to world peace." The resultant funds to train these specialists were channeled through the foundation's International Training and Research Program. By the mid-1960s the Ford Foundation had allocated the staggering sum of $138 million to a limited number of universities for the training of foreign-area and international-affairs specialists.



There was agreement among foundation personnel that these specialists should make available to foreign-policy decision makers their knowledge of the nations that they studied. The national security of the United States demanded no less. Consequently, the foundations frequently acted as the intermediaries between area specialists and government agencies in matters pertaining to national security. One example of this was discussed at a 1953 meeting of Ford's Board of Overseas Training and Research. The draft minutes of that meeting record that "the feeling was expressed that long-term studies undertaking to evaluate the vulnerability of ... to Communist influence were greatly needed and should be undertaken. ... suggested that the staff work out appropriate and adequate liaison with the government ." Professor George M. Kahin of Cornell University submitted a proposal that detailed how such a study would be conducted in Indonesia.

Several years later Charles Fahs of the Rockefeller Foundation commented on the important role to be played by foundation-supported international-affairs specialists in the furtherance of United States foreign-policy objectives. In a memorandum to Rockefeller president Harrar, Fahs argued that "wherever possible, programs should be subcontracted to non-governmental agencies, e.g., universities. An effort is long overdue to correlate overseas contracts with area study competence in the contracting institutions in order to assure greater knowledge of the local situation."

The Ford Foundation almost singlehandedly established the major areas- studies programs in American universities.

Between 1959 and 1963, for example, Ford made direct grants of approximately $26 million to support non-Western language and area-studies programs at fifteen universities Boston, California, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Indiana, Michigan, Northwestern, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Stanford, Washington, Wisconsin, and Yale. These same universities are the leaders in the production of Ph.D. degrees and, because of their prestige, generally manage to place their graduates in the upper echelons of the American corporate, political, and academic strata, from which their graduates' ideas frequently dominate their respective fields.



The area-studies programs were designed to develop American scholars' expertise in specific areas, e.g., Africa, Latin America, the Near East, South Asia, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The foundations also supported the growth of more general programs in international affairs during the 1950s and 1960s, and the funding was equally generous. The most important of these included Harvard's Center for International Affairs, the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Center for Strategic Studies at Georgetown University, the Institute of International Studies at Berkeley, the Stanford University Institute for Communications Research, and the Center for International Studies at Princeton University. Nor were these programs limited to the United States. The Graduate Institute of International Affairs in Geneva has been supported from its inception largely by the Rockefeller Foundation. The Royal Institute of International Affairs in London and St. Antony's College, Oxford, have also been sustained over the years by funds from the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller foundations.



The links among the foundations, some subsidized university centers, and foreign-policy formulation are suggested by noting just a few of the key individuals associated over the years with these foundation- supported international programs. The first director of MIT's Center for International Studies was Max Milliken, a former assistant director of the CIA. An equally influential member of the center staff was W. W. Rostow, who subsequently became a key foreign-policy advisor to President Kennedy and Johnson and an architect of the Vietnam war. Individuals associated with Harvard's Center for International Affairs over the years have included Robert R. Bowie, head of the State Department's policy planning staff; Henry A. Kissinger, secretary of state in the Nixon administration; McGeorge Bundy, national security advisor to presidents Kennedy and Johnson and later Ford Foundation president; and James A. Perkins, vice-president of the Carnegie Corporation and a director of the Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank.

<snip>

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/oss/ideologyofphilanthropy.htm

information about the role of Ford and the Ford Foundation in South America in the 1970s and thereafter. It is definitely worth reading if you are interested in the Ford Foundation.

Ford Foundation, a philanthropic facade for the CIA


<snip>

With the end of McCarthyism and the beginning of peaceful coexistence, the debate in Washington is softened. The Ford Foundation is no longer seen as an alternative to the CIA, but rather as its associate. Richard Bissel Jr. abandoned the Foundation to take hold of the operative direction of stay-behind, while the Ford Foundation assisted the CIA in several large operations.

It is replaced in the funding of the Congress for Freedom in Culture and entrusted David Lerner and Raymond Aron, an essential figure in the Congress, a study on the failure of the treaty the European Defense Community in France. It financed the Hungarian Philharmonic Orchestra made up by musicians compelled to exile due to Stalinism and whom the CIA wanted to present as symbols of the free world. It also financed the American Committee on United Europe (ACUE), a front for the CIA entrusted with supporting the construction of a Federal Europe according to the interests of Washington. The ACUE is headed by the former director of secret services during the War World and its Vice-President is a founding member of the CIA.


<snip>

This money allowed to help refugees coming from Hungary or Poland and to create structures to accommodate them. The Ford Foundation equally organized training and study programs for scientists coming the Warsaw Pact, which were invited to the USA and West Europe. In all this there was a sort of perverse game as preferred by special services: the CIA expected to recruit agents among economists, researchers in social sciences and experts invited by the Ford Foundation, while the KGB considered the possibility of sending reliable elements to acquire American knowledge.

At the same time, Japan was launching English language promotion programs, US studies and contacts between Japan and Europe. The philanthropic diplomacy of the Ford Foundation covered the whole world. It took the fostering of the US culture everywhere and tried to win to its side the Non-Aligned Countries. In Africa, the threat of an alignment with Moscow on the part of the recently independent countries motivates the creation of numerous aid programs for that region, especially in Algeria. In the same way an agricultural program have been created in India with the help of European investors to whom Shepard Stone convinced of creating Ford style foundations.

At the university level, the Ford Foundation financed, in 1959, St Antony’s College in Oxford, specialized in Humanities. The European Center of Nuclear Research (ECNR) also received subventions in 1956, as well as the institute run by the Danish nuclear physician Niels Bohr. So the, with the approval of the CIA, the Foundation brings to Denmark delegations of Polish, Soviet and even Chinese scientists, officially, by virtue of the “scientific dialogue”. In that same line, even the Oxford University got a subvention of a million dollars in 1958, just like the Churchill College of Cambridge.

<snip>

http://www.voltairenet.org/article30039.html

JOHN TAYLOR GATTO’S NEW BOOK:
AN EYE OPENER ON EDUCATION
By: Samuel L. Blumenfeld

John Gatto has talked about his new book—in progress for years. And we’ve all waited for it patiently. It was delayed by the original publisher. But finally, it’s done and about to hit American culture with an incredible wallop. John sent me a pre-publication edition, and it has taken me weeks to read all of it. And you have to read it all, because you just don’t want to miss a word. That’s the way John writes, as if he’s standing next to you and talking into your ear. And then, I shall probably read it over and over again. It’s a breathtaking, sweeping view of what compulsory schooling has done to America.

And it’s more. John Taylor Gatto is much more than New York State’s Former Teacher of the Year. He is a philosopher who is probing into the depths of our American civilization and finding answers that no one else could have possibly dreamed of. And it is obvious that he loves America because he writes with such passion and humor, especially when he writes about growing up in western Pennsylvania on the banks of the Monongahela or about his adventures in the classrooms of Manhattan. The title of his book is The Underground History of American Education. A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into The Problem of Modern Schooling.

What makes the occasion of this book so special is the knowledge that only an American could have written it. George Santayana wrote in 1920, “To be an American is of itself almost a moral condition, an education, and a career.” John is so thoroughly American in his ability to analyze and understand what has happened to this country. His knowledge is intimate, profound, and accurate. He understands fully the anatomy of our educational-industrial complex, which is far more dangerous than the military-industrial complex, which President Eisenhower warned us about. After all, what does the military-industrial complex produce? Guns, tanks, airplanes, battleships, bombs—inanimate objects which the government is supposed to use only when we are threatened. Most Americans are quite content to have all of this stuff as insurance against our enemies but not have to use it. But Madeline Albright, eager to bomb Belgrade, told the generals: “What good is having all this stuff if you never use it?” What she didn’t understand is that not using it is the whole point about having it. So she and her NATO colleagues invented a war so that they could use it.

But with the educational-industrial complex, we are dealing with an entirely different animal, one that eats children alive, destroys minds, destroys families, undermines our culture, provides neither protection from our enemies nor academic learning for our kids. It’s an expensive monster that Gatto knows all too well and wants us to know as thoroughly as he does. I kept notes while reading the book, here are a few sample quotes to whet your appetite:

“School is the first impression children get of organized society. Like most first impressions it is the lasting one. Life is dull and stupid, only Coke provides relief. And other products, too, of course.”

“Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy—these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another.”

“Much of the weird behavior kids display is a function of the aperiodic reinforcement schedule. And the endless confinement and inactivity slowly drives children out of their minds. Trapped children, like trapped rats, need close management. Any rat psychologist will tell you that.”

What should make you suspicious about School is its relentless compulsion:

“The net effect of holding children in confinement for twelve years without honor paid to the spirit is a compelling demonstration that the State considers the Western spiritual tradition dangerous.”

“Who besides a degraded rabble would voluntarily present itself to be graded and classified like meat? No wonder school is compulsory.”

“The crime of mass forced schooling is this: it amputates the full argument and replaces it with engineered consensus.”


http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/review_blum.htm

the section on the history of education; how "they" want to control America's future via education will blow you away. It makes so much sense as to why schools are failing to educate. It is not their purpose, the school systems purpose is to program social behavior.

Welcome to DU!

Considering that most of the professors there, if not all, are completely willing and able to take shots at the current state of affairs.

As if the real world problems aren't enough?

You should first take the time to read the article before being dismissive in a knee-jerk fashion. Using labels as you did shows that you are weak in your ability to debate the topic. Now let me get you back on some solid footing as to how this is not conspiratorial at all but very real.

How I came to this was through Academia itself and not speculation. A close friend of mine works in the Near East studies program in the Ivy League, he is presently doing a Post-Doc. I tutor him in a different field and we often have conversations that cover a lot of ground. In one conversation he was discussing his field of expertise and how this entire field of study came into existence which was essentially through the US State Dept. I asked him to explain what he meant exactly as I hadn't entertained that idea before and so he did. And now I'm explaining it, though not as clearly and expertly as he could, to you.

If you doubt any of this I would be glad to arrange an exchange between you and he for further discussion on this point.

He isn't some nutjob but rather considered to be the most brilliant student at the University in his field as attested to by pretty much everyone.

I am quite sincere in my offer.

How many forums have you been kicked off of for posting this shit ad naseum?

too unsettling?

I'm not sure what you're getting at but it seems you are not interested in open and honest dialogue but are more interested in side-tracking the content of the discussion. That indicates a closed mind.

My offer was genuine but you seem hesitant to challenge your assumptioms about this.

Are there any specific points in the OP that you wish to refute?

either in contradiction to the OP or otherwise, obviously.

You are sleeping.

A system that allows "all the problems" that we have is something that was clearly and openly designed to be such.

The fact that you just haven't got the news yet is simply proof that the system is working.

Wake up.

or always have been open to most liberal studies. They have encouraged diversity and understanding. Now the new universities like in Virginia where religion and religious government control are the mandate, that I see as a big problem for our democratic survival.

If corporate influence in media, say, tends to result in pro-corporate news coverage, then I don't see why universities should be any different. I teach in one; there's already a good deal of prssure to watch what we say and how we say it because of Horowitz and his campus brownshirts. Imagine what it'll be like when state universities begin to privatize, if it comes to that.

it takes a seemingly radical point of view to open better possibilities. Thanks.

The range of discussion in Universities is quite limited. Now there are endless permutations within that limited spectrum but I assure you it is not as it seems. If you want a "career" in Academia be prepared to limit your range of thinking.

Are you familiar with this book? Highly recommend it for you to get a firsthand glimpse into "liberal" Academia.



This book shows that professional education is a battle for the very identity of the individual, as is professional employment. It shows how students and working professionals face intense pressure to compromise their ideals and sideline their commitment to work for a better world. And it explores what individuals can do to resist this pressure, hold on to their values and pursue their social visions. People usually don't think of school and work in terms of such a high-stakes struggle. But if they did, they would be able to explain why so many professional training programs seem more abusive than enlightening, and why so many jobs seem more frustrating than fulfilling.

I decided to write this book when I was in graduate school myself, getting a PhD in physics, and was upset to see many of the best people dropping out or being kicked out. Simply put, those students most concerned about others were the most likely to disappear, whereas their self-centered, narrowly focused peers were set for success. The most friendly, sympathetic and loyal individuals, those who stubbornly continued to value human contact, were handicapped in the competition. They were at a disadvantage not only because their attention was divided, but also because their beliefs about big-picture issues such as justice and social impact caused them to stop, think and question. Their hesitation and contemplation slowed them down, tempered their enthusiasm and drew attention to their deviant priorities, putting them at a disadvantage relative to their unquestioning, gung-ho classmates. Employers, too, I realized, favored people who kept their concerns about the big picture nicely under control, always in a position of secondary importance relative to the assigned work at hand. Thus I saw education and employment as a self-consistent, but deeply flawed, system. I wrote this book in the hope of exposing the problem more completely and thereby forcing change.

A system that turns potentially independent thinkers into politically subordinate clones is as bad for society as it is for the stunted individuals. It bolsters the power of the corporations and other hierarchical organizations, undermining democracy. As I will explain in detail, it does this by producing people who are useful to hierarchies, and only to hierarchies: uncritical employees ready and able to extend the reach of their employers' will. At the same time, a system in which individuals do not make a significant difference at their point of deepest involvement in society—that is, at work—undermines efforts to build a culture of real democracy. And in a subordinating system, organizations are more likely to shortchange or even abuse clients, because employees who know their place are not effective at challenging their employers' policies, even when those policies adversely affect the quality of their own work on behalf of clients.

This book is intended for a broad range of professionals, nonprofessionals and students, and for anyone interested in how today's society works. It is for students who wonder why graduate or professional school is so abusive. It is for nonprofessionals who wonder why the professionals at work are so often insufferable, and who want to be treated with greater respect. It is for socially concerned professionals who wonder why their liberal colleagues behave so damn conservatively in the workplace. (Chapter 1 explains how professionals are fundamentally conservative even though liberalism is the dominant ideology in the professions.) It is for individuals who are frustrated by the restrictions on their work and troubled by the resulting role they play—or don't play—in the world. It is also for those who simply find their careers much less fulfilling than they had expected and aren't exactly sure why.

http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/introduction.htm

“I found Disciplined Minds while planning

a course that deals with the social

role and moral responsibility of

intellectuals, and after I finished

reading it I whooped with joy. It is

the perfect book to engage students on

these issues -- well researched,

powerfully argued, and clearly written.

Even conservative students with politics

at odds with Schmidt's find the book

valuable because of its (sometimes

painful) honesty and clarity. In

addition to using it in my course, I

wish I could make Disciplined Minds

required reading for my faculty

colleagues.”



-- Robert Jensen

School of Journalism

University of Texas at Austin

accept as a liberal education does present it's limits.

Sounds like Ivy League or something to that effect.

There are far too many people like you in America
for it to be a conspiracy.
Gatto is one of the most brilliant minds in education.

You?

What exactly are your credentials in the area of education?

BHN

as many states continue to de-fund higher education. Here in Wisconsin, thanks to our wingnut state legislature, only 20% of UW-Madison's budget is paid for by state taxes, down from 29% ten years ago.

http://www.staterelations.wisc.edu/faq.html

The situation has gotten so bad (and relations between the UW system and the state Assembly have gotten so hostile) that UW-Madison has floated a proposal to withdraw from the state-funded university system and go it alone as a private, self-regulating school. In other, wingnuttier states, the state's share of public U budgets is even lower—in the 15% range. Obviously, universities have to look somewhere for money; corporations aren't the best solution, but given the hostility of many state governments toward funding higher education, corporate money and, ultimately, privatization may be the only solution. It's what we get when we vote again and again for lower state taxes.

Over throw Democratically elected leaders and murder millions of people. I didn't know that. Thanx Naomi for the valuable information. All these fuckers need to be brought up on charges of crimes against humanity.

I'm halfway through 'Underground History'. It's a fascinating perspective. The very structure of schools -- to a great extent, regardless of actual content -- has acclimated us to the insidious expansion of fascism and top-down, centralized power. Where once a few years of schooling prepared people for a lifetime of independent thought and independent livelihoods, kids today in the better schools are prepped to be serfs-in-suits with laptops and powerpoint presentations, and in the inferior schools to be numbed enough and dumbed down enough to accept burger-flipping jobs at McD's or Walmart greeters.

The quotes in that book from the early developers of the 20th century school system are remarkable: The goal of school is to 'instill a sense of subservience in the young'. Children should be 'cut to fit'.

Best of all, the obvious-but-never-noticed concept that "public schools aren't 'public' in the sense that libraries are 'public' or roads are 'public'". I always wondered why there wasn't more freedom to speed ahead in various subjects to advanced grades if one was capable. If school were an all-you-can-eat smorgasboard, and one was free to choose what one wanted to study, rather than be forced to fit the mold, the products of the school system would be too unpredictable, too nonstandard, and possibly too bold to fit into the pre-cast niches in the beehive.

I just read his description of what Humboldt had envisioned and fought for in education in Prussia:



NCLB is a culmination, but between the mega-media and the copycat schools systems nationwide, the Prussian model has been well on its way in America for more than 50 years.

Let freedom ring.

:shrug:

which is only the tip of the iceberg and only a minor, but important aspect of the OP:

An Unholy Alliance?
UC Berkeley's $500-million deal with BP
challenges traditional public-private partnerships
JENNIFER WASHBURN / Sacramento Bee 8apr2007

Five hundred million dollars is a lot of money — especially for a public university. When the giant oil company BP announced Feb. 1 that it had chosen the University of California, Berkeley, to lead the largest academic-industry research consortium in U.S. history, University of California officials appeared giddy.

If the deal is approved, BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, will give $500 million over 10 years to create a multidisciplinary Energy Biosciences Institute at UC Berkeley. Berkeley would partner with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to establish the institute devoted to researching biofuels — fuels derived from plants and other organisms.

Many university and state officials pronounced the BP alliance a victory for the environment. "A tremendous day for Mother Earth," UC President Robert Dynes declared when the partnership was announced. From a public relations standpoint, BP's willingness to invest in alternative energy research vastly improved the company's image, which had been sullied by a refinery explosion in Texas and a 267,000-gallon oil spill from corroding pipelines in Alaska.

Five hundred million dollars is a lot of money — especially for a public university. When the giant oil company BP announced Feb. 1 that it had chosen the University of California, Berkeley, to lead the largest academic-industry research consortium in U.S. history, University of California officials appeared giddy.

<snip>

http://www.mindfully.org/Energy/2007/BP-UCB-Unholy-Alliance8apr07.htm

I just don't see this as the end of university education.

Take MIT for example. Since WWI, it has been the research school for the military industrial complex with many proprietary-classified projects. But MIT still does a great job at educating its students and producing non proprietary-classified products, research, and knowledge for the general public.

The real makers of modern schooling weren't at all who we think.


Not Cotton Mather


or Horace Mann

The real makers of modern schooling were leaders of the new American industrialist class, men like:


Andrew Carnegie, the steel baron...



Henry Ford, master of the assembly line which compounded steel and oil into a vehicular dynasty...


Men like these, and the brilliant efficiency expert Frederick W. Taylor, who inspired the entire "social efficiency" movement of the early twentieth century, along with providing the new Soviet Union its operating philosophy and doing the same job for Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany; men who dreamed bigger dreams than any had dreamed since Napoleon or Charlemagne, these were the makers of modern schooling.


The new mass schooling which came about slowly but continuously after 1890, had a different purpose, a "fourth" purpose.

The fourth purpose steadily squeezed the traditional three to the margins of schooling; in the fourth purpose, school in America became like school in Germany, a servant of corporate and political management.

Teachers and principals, “scientifically”certified in teachers college practices, were made unaware of the invisible curriculum they really taught.



The secret of commerce, that kids drive purchases, meant that schools had to become psychological laboratories where training in consumerism was the central pursuit.

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

U.S. Drops Out of TIMMS

The U.S. has quietly decided to withdraw from TIMSS. (Hat tip: Extreme Wisdom) TIMSS is the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study, which is an international test designed to compare 4th and 8th grade students.

"The ruling class has the schools and press under its thumb. This enables it
to sway the emotions of the masses"
-Albert Einstein

probably true that this kind of money has a significant influence in certain fields and in certain departments of certain colleges and universities. That's different from saying the curriculum at American colleges and universities is under corporate control.

sigh.

Who do you think writes, edits, and distributes textbooks in the US?

What perspective is given in US History courses?

When was the last time you saw a history textbook which framed our conquest of "the new world" as anything other than wonderful? You of course know that as invaders, we slaughtered millions of American Indian, and committed perhaps the first instance of biological warfare.

These topics are simply unmentionable in American textbooks.

By design.

Not news to me but still a great post

And people put so much importance on a College education.

The Consensus on Third-World Development

<snip>

The fact that such conservative ideas concerning development meshed perfectly with the goals of United States was not fortuitous. Myrdal has noted that American studies of the developing world at this time were "expected to reach opportune conclusions , and to appear in a form that is regarded as advantageous, or at least not disadvantageous, to national interests as these are popularly understood." 70 The interests of the United States in the Third World, as popularly understood at the time by mainstream social scientists and policy makers, were defined in terms of gradual movement toward a form of Western democracy, continued alignment to the world capitalist system, continued access to strategic raw materials, order, and stability, and at best a policy not antagonistic to the United States -- all of which were to be encouraged by the nurturing of an indigenous elite that understood the benefits that could accrue from such policies.

O'Brien notes that this developmental consensus endorsed the leadership role of "technological and bureaucratic elites." The political scientists concerned with the development shared the "bureaucrat's perspective in fearing the passion and unpredictability which may be unleashed if people escape control from above." 71 Social scientists, business leaders, foundation personnel, and those who implemented United States foreign policy agreed on the importance of order and stability for Third-World development. Packenham notes that the consensus held that "radical politics, including conflict, disorder, violence, and revolution, are unnecessary for economic and political development and therefore are always bad." 72 As early as 1949 the director of the Rockefeller Foundation's Division of Social Science commented on the role of the social sciences in helping "to serve the orderly evolution of the unindustrialized countries." 73 In short, the measured and gradual development of Third-World nations was seen to serve the interests of world stability, preclude the advance of "radical" regimes and the concomitant possibility of nationalization of foreign holdings, while simultaneously affording an international context within which the major foundations could play crucial roles in developing national polities.

The views of the social scientists, foundation personnel, and government officials toward Third-World development were mutually reinforcing. Many of the key foundation personnel concerned with the social sciences had worked in one of the Washington agencies involved with foreign policy in the immediate post-1945 period, while others had close ties to major American universities.

This period was also characterized by the frequent movement of social scientists between their university bases and policy centers in Washington, where they made available to government officials their analyses of social phenomena at home and abroad and suggested policy options for implementation. So broad was the evolving consensus concerning the ideology of corporate liberalism at home and imperial liberalism abroad that such interaction only strengthened the sense of rectitude -- if not arrogance -- which characterized the work of the mainstream social scientists. Halberstam's analysis of the planning and implementation of the Vietnam war largely on the basis of the "expert" and "objective" advice by intellectuals with pronounced social science backgrounds of the mainstream variety is, of course, the best documented-and most appalling-manifestation of this syndrome. 74 To these people the struggle against the communist juggernaut was beyond ideology. To intimate that their work was ideologically biased was tantamount to questioning their integrity.

This ideological commitment to America's international role meant that the theories of development elaborated by the foundation- supported academics only gained currency to the degree that they were judged to be supportive of the broader foreign-policy objectives that grew out of that ideology. Such theories restricted the possible range of development in the Third World to options that were perceived as advantageous to the United States, but not necessarily to the developing nations in question, all the rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding. Developmental theories posited on the assumptions of gradualism, the maintenance of the existing institutional order, the legitimacy and inviolability of certain elites, the importance of sustained economic growth-to name only several-refuse to recognize that the price of such development in terms of human misery and suffering may exceed that of development brought about through revolution and different forms of economic and social arrangements. Such views are also ahistorical. The development of the West was generally accompanied by revolution and civil war, as Rhodes, for one, notes. He asks how rational people can ignore this reality when focusing on the contemporary Third World and continually stressing order and stability. 75 While Barrington Moore's views on these subjects have received a polite response from academics, the implications of his work have been largely ignored. 76 The proponents of gradualism and moderation, wedded as they are to Western-oriented institutions, elite domination, and modi operandi which do little to alleviate the plight of the masses in the underdeveloped nations while ensuring extended markets for capitalist activity, continue to see their particular viewpoint prevail.

<snip>

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/oss/ideologyofphilanthropy.htm

NPR and it is no wonder all you hear on there any more is garbage.

Your posts are of lasting value to those who read them and should be properly archived.

Where Octafish is speaking truth about the Bush Crime Family, you are doing the same thing for society as a whole. The import of your work literally can not be understated.

Thanks!
Jason

*edit* didnt see your journal.

I recently received a fund raising call from the University of Texas (I'm an alumnus). The student on the phone helpfully explained that the College of Liberal Arts had a new grant from the Department of Defense for a program to train in languages and culture of the Middle East. The DoD would then use these graduates for its work in the region.

The student caller was a female philosophy major, very nice, and was only doing what they directed her to do in her part-time job, so I tried to be nice in my response. But, rather than a donation (and I normally would have been inclined to give at least a small amount), what she got was a lengthy discussion essentially about how war (and therefore the DoD) wasn't the answer unless you were a bigwig at a multi-national corporation.

Previous to this call I already had an idea that corporatism was infesting universities. But I hadn't really thought about the potential for programs even in a college of liberal arts. Also, I was saddened by the thought of a philosophy major having to do this work on behalf of the military industrial complex in order to make it through college.

...