HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Weatherheads' Gift To Support CFIA

The Center for International Affairs (CFIA) is receiving $21 million from Albert J. Weatherhead III '50, B '52, Celia S. Weatherhead, and the Weatherhead Foundation.

In honor of the Weatherheads' extraordinary gift, Harvard is renaming the institution the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. The Weatherheads' cumulative giving to Harvard ranks as the third largest ever to the University from a living donor.

"The Weatherheads' magnificent gift could not be more welcome or come at a better time," said President Neil L. Rudenstine. "We are in the midst of an unusually dynamic and exciting time for international studies across Harvard, and the CFIA continues to play a leading role in bringing serious, collaborative research to bear on important policy issues that cross national and regional boundaries. This new endowment support will greatly strengthen the CFIA's foundations at a moment of real opportunity. We are extremely grateful to the Weatherheads for their generosity and for the confidence they've shown in the ability of our faculty and students to contribute to the understanding and conduct of international affairs."

The gift enables Harvard to integrate its vast intellectual resources to improve and deepen understanding of the complex problems that confront the world community. The new endowment funds will strengthen the CFIA in three primary ways: it will expand Harvard's problem-solving research on major world issues, enable the University to train future world leaders, and further Harvard's effort to develop the next generation of international relations scholars.

Jorge I. Dominguez, director of the Center, added: "The Weatherheads vastly expand our capacity to develop and disseminate fundamental research, pertinent to the tasks that citizens and decisionmakers face everywhere. It's as simple as this: more scholars will spend more time on more issues, and this we anticipate will result in more insight and more solutions -- all thanks to the Weatherheads."

Initiative addresses complex issues

Specifically, the gift establishes the Weatherhead International Relations Initiative, under which teams of scholars and practitioners from around the world will collaborate over the course of a year and focus their work on common themes.

Faculty from across the University will assemble teams of scholars and practitioners to conduct complex large-scale research on cutting-edge topics in international affairs. The Weatherheads remove many existing impediments to such collaboration by providing funds for faculty research leaves; visiting scholars; practitioners in government, business, and other professions; and for workshops, conferences, and course development.

Dominguez offered examples of the kinds of issues that Weatherhead Initiative participants will likely explore: the coordination of exchange rates and other macroeconomic policies in Europe, the standards for assessment of and response to human rights emergencies, the prospects for war and peace in the post-Cold War world, and the fate of regional trade integration and its impact on a global trading regime.

As has often happened in the CFIA's history, it is probable that some of the research teams' findings will be adopted by foreign policymakers in governments around the world.

Fellows Program strengthened

An additional component of the Weatherheads' commitment provides for an endowment to strengthen the Center's Fellows Program, which annually draws to Harvard from around the world approximately 20 senior diplomats, military officers, journalists, politicians, and other nonacademic professionals active in the field of international affairs.

"The founders of the CFIA believed that Harvard talent could help reshape thinking about the world in which we live, but they did not want the scholars to work in isolation," said Dominguez. "So they presciently established the Fellows Program to bring exceptional senior practitioners to Harvard to work in concert with the faculty."

The Fellows Program has attracted such a distinguished group over the years that its list of alumni reads like a "Who's Who" of the diplomatic corps. Fellows include ambassadors to and from countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America.

"With the Weatherhead funds, we will be able to develop a substantially different -- and better -- Fellows program," said Dominguez. "The end of the Cold War has dramatically increased the number of significant players in international affairs, both in terms of the number of countries expressing their own clear voice and interest, and in the range of institutions whose leaders have powerful influence on the course of world events. These funds will enable us to bring together a class of Fellows much more reflective of the world at large, including countries traditionally too poor to nominate Fellows, and institutions like finance ministries that have moved from being domestic to international players."

Harvard Academy to expand

The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies also receives support from the Weatherheads' gift. The Academy will be able to appoint more scholars, develop a fuller program to make use of their talents, and integrate them closely with other Center programs.

According to Academy Director Samuel P. Huntington, social scientists in area studies -- especially those whose areas of expertise are those regions of the world requiring mastery of difficult languages -- are chosen as Academy Scholars.

"We invite those who show promise of becoming leading scholars at major universities," said Huntingon, who is the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor. "I am so pleased that the Weatherheads responded to our need to expand Harvard's support for first-rate young scholars. The broad academic community -- including generations of teachers and students -- benefits when we train the country's future top scholars in a way that combines thorough disciplinary and area specializations."

Chair of the Overseers' Visiting Committee to the CFIA, Sidney R. Knafel '52, MBA '54, commented on the gift as a whole: "The role of all the research centers at Harvard has shifted to higher prominence in recent years both as seats of searching scholarship and also as training grounds for midcareer practitioners and Harvard students. These ambitions require very substantial support if they are going to be realized and then maintained with the characteristic Harvard standard of excellence. I am just thrilled that the Weatherheads have identified and provided for the CFIA a permanent foundation so that the Center -- one of the most extraordinary parts of Harvard -- may prosper in making a worldwide impact on international relations."

Tradition of significant contribution

Since its founding by Harvard faculty in 1958, the Center for International Affairs has sought to provide a multidisciplinary environment for policy-relevant research on international issues.

Having participated in nearly every capacity at the Center since his graduate student days in the 1960s, Jorge Dominguez became its fifth director in 1994 -- he is also Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs.

Douglas Dillon '31, LLD '59 (hon.), and the Dillon Fund have provided enormous support for the Center for International Affairs over the years, including establishing a chair for the Center's director and creating an endowment for faculty research.

Dominguez, besides overseeing the myriad activities of the CFIA, has been studying how democratic government in Latin America leads to economic improvements, developing a theory that turns conventional wisdom on its head. "Before, everyone thought that democratic government in Latin America impeded strong economies," explained Dominguez. "I've found just the opposite to be true."

Dominguez pointed to a long line of distinction at the CFIA, starting notably with the Center's first associate director. "Henry Kissinger began two CFIA traditions: public service and groundbreaking research that illuminates international affairs," said Dominguez.

At Harvard during the 1950s, Kissinger presented a milestone analysis of how the introduction of nuclear weapons into geopolitics impacted foreign policy decisions. He subsequently served as national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Now, it is a regular occurrence for Center faculty and Fellows to spend time in Washington, D.C., as senior government officials and advisers. [See accompanying chart.]

Center faculty from the 1950s through today have developed pioneering analyses and original concepts from deterrence (Thomas Schelling) to theories of democratization (Samuel Huntington and Jorge Dominguez), transnational security (Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye), the role of the multinational corporation (Raymond Vernon), and civil society (Robert Putnam).

Academia, of course, is another beneficiary of CFIA training and research. Many former CFIA graduate students now teach at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Business School, the Kennedy School of Government, and the Law School.

Countless others have assumed tenured positions at universities around the world.

Center directors have personified one of the institution's primary accomplishments: the development of a body of scholarly work whose analyses and conclusions are of relevance and use to the world beyond academia. Huntington is a good example of the many highly acclaimed scholars affiliated with the Center. His book Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (which is being translated into 20 foreign languages) provoked a lively debate in international foreign policy circles with its assertion that cultures, not economics or ideologies, will be the major source of conflict in the post-Cold War era.

"The impact of Huntington's scholarship is astonishing," reported Dominguez. "Just to give one example, his book Political Order and the Changing Society [1967], which established a framework for examining what came to be known as the 'third world,' was the single most frequently assigned volume for graduate courses in comparative politics throughout the country for decades following its publication."

Given that more than 230 faculty, visiting scholars, practitioners, students, and staff are associated with the Center, representing in an average year about 35 nationalities, additional contributions to global politics from the enhanced Weatherhead Center for International Affairs may be expected.

"The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs -- with its extraordinary record of scholarship and a formidable network of people all over the world -- can now look forward to a very bright future, thanks to Harvard's good friends, Al and Celia," concluded Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy R. Knowles.