Given the recent support for international projects, Nye, who has received funding from a number of foundations in the past, says finding financing for his work has become easier.
"Sometimes a foundation will be interested in a subject and put out flyers," Nye says. "Other cases may arise in which a professor has an idea and goes to the foundation."
In either case, he says, there is a certain give and take between the foundations and the academic community that goes to shape overall trends in scholarship.
About three years ago, Nye says the Ford Foundation asked him to review their recent giving trends, looking at established priorities and goals. He recommended that Ford increase its support of research on international organizations and institutions.
Although foundations often solicit this advice, Nye notes professors have little real power to influence the private groups. "It doesn't mean they have to listen to us," the government professor adds.
For Huntington, the Olin Foundation in particular has been key in funding his latest projects, including Harvard's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, which he directs. Since 1988, Olin has slated more than $2 million for Huntington and various projects he oversees through the institute.
When Huntington was director of the Center for International Affairs, he says he was struck by graduate student interest in security matters. In 1979, he initiated a program in that area, which later became the Olin Institute.
Olin has pledged indefinite support for Huntington's program, in essence institutionalizing national security studies at Harvard. Unlike many foundations which approve more short-term work, Olin has made a lasting commitment to this project.
Foundation support like Olin's has been essential to the success of Huntington's research. "I can't remember when I got a government grant," says the professor.
Occasionally other scholars will approach him for advice about where to go for funding for specific projects, Huntington says. Most times, he sends them to a foundation.
More established scholars, like Nye and Huntington, develop relationships with different foundations over the years garnering contacts and influence in the process.
Yet, at the same time, Olin has built its own kind of influence, Huntington says, because "most people under 40 teaching in the national security field have participated in this program."
Economic Malaise
Still, as Harvard examines its financial priorities in preparation for a University-wide fundraising drive, scholars across the faculties must check their own economic weather vanes.
Despite careful investment, foundations, too, are squeezed by economic malaise, scholars and analysts say. So, even as the hard sciences wait on federal budget debacles, the social sciences must look to stock market fluctuations to read their funding future.
As government agencies, influenced by a shrinking economy, begin to tighten their belts on support for education, Olin's Pierson says foundations will similarly be affected.
"With the stock market going down and other uncertainties, people will trim their giving," Pierson says.
And professors say there are few alternatives should the foundation option diminish. "You're talking about billions and billions of dollars," explains Huntington. "Foundations have been a great national asset."