I.

When Professor Robert R. Bowie organized Harvard's Center for International Affairs in 1958, he wanted to attract first-rate public officials from the United States and other countries to spend an academic year at the Center on leave from their services. He envisioned an exchange between these visiting Fellows and the Center's Harvard associates that would have "significant effect" upon international policy-making.

That idea never materialized.

"I think the goal was chimerical," reflects Edward S. Mason, Lamont University Professor and one of the original senior members of the Center. "Countries cannot spare their leading policy makers for six or eight months. The Fellows who have come to the Center are capable public officials, but no one could pretend they were the top policy makers in their countries."

With the passing of Bowie's grand scheme for the Fellows program, the Center changed its complexion: growing academic functions have replaced earlier service ambitions. In both the Center and its semi-autonomous branch, the Development Advisory Service (DAS), there has been a proliferation of research projects and publications.

The change has been radical. In 1958-59, the Center's first year of operation, expenditures for research totaled $29,000-slightly less than the $31,000 spent for the Fellows program. This year $761,000 is being spent on research, $60,000 on the Fellows.

Large grants and contracts have enabled the Center to undertake longterm, expensive research projects. In 1958-59, a $56,000 allocation by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences was the largest source of income in the Center's $129,000 budget. In 1955-56 the University provided office space and maintenance, but not a penny of the $995,000 budget. Instead, foundations grants and government contracts accounted for over 90 per cent of the funds.

As a result, the Center's output is enormous. During 1965-66 alone, 13 books and 113 articles were published under its auspices.

The only teaching conducted at the Center are regular research seminars for Faculty members. Research Associates, and Fellows. The Center has a permanent group of nine Faculty members, who also serve in the departments of Government, Economics, Social Relations, and the Business School. In addition, the Center takes over part of the salaries of about 15 Faculty members in order to allow them more time for research with less teaching responsibility.

Outsiders are invited in as Research Associates for a period of six months to two years to engage in specific research and writing for publication. There are about 30 of these people, including a staff member of the Rand Corporation, British author Barbara Ward, and Paul Seabury, professor of political science at Berkeley.

Although the Center does not subsidize graduate students, it provides some post-doctoral support. "One thing we are beginning to do successfully," says Thomas C. Schelling, professor of Economics and the Center's Acting Director in 1965-66, "is to keep an eye on someone doing a good Ph.D. thesis in one of our fields. We may ask him to join the Center on half salary and turn his thesis into a publishable book."

The Center is officially far removed from the undergraduate's world. It confers no degrees, offers no courses for credit. Nevertheless, its impact on students is considerable.

Over the years, it has been a strong drawing card for Harvard, and, without it, there would probably be no Schelling here to teach international games and strategy, no Lipset to analyse the social basis of political institutions, and no Huntington to teach about the causes of political change and stability. Karl W. Deutsch, professor of Government at Yale, joins the Harvard Faculty next year with the guarantee that he be an associate of the Center.

What makes the Center so attractive is not only its emphasis on research, but also the depth and diversity of that research.

To take but a few examples: