This event has been postponed. Check the event page on our website for an updated date.
Location Note
1219 International Affairs Building
420 W 118th St, 12th floor
This event is in-person for CUID card holders only. In-person attendees must be in compliance with Columbia University's health protocols for returning to campus. Pre-registration, valid CUID card, valid green pass, and face covering are required for admittance. All other attendees may participate virtually on Zoom or YouTube.
Please join the Harriman Institute for a discussion with David Wolff (Hokkaido University) on the early history of the Russian Institute and the Rockefeller Foundation's impact on global Slavic Studies. David C. Engerman (Yale University) will serve as discussant, with Valentina Izmirlieva, Director of the Harriman Institute, as moderator.
It is well known that the Harriman Institute’s predecessor, the Russian Institute, established in 1946, was the first area studies center in the United States devoted to multidisciplinary teaching of and research on Russia. David Engerman’s path-breaking monograph Know Your Enemy relates the focused philanthropy with which the Rockefeller Foundation began to support area studies in the 1930s, encouraged innovations during World War II, and finally poured over a million dollars into the Columbia project, making it preeminent.
What is less well known is that the Rockefeller Foundation was not only interested in establishing area studies in the US for patriotic purposes, but also made grants in the late 1940s and 1950s to set up or strengthen area studies centers all over the “free world” in order to provide cross-cutting knowledge to policy communities everywhere in the hope that better information would lead to better international relations. These connections radiating from New York can be construed as an additional Cold War front. In this project, Slavic Studies would have a special place, and Columbia, the flagship of American Slavic studies, would serve as both model for and host to leading scholars with leading roles at their home institutions. This research makes use of Rockefeller Foundation and Columbia University archives, as well as memoir materials from Japan and Germany.
Ways to Attend
Register for Zoom Webinar
Watch on YouTube
In-person (CUID Only): Reserve Your Seat (see button below)
