Foundations of the American Century

by Inderjeet Parmar

  This chapter tests these rival claims against documentary evidence drawn from the comprehensive archival records of the Ford Foundation, including key trustees’ oral histories, official correspondence, field-office reports, internal memoranda, grant files, and minutes of trustees’ and executive and other committee meetings. Ford archival sources furnish evidence of their funded programs, projects, and network construction in the U.S. academy and in Indonesia (in this case) and the extensive liaison between the American and Indonesian university systems, including doctoral training and fellowship programs. In addition, Ford archives yield evidence of the foundation’s connections with agencies of the American foreign policy apparatus—including the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Economic Cooperation Administration, among others. The chapter focuses on two particular Ford-funded programs—University of California–Berkeley’s interconnections with the Economics Faculty at the University of Indonesia and the Cornell Modern Indonesia Project—to provide concrete cases from which conclusions may be drawn in regard to the rival claims made by neo-Gramscians and their critics.

  THE ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

  In general, Ford followed a set format in its overseas operations: first, strengthen or develop a U.S.-based area studies capacity in the region of interest by investing large resources at elite American universities; second, and almost in tandem, develop relevant institutions in the “target” nation or region; third, bring the two parts of the emerging network together; and fourth and overall, ensure that the entire program fits with the broad objectives of the American state. Being a private, nonstate independent organization assisted Ford enormously in winning acceptance from potentially hostile governments overseas.

  Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Dean Rusk clearly signaled a U.S. state interest in the Far East and the need for official and unofficial provision of education and training to the peoples of the region.19 This aligned with President Truman’s Point Four program of promoting American technical knowledge and cultural attributes as a strategy for Third World development. Ford acted on that injunction with specific reference to Indonesia (and Asia more generally) by commissioning an extensive survey of existing Asian studies programs in U.S. universities and embarking on a program of major investment in the new “discipline.” Through the Modern Indonesia Project at Cornell and the connection between economists at the University of Indonesia and at UC–Berkeley, as well as through important programs at MIT and Harvard, Ford established a tightly knit academic network oriented toward the production of scholars dedicated to policy-related work in Indonesian political and economic development. The network included Indonesian and American government officials and agencies. Ford’s operations became known as a “private Point Four program,”20 championed by Paul Hoffman, who had headed up Marshall Plan aid to Europe through the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA).21

  The Ford Foundation’s interest in Asia and Asian studies began early and was specifically focused by two profound developments: the successful communist revolution in China in 1949 and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. Also significant were concerns over the character of Indonesia’s political leadership, the “communist threat” to Japan, and nationalist resistance to French rule in Indo-China. In short, Cold War ideological and military competition and, equally importantly, nationalist threats to American economic interests in the region drove the Ford Foundation’s interest in Asia. Their concerns manifested themselves in large-scale investments in practical and policy-oriented research programs as well as in “basic research” designed to generate the basis of longer-term useful knowledge.

  The utilitarian nature of Ford’s interest in Asian studies was manifested from the moment that the foundation commissioned Stanford University to conduct a confidential survey of educational provision in that area at U.S. universities in 1951.22 Rowan Gaither noted that Ford wanted to develop knowledge of “critical foreign areas” and to present such knowledge to “decision-makers and the public,” fearing that U.S. foreign policy would “be inadequate unless our knowledge…—political, economic and social—is increased, utilized and disseminated.”23 The original grant awarded totaled $35,000.

  Documents associated with the Asian studies survey are replete with a definite understanding of the political power of mobilized knowledge. In one memorandum, Dyke Brown, a key Ford official, suggested that the idea was “to mobilize Western resources of knowledge with respect to Asia… [because]… Asia is critical in world developments” and because “the Soviet Union has capitalized on Asia’s revolutionary convulsions to the disadvantage of the West.” The memorandum went on to argue that “time is short and our existing knowledge must be applied effectively and with dispatch.” As the existing expertise in the United States on Asia was scattered across the country, Ford pressed for “an integrated approach… to enlist the cooperation of individuals and institutions in a plan to mobilize the materials, knowledge, and talent available.” Further on, the memo again noted the “need… for mobilizing scattered and inadequate resources… to [meet] the demands of a rapidly changing cold-war world.” This could best be done by constructing networks of highly motivated American scholars24 in strong departments and institutions undertaking research on Asia and linked with relevant individuals and groups in Asia. Knowledge development and mobilization, in an integrated and planned manner, Ford recognized, lay at the heart of its mission both to aid U.S. foreign policy makers and in the “struggle for the minds of men in Asia.” One of the aims of the Asian studies project was to promote better understanding of “Western ideals” in Asia, which could only occur through studies of the “Asian mind”; hence, studies were proposed that would research “Patterns of Thinking… [and]… Radicalism and Conservatism in Modern Asia.”25

  Ford’s own extensive connections with Washington, D.C., policy makers were reinforced by those of Stanford University. For instance, Stanford’s proposed study of “Strategy and Tactics of Soviet Political Policies Toward Asia” aroused great interest in the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Air Force, and the State Department, with the latter keen that Robert North, a historian at Stanford, who was among the originators of the proposal, work there on the project.26 Indeed, the proposal received State Department advice at an early stage, focused as it was on assisting official policy.27 Additionally, there were numerous scholars serving the American state, such as the historian William L. Langer (CIA), or very close to state officials, such as Clyde Kluckohn (Harvard’s Russian Research Center), to advise Ford on how to develop its strategy and research programs and on the precise character of its liaison with state officials, to maximize benefits for both parties. This was scholarship in the service of the American state, privately financed but located entirely within the mindset of officialdom.

  The Ford-commissioned survey of Asian studies showed significant strength at certain institutions—such as Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, and California—but a general picture of unsystematic subject coverage. The report recommended the immediate reconstruction and strengthening of key centers of Asian studies, which the Ford Foundation’s trustees vigorously supported. Ford’s International Training and Research division (ITR) was the principal source of area studies funding to U.S. universities, spending approximately $52 million from 1951–1961 to “increase American understanding of the unfamiliar areas of the world… [and]… to increase the number of Americans with special competence in these areas.” Additionally, ITR invested almost $29 million on university graduate programs in foreign affairs for professional engineers, educators, lawyers, and so on. In just ten years, ITR funded sixteen universities that constructed thirty-three foreign-area training and research programs.28 From 1951 to 1966, ITR expended $258,444,169 on area studies, language development, strengthening professional fields, and the administration of foreign academics.29 In Indonesia, Ford spent $1.8 million on developing English-language teaching facilities alone, from 1951 to 1956, a
nd helped establish ten English-language centers for training 1,500 secondary-school teachers. Indonesia later adopted English as its second language. The foundation also invested over $1 million in Indonesian technical educational facilities.30 Between 1951 and 1962, Ford invested $10.1 million in technical assistance programs in Indonesia.31

  Ford, alongside the Rockefeller Foundation, constructed Southeast Asia studies programs at American universities. For example, in 1957, Ford funded a China studies center at Harvard with a grant of $300,000, in addition granting $125,000 for training teachers in East Asian studies. At the same time, Ford awarded $579,000 to Cornell, of which $300,000 was allocated for Southeast Asia studies, $75,000 for China studies, and $204,000 for field-training facilities in the Chinese language. On the latter grant, Ford reported that “the universities concerned and the State Department concur in the recommendation that this grant be made.”32 Such foreign-areas training could often best be done in the United States, because of superior facilities and because many countries were “sensitive to being the object of foreign study.”33

  Additionally, Ford considered it vital to help create an Asian studies community by providing, from 1954, hundreds of thousands of dollars for an Association for Asian Studies (AAS) that would hold annual conferences and construct a forum where scholars could meet “government and business officials active in these fields whose recommendations can influence university and government programs.” By 1965, the AAS boasted three thousand members, a quarterly newsletter, and a prestigious review, the Journal of Asian Studies.34

  Ford Foundation officials wanted to produce “power” through “separate generating plants”: strengthening extant centers, developing new ones better tailored to current needs, and linking them to one another and to their overseas “cousin” institutions. In addition, however, the networks would include government agencies and public-opinion experts. “Such… [mechanisms] would enable the Asian specialist to be used for the major purposes of the national interest.” In short, networks as power technology.35

  CORNELL MODERN INDONESIA PROJECT (MIP)

  Ford allocated $224,000 to the Modern Indonesia Project (MIP) at Cornell University in 1954. In particular, Ford was keen to construct a social science wing within Indonesian studies at Cornell, with a special focus on field-based research and study. The political-ideological and Cold War character of the neutral and academic-sounding Modern Indonesia Project (MIP) is indicated by its original name: “Techniques of Soviet Indoctrination and Control in Indonesia.”36 It was a program of surveillance (albeit academic) and study of the power structures, political movements, and decision makers in Indonesia, especially at the level of the village—where the majority of Indonesians lived. Elite and mass-based research was fundamental to this project, which was based on consultations with the CIA and State Department. Over the next decade, MIP produced numerous books, papers, articles, and reports. Those publications were circulated within the Indonesian and American scholarly communities, to official foreign policy makers in both countries, and to a broader public through the American press. In addition, MIP researchers were in contact with official U.S. foreign policy makers about their experiences in Indonesia. Most importantly, the Modern Indonesia Project—and other Ford-sponsored research initiatives in Indonesia and the United States—fostered, constructed, developed, and consolidated a nascent modernizing knowledge network that was articulated with the national state apparatus, American academia, and the general anticommunist objectives of U.S. foreign policy.

  It was the job of Professor George McT. Kahin,37 the director of Cornell’s Southeast Asia program and a man close to key Indonesian academics like Sumitro and Djokosotono at the University of Indonesia, to operationalize Ford’s plans,38 which had previously been approved by the CIA.39 His first worry was that the project, as it stood, as “a study of Communist movements… per se would arouse Indonesian suspicions” and jeopardize future work in the country. He was also concerned with a directive he had received from Ford’s Swayzee “not to identify the Indonesia Study as a Ford Foundation project.”40 In addition, Kahin pointed out that a direct study of communism in Indonesia—to which he referred as “the problem” or main focus of the programme—would miss the essential fact that communist strategy was to “work within and capture… key positions in existing mass organizations.”41 The foundation accepted Kahin’s concerns and suggested “that even those obsessed with the importance of Indonesian communism could understand it better within the context of the whole range of that country’s political life.”42 Kahin then outlined an eight-part project encompassing detailed studies of central government, parliament, local government, labor and youth organizations, Islamic parties, the two major communist parties, the Socialist Party, and the Chinese community in Indonesia. In each and every part of these studies, the central concern was to collect data on communists and their opponents and to evaluate their role, strength, and influence. This was practical endorsement by Kahin that communism was the central problem of Indonesia—precisely the point of Paul Langer’s initial aims, as endorsed by the Ford Foundation, for the project.43

  In the study of central government, special attention was proposed for the influence of the Communist Party (KPI), especially in key ministries such as Internal Affairs, Labor, and Foreign Affairs and in the President’s Cabinet Secretariat. This would be coordinated with the local government study, “again with close attention to the role of the Communists… [especially] in areas where Communist strength was most important.”44 Among labor organizations, special place was given to the Estates Workers Union and the unions of oil-field workers. Serious attention was proposed for Islamic parties, especially “the important left wing (Religious Socialist) of the Masjumi, rivals of the Communists.” Research on the Chinese community focused on their relationship to the state, PKI, and international communism.45

  Kahin planned to put the separate studies under the leadership of highly motivated academics working with graduate students with linguistic skills and area studies and disciplinary expertise, whom he would coordinate, mentor, and assist.46 It was clear to Kahin, as an experienced “participant-observer,” that special care was needed in selecting appropriate scholars: expertise alone was not the only consideration; it was equally important that researchers develop “rapport” with Indonesians and gain their confidence. This was most pointedly emphasized in the study of the Chinese community. Kahin suggested that the study be led by a man who would spend two years in Indonesia, because of the “sensitivity of the Indonesian Chinese to any probing in the political sphere.” In his first year, the scholar should conduct a “general sociological survey”—assisted by a research student interested in the Chinese family—

  and only thereafter come to grips with the more strictly political questions. The first year could serve the dual purpose of winning him the sort of confidence he would need in order to get answers to questions of a political nature and at the same time give him an over-all understanding of Chinese society in Indonesia which would be extremely helpful in undertaking the more political study during the second year.

  Kahin’s scholarly skills, it is clear, served both scholarly and political ends,47 a dilemma central to much policy-oriented research.

  Kahin’s first report to the Ford Foundation—covering the initial fifteen months of the Indonesia research program—provides a flavor of its direct and indirect effects. It shows, at its broadest level, the success of MIP in developing collaborative relationships with important elements of the Indonesian state—including the national police force—and with faculty of the University of Indonesia and Indonesian graduate students. In addition, MIP developed a number of spinoff research projects and even provided small-scale funding for other field researchers whose interests dovetailed with theirs. Finally, the Cornell MIP had direct effects on police training and local politics.

  At the suggestion of Ford officials, Kahin had allocated the bulk of the Indonesian field research to
local scholars, as Western academics were often regarded with “suspicion.” The effects were twofold: first, this helped develop better-trained and experienced Indonesian social scientists and created a stronger indigenous social-scientific community, doubling its original size. Its second and equally important effect was political: it helped close “the appallingly wide gap between the small Western-educated elite and the masses of the peasantry.”48 Both processes were to have long-term effects on Indonesian society and politics.

  To a certain extent, the University of Indonesia (UI) became a client of the Cornell program. From its financial resources, MIP subsidized five “substantial projects” at UI, the largest being “a study of the socio-political organization and articulation of twenty-three Javanese and thirty Sumatran villages.” Both MIP and UI, however, maintained the fiction that costs would be shared equally between them, as it made “sponsorship of these projects… politically much more acceptable if outside money is not seen as being dominant.” Kahin’s report makes clear, however, that the Indonesians are “relying upon the Cornell Modern Indonesia Project to finance all or nearly all of this research.”49 These arrangements were endorsed by all appropriate UI officials, including its president, Djohan; the dean of the faculty of law and social science, Professor Djokosutono; and the dean of the faculty of economics, Sumitro.50