Taking on the World's Repressive Regimes: The Ford Foundation's International Human Rights Policies and Practices

Taking on the World’s Repressive Regimes

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Taking on the World’s Repressive Regimes: The Ford Foundation’s International Human Rights Policies and Practices

William Korey

TAKING ON THE WORLD’S REPRESSIVE REGIMES Copyright © William Korey, 2007. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978-1-4039-6171-6 ISBN-10: 1-4039-6171-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Korey, William, 1922– Taking on the world's repressive regimes : the Ford Foundation's international human rights policies and practices / by William Korey. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-4039-6171-6 ISBN-10: 1-4039-6171-9 1. Human rights. 2. Ford Foundation—History. I. Title. JC571.K597 2007 323.06'01—dc22 2006103204 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: August 2007 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

To Diana Marx, my loving and devoted companion.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

ix

1

Origins and Background

1

2

Chile: A Breakthrough in Foundation Policy

25

3

Foundation Policy across Latin America

47

4

The “Human Rights Lobby”

69

5

U.S. Helsinki Watch: The Foundation in Eastern Europe

89

6

The “Foundation for European Intellectual Cooperation”

119

7

Taking Risks on South Africa

139

8

The Rejection of “Fatalism”

161

9

A Historic Role

185

10

Women’s Rights: “A Position of Empowerment”

209

11

From Nairobi to Beijing

229

12

A Stumble and Strides Forward

249

Notes

271

Bibliography

299

Index

307

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A half-dozen years since 2001 have gone into the preparation of this work, which was preceded by, and, indeed, stimulated by my last human rights volume, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was while researching that work that I learned that the Ford Foundation was the principal funder of almost all major human-rights nongovernmental organizations. In the early stage of the current study, I was greatly assisted by Catherine Fitzpatrick, who was serving at the time as director of the International League for Human Rights, having earlier been the research director of the U.S. Helsinki Watch. At my request, she researched the files of the Ford Foundation Archives on U.S. Helsinki Watch and Americas Watch and provided me with a basic overview of their material. In addition, she accompanied me on several NGO interviews of Ford Foundation and nongovernmental officials. An invaluable source of background information on human rights generally and women’s rights specifically was Felice Gaer, director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, on whose Advisory Council I participated. She has served me well on the current study with considerable advice and suggestions. The fact that she had worked for the Ford Foundation on human-rights issues in the seventies and early eighties proved most helpful. Throughout my research in the valuable Ford Foundation Archives, I was enormously assisted by Alan Divack, the former foundation archivist, and his assistant, Anthony Maloney. Divack’s detailed knowledge of the archives cannot be equaled and I am most grateful for the guidance he provided in expediting my path through the archival files. Within the Ford Foundation, too, extraordinarily helpful has been Larry Cox, who served for ten years as the foundation’s principal human-rights officer. He was unusually attentive in arranging interviews with high foundation officials and he provided me with pertinent documentation. In prior years, the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation was always an institution from which I might seek modest funding for research projects. This was especially the case when Bob Crane was its president. He is no longer chief executive of that philanthropy, having moved to the Jeht Foundation. Still, as a board member of the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, he remains

x

Ac k n ow l e d g m e n ts

in a position to be helpful. And he has performed that function once again, and I am most appreciative. An especially warm and grateful “thank you” is extended herewith to the gifted and talented typist of this manuscript, Suzanne Garnet, who managed to juggle the reading of hieroglyphics with rearing a family, including two lovely, if somewhat noisy, children. I am deeply indebted to her constancy.

Chapter

1

O r i g i n s a n d Bac kg r o u n d

I n the West, “Never Again” became the popular slogan, especially of the

young, once Hitlerism and the Nazi war machine were smashed. No one wanted to experience or witness again the horrors of genocide that had reached a climactic point in the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century. Civilization could not tolerate the apparatus of hate, whether the targets were racial, ethnic, or religious groups. Nor could it countenance the machinery of discrimination that led to horrendous forms of barbarism. To shut the door on the various forms of hate and bigotry and their excrescences was seen as the fundamental challenge to the international community in the post-war world. The challenge found early expression in the creation of the United National Charter, which was basically a treaty in which human rights occupied a central place, along with the maintenance of peace and the promotion of economic progress. Once ratified by the memberstates of the UN in 1945, the Charter prompted the drive for a Universal Declaration of Human Rights of which Eleanor Roosevelt was the principal architect. It was unanimously adopted on the historic day of December 10, 1948, encompassing thirty articles that embraced the gamut of the human rights issues of the day. The phrase “human rights” would soon be paired with “never again” to express humankind’s aspiration for a new era. At first, it was only an aspiration, as the phrase was rarely used in political discourse and in press reportage. Rarely did the phrase appear in the major newspapers of the day. Nor was much attention paid in the media to the special UN bodies dealing with human rights—the UN Commission on Human Rights or its SubCommission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. The years of the late 1940s through the 1960s hardly, if ever, saw the phrase “human rights” take on life and meaning, whether in diplomatic discourse or in the decision-making process of foreign policy. Of course, certain nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like the International League for Human Rights, the International Commission of Jurists, and the American Jewish Committee, placed human rights at the center of their policy concerns, but rarely, if ever, would they find an echo in public attention. It was hardly surprising, then, that major standard works

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on international relations would not focus on the subject. The principal basic volume on international affairs in academia well illuminates the silence embracing the subject of human rights. Hans Morgenthau’s Politics among Nations never mentioned the phrase, nor even referred to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its first five editions, the last of which was published in 1973.1 Not until the book’s sixth edition, published in 1985, after Morgenthau’s death, was a section of several pages entitled, “Human Rights and International Morality” added.2 But the new material, in keeping with Morgenthau’s overall view, insisted upon “the impossibility of enforcing the universal application of human rights.”3 At the same time, an examination of the leading American journal on international relations, Foreign Affairs, found it to be devoid of academic articles on the subject of human rights.4 Not until the spring of 1967 did this key journal carry a single article on human rights. A new NGO, created in 1961, altered the broad international prospective. Amnesty International, headquartered in London but with member branches quickly sprouting everywhere, began to expose torture and other human rights abuses in the hidden crevices of repressive regimes. Its well-researched reports and documents, calling for the release of “prisoners of conscience,” began to concentrate public attention on critical human rights issues.5 International recognition was shortly forthcoming. Amnesty International was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977, a rare acknowledgment of the work of a human rights international NGO. Earlier that same year, a new U.S. administration in Washington, DC—the Carter administration—declared human rights the centerpiece of its foreign policy. Still, the early seventies would be distinguished less by the advancement of human rights than by its repression. Much of the last quarter of the twentieth century would be characterized by massive killings, including genocide, torture, disappearances, and racism, along with ethnic and religious discrimination. Three vast institutional structures emerged as the powerful expression of general repression. The oldest and most elaborate political apparatus designed for repression was the Soviet-dominated totalitarian power in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his domestic and Eastern European colleagues imposed it, particularly during and after 1949. With Stalin’s death four years later, a “thaw” crept through the frozen blocks of society, permitting a certain temporary easing of harsh repression, but which resumed in its intensity during the late sixties and early seventies. Running parallel to the ruthless repression in Eastern Europe were stunning new developments in Latin America where electoral democracies had prevailed for a long time, even while economic impoverishment held many in its grasp. To thwart social outbursts, the sixties saw the emergence of harsh military rule in several Latin countries, a development that reached a climactic point with the military seizure of power in democratic Chile in September 1973. Authoritarian right-wing military rule would also embrace other democratic societies in Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. The elements

Origins and Background

3

of repression, so characteristic of totalitarian Eastern Europe, would now embrace authoritarian regimes in which military dictatorships replaced democratic rule. If anything, violence against human rights, whether through extrajudicial killings, torture, disappearances, or discrimination, reached new heights. Significant parts of two great continents now expressed the very antithesis of human rights. The virulence of brutal repression would reach out to the southern tip of a third continent, Africa, at the same time, during the mid1970s. South Africa may have still been characterized as a democracy in terms of constitutional provisions for rights that could be exercised by its white communities; however, those rights and privileges only applied to this numerically thin slice of society and not to the far larger nonwhite communities of blacks, Indians, and those of mixed race. If apartheid as the foundation of society was organized much earlier, it was deepened and intensified in the seventies. Thus, the South African state assumed an authoritarian character with respect to the complete subordination of the nonwhite communities. The overwhelming and overpowering challenges of the very antithesis of human rights could not but undermine the fundamental themes and goals of the post-war era. Human rights was hardly an aspiration any longer; rather, the very opposite prevailed in broad segments of the globe and was spreading. “Never Again” seemed to be only a formula to be dismissed and discarded. Yet, in hardly fifteen years after the seventies, the hardened state structures of repression would all be overthrown. By 1989–91, only a decade before the twentieth century ended, to the relief of millions, totalitarianism and authoritarianism had collapsed or, in the case of South Africa, was near collapse. Here, free elections would quickly follow, extending in 1994 to the country’s nonwhite communities. Thus, by the end of the century, freedom would embrace the formerly repressive regimes of Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Africa. Still, it could not be said that human rights were being fully implemented everywhere and, therefore, were in the ascendant. Humankind would be confronted in the nineties with the horrors of genocide in the former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda, and in parts of Sudan, the latter extending to Darfur in the twenty-first century. Nonetheless, the hope for the expansion of human rights had been rekindled while the dominant institutions of repression during the latter part of the twentieth century lay in the dust. Significantly, it was the Ford Foundation, through a new program on human rights adopted in 1975, that independently undertook the task of confronting the three giant institutions of repression in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and played an important role in helping destroy each of them. Coincidentally, the demise of the three institutions occurred at approximately the same time. The Chilean military dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet came to an end in 1990 with the election of a new government. Several years earlier, in 1982–83, its companion military repressive regime in Argentina had collapsed after a short war with Britain over the Falkland

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Islands, and it was followed by democratic elections. The latter half of 1989 was distinguished in Eastern Europe by several democratic revolutions, most notably in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and East Germany. The former Soviet empire lay in ruins. Within the Soviet Union itself, democratic stirrings would find increasing expression even as major nationalities of the Union drove for independence. In December 1991, the once powerful Soviet state itself disintegrated into a dozen separate nations. Finally, South Africa’s most popular prisoner-activist, Nelson Mandela, was released from life imprisonment in February 1991, and he was soon thereafter elected president of the African National Congress. Preparations for the first free general election began almost immediately, leading to Mandela becoming president in April 1994. It is the remarkable role played by the Ford Foundation in helping bring about the destruction of the powerful repressive military and political institutions that is the subject of the next eight chapters of this work. The bulk of the foundation’s effort was not accomplished directly; rather, it was achieved, indirectly although deliberately, through assistance to various nongovernmental organizations, both local and international. Precisely how and in what way these tasks were undertaken is given detailed attention and is drawn mainly from foundation archives and from other primary sources. The extraordinary story of the Ford Foundation in action to realize human rights objectives is an unusually dramatic one that has never before been told with such detail. This is very much an unlikely story. The Ford Foundation did not begin with a human rights goal, and, indeed, did not sound human rights themes for nearly forty years after its creation in 1936. Its beginning was quite ordinary and prosaic. Its principal founders were Henry Ford, the ingenious builder of the Ford Model-T and the great Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan, together with his son, Edsel. But the primary motivation for the foundation’s establishment, as with many other family foundations, was Henry Ford’s “concern for preserving the [Ford Motor] Company intact.”6 By creating the foundation as a tax exempt organization and bequeathing the nonvoting shares of the company to the foundation, the family would not have to be burdened by huge taxes on the company’s profits. Edsel appears to have had an additional motivation: to transfer more of his wealth to philanthropic purposes. He had been frequently distressed to learn how some of his friends or their heirs were forced to liquidate at depressed prices so that they might raise required tax funds. The result was often the divestiture of family control of the family’s business. Clearly, moral considerations did not occupy the thinking of the foundation’s creators. Nothing in the foundation’s origins echoed the following famous comment by Andrew Carnegie: “The man who dies rich dies disgraced.”7 Nor were the conduct and belief of Henry Ford of more principled motivations. That human rights did not interest Henry Ford in the slightest was extraordinarily displayed in the publication by his personally-owned

Origins and Background

5

Dearborn Independent of the most notorious of anti-Semitic publications, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which had been forged by the Tsarist secret police in the early twentieth century in Russia. Beginning in November 1920, the Dearborn Independent published excerpts from the Protocols highlighting a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world by the manipulation of banks they allegedly controlled.8 The publication was intended for a mass audience, with two hundred thousand to five hundred thousand copies produced for the next eighteen months. Ford was so enthused about the product that he arranged for his Dearborn outlet to print a 250–page paperback anthology of the anti-Semitic articles for a mere twenty-five cents per copy. The anthology carried the title, The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem. The booklet would become widely known in various circles of American bigotry. Its title, The International Jew, captured the essence of the hatemonger’s image of the dispersed Jewish outsider. Especially striking, as Neil Baldwin, the researcher of the Henry Ford role in promoting anti-Semitism, noted, was the impact that the automobile maker had upon the Nazis as early as 1922 when Adolf Hitler was making his first coup attempt in Munich, Germany. Baldwin’s research showed that Hitler’s office in Munich in that year displayed numerous copies of a German translation of the Ford book with a preface that lauded Ford for the antiSemitic service that he provided America. One year later, Hitler was reported by Baldwin as saying that he “looked to Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing fascist movement in America.” Later, in 1938, Hitler, now as “Fuehrer” of Greater Germany, personally bestowed upon Ford the highest award to a foreigner, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle.9 It was given on Ford’s seventy-fifth birthday. Relations with Hitler were symptomatic of but one aspect of Ford’s pronounced bigotry. He also cultivated a relationship with a wellknown domestic anti-Semite, Gerald L. K. Smith, who moved to Detroit in 1937 and, according to Baldwin, was provided “with Ford’s subsidy at the elegant Detroit Leland Hotel.”10 In addition, Ford extended him “financial backing,” enabling Smith “to continue his widely heard radio speeches.” Significantly, Ford’s relations with Smith took place only one year after he had created the Ford Foundation. It is important to note, observed Baldwin toward the end of his study, that Ford’s family descendants later sought to make amends for Henry Ford’s personal legacy of anti-Semitism. Beginning with his grandson Henry Ford II, the family extended to Israel considerable economic credits and generously supported Jewish charities at home and abroad. Anti-Semitism was but one aspect of a perspective that would be considered antithetical to even a minimum standard of human rights. A second indication was hostility to worker trade union rights policy. Trade unions were held in total disdain by Henry Ford and he sought to ward them off with the most virulent of means. His agent in this effort was Harry Bennett, who would be identified as “chief troubleshooter” and who served as head of the Ford Service Department, which functioned as the company’s strike-breaking

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Taking on the World's Repressive Regimes/William Korey

instrument. A major historian of the Ford Motor Company called Bennett’s service unit “the largest private police force in the world.”11 At its peak, it totaled some three thousand men. Charged with the responsibility of maintaining maximum work discipline, the Bennett agents operated everywhere, seeking to sniff out any hint of strike advocacy or union agitation. Any indication of such intent would lead to the summary firing of the worker. And it made no difference whether such views were articulated on the work floor or a distance away.12 In a word, the agents were often spies and strikebreakers. Toughness was the mark of Bennett’s service employees. Many were hired athletes with appropriate looks of roughneck fighters. They were dubbed “plug-uglies.” Bennett’s network was not restricted to the Ford plant. All of Dearborn was seen as its territory and indeed, all of the state of Michigan were targets of the unit’s investigators, and their methods were hardly polite. Beatings were rather pronounced even as they were in violation of the Wagner Labor Act, enacted by the U.S. Congress to help legitimize trade union activity. So powerful had Bennett become that a former high functionary of the Ford Foundation, Waldemar Nielson, observed that by 1945, “management [of the motor company] had fallen into the hands of a gang of hired thugs under director Harry Bennett, long time head of Ford’s private NKVD [Soviet secret police].”13 At the very beginning, the foundation’s income was extremely modest—a twenty-five thousand dollar gift from Edsel in 1936. But by the end of the year, cash donations by the family brought the total to almost two million dollars. The potential of the foundation became evident with the drawing up of the respective wills of Henry and Edsel in July 1936. The bulk of their stock in the company was transferred to the foundation. Thus was safeguarded in perpetuity family control over a vast industrial enterprise. The contributions to the foundation by Henry and Edsel would continue after its founding. Before Henry Ford’s death in April 1947 at eighty-three years of age, he had given it one and one-half million of his shares in nonvoting stock. With the addition of Edsel’s gifts of stock—he had died in 1943—the foundation, by 1950, held a total of over three million shares of the Ford Motor Company’s stock. Even with this potentially huge source of funding, the operation of the foundation was, in the earliest years, extraordinarily modest. A historian of the foundation found that “the first decade of its life was passed in virtual obscurity.”14 Clearly, it was not intended to be the great philanthropy that it later would become. No grand design was set forth when it was chartered in January 1936 as a nonprofit Michigan corporation. It could hardly hold a candle at that time to the Rockefeller or Carnegie Foundations, both of which were widely known. If it engendered little publicity, it was because there was little about which to boast. Indeed, during the first decade and a half of its life, the foundation did not publish an annual report nor did it disclose much, if anything, about either its income or spending.

Origins and Background

7

In fact, the foundation, in its early years, was seen as, and to a large extent was, a local operation. Headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, near the center of the Ford automobile factory operations, the foundation provided support for philanthropies in and near Detroit or to projects that had been and remained close to the Ford family’s concern. Ford’s grandson, who would later run the company, noted that a key reason for creating the foundation was “to provide a convenient means for carrying on the many obligations of the Ford family in education, charity and scientific progress.”15 This constituted an aim that was a far cry from what the foundation would later consider the object of its grants. Among the initial recipients were the Henry Ford Hospital, the Diocese of Michigan, the Detroit YMCA, the Detroit Institute of the Arts, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the Detroit Community Fund. Certain health charities, like the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, were also recipients. World War II prompted a series of distinctly patriotic grants. Among them was the United China Relief, Army Emergency Relief, the Navy Relief Society, and hospitality programs sponsored by the Knights of Columbus. To these were added several colleges, mainly in the Detroit area, and a host of additional charitable organizations beyond the area that were popular at the time, like Father Flanagan’s Boys House and the Boys Clubs of America. That the foundation’s focus was quite limited is evident. From 1936 to 1948, the foundation disbursed a total of about $15.5 million, about one million dollars per year. The staff was a mere one-man operation—Burt J. Craig; he had come from the Ford Motor Company. His office was in a small suite of “a nondescript” office building in downtown Detroit, and a pair of file drawers carried the records of the foundation. The three-member board of trustees was composed of largely Ford family friends and associates. Not until October 1946 was the board augmented by a prominent outsider— Karl T. Compton, the eminent nuclear physicist who was president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A dramatic transformation would come about on December 31, 1950, with the formal disbursements of the various Ford family estates. The foundation’s assets, greatly enlarged by the increased value of the motor company’s stocks, suddenly became almost one half of a billion dollars. Far outdistancing the assets of either the Rockefeller or Carnegie Foundations, it had “quietly became one of the wealthiest institutions in the world.”16 It was evident that the earlier limited horizon of foundation grants could hardly be confined to narrow goals. That the foundation must assume a major public responsibility would rather quickly dawn upon Henry Ford II, who now occupied the chairmanship of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees. He observed, “not until you work at it, do you find how hard it is to give money away and give it away wisely.”17 Fortunately, with his “open mind” and rather extensive schooling, he was not averse to having the foundation embrace a greater social responsibility. He would declare in 1952 that “business itself

8

Taking on the World's Repressive Regimes/William Korey

is learning its civic and social obligations and it can’t afford to neglect its responsibility to the whole society.” The foundation’s Board of Trustees was enlarged to include the dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Business Administration and the vice-president of a leading Detroit department store. But it was Karl Compton who would play the leading role in developing the new orientation. He recommended that a study be conducted of what other foundations have done, as well as an inquiry into what men need to live more fruitful lives. As important as focusing on these questions was the selection of a new Board of Trustees leader that would direct the survey. Compton had a single recommendation to offer—H. Rowan Gaither, a San Francisco lawyer. It was an impressive choice even if Gaither had not, as yet, acquired a significant public record. Only thirty-nine years of age, he had already served, during the war years, as assistant director of the MIT Radiation Laboratory in Cambridge, a responsibility that enabled him to play a key role in the development of radar for the armed services. He was also a member of the National Defense Research Committee. With the conclusion of World War II, he returned to his California law firm and would then become general counsel and chairman of the Rand Corporation, the nonprofit organization significantly involved with research for the Air Force in both the physical and social-science fields. In early November 1948, Gaither traveled to Detroit to meet with Henry Ford II and several other Ford associates. He was made aware that during the next two years, the income of the foundation would increase to a staggering sum as a result of the final legal settlement of the Ford estates. Far more significant was the new posture that the trustees wanted the Foundation to assume. It was to become a “truly great public trust.” The aim of assuming great responsibility to serve the public vigorously could not fail to challenge the youthful and enterprising Gaither. Of equal importance was the response given to his question of what the future relationship between the Ford family and the foundation would be. Serving at the same time both the family and the public interest could create insoluble problems. Gaither was assured that, in the near future, the Ford family would relinquish control or any kind of influence upon the foundation. Gaither’s response to whether he would take the position was an enthusiastic, “yes.” He agreed, as part of his new job of running the foundation, to undertake an inquiry into what steps and procedures were needed to achieve the objective of transforming the foundation into a major institution. Gaither indicated that he would quickly appoint a Study Committee composed of experts in various fields of knowledge that would draft plans and procedures to guide the foundation’s operations. At the same time, he committed himself to prepare a statement of purpose and policies that would be designed to distinguish the foundation, providing it with a special and unique character. That statement would be submitted to the Board of Trustees for its approval. The survey was to be completed by July 1, 1949. Henry Ford II set the frame of reference for the proposed study. According to Gaither, he

Origins and Background

9

sought to learn how the foundation might best “use its resources . . . in the interests of the public welfare.”18 The last phrase was crucial and would set the tone for later foundation plans. Ford expected that the researchers of the study would go to the general public and tap into its thinking on the subject of “public welfare.” Presumably, the experts would focus upon urgent social needs. As they would deal with human problems, Ford believed, their primary goal should be to seek out the causes or roots of problems rather than their overt symptoms. Gaither chose largely from academia: the former assistant dean of Harvard’s School of Business Administration, the chairman of the University of California’s Political Science Department, the chairman of the University of Michigan’s Department of Psychology, the president of the University of the State of New York (who was also the state’s Commissioner of Education), a top professor of medicine at Harvard, and a key professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology. While they were to prepare and approve the final study, a staff to service the academic consultants was appointed to work at the Study Committee’s new location—the Drake Hotel in New York City. Henry Ford II, on November 22, 1948, sent Gaither a letter that reflected his emphasis with the following statement: “the Foundation was established for the purpose of advancing the national welfare.”19 When the Study Committee was formally announced in a press release on December 20, 1948, the phrase “national welfare” was changed to “human welfare.”20 In wrestling with its mandate, the Study Committee made clear that it would avoid “the preconceptions and habits of existing philanthropic agencies.”21 Its members were clearly determined to chart a new and different course from similar institutions. At the same time, the committee was determined to have studies concentrate on broad issues about “critical areas where problems were most serious and where the most significant contributions to human welfare could be made.” An analyst of the Study Committee report learned that Gaither and his colleagues had traveled an extraordinary amount—250,000 miles—in order to prepare their report.22 They interviewed no less than one thousand experts and drafted an enormous quantity of mimeographed reports totaling 3400 pages. The final document, which was boiled down to 139 pages, was entitled Report of the Study for the Ford Foundation on Policy and Program. It was considered by the trustees to “represent the best thinking in the United States.” Dwight Macdonald, a historian and critic of the foundation’s early years, condescendingly referred to the study as “a work of awesome earnestness, composed in the most stately foundationese,” a term he created to mean “overwhelmingly self-evident” and drawn from “boring formulations.” The following five program areas were set forth in the study: (1) the establishment of peace; (2) the strengthening of democracy; (3) the strengthening of the economy; (4) education in a democratic society; and (5) individual behavior and human relations.

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Taking on the World's Repressive Regimes/William Korey

The first three categories would carry obvious ramifications for international affairs with a certain possible implication for the much later human rights area. But it was the following additional language in the fourth category that would become a leading theme of the foundation’s international program: “the discovery, support, and use of talent and leadership in all fields and at all ages.” The formulation would have broad consequences for Ford Foundation policy: elitism became a major guidepost of the foundation. In the foundation’s new incarnation, it ceased to be—in the language of the Study Committee—“a regional organization,” but rather was transformed into “a national institution broadly dedicated to the advancement of human welfare.”23 Rejected by the Study Committee was the “old role” of a foundation that had made contributions to charities, hospitals, and public service organizations. Gaither’s Study Committee was unique in the history of philanthropy. No philanthropic institution, including the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations, had ever undertaken a comparable survey for its objectives and aims. The Ford Foundation saw its mission as the obtaining of “the best thinking available concerning the problems of human welfare and what a foundation might do about them.”24 The period during which the Study Committee worked to shape the future of the Ford Foundation—1948–50—was described by Henry Ford II as the “turning point” in the evolution of the foundation.25 At the very same time, the foundation would emerge as the largest of general purpose philanthropic institutions. The Study Committee report was completed in 1949 but not released to the public until the following year, at which time it was referred to as a “Magna Carta.” The implication was clear: the report was seen as the touchstone for advancing democracy, for overcoming poverty, and for promoting breakthroughs in benefiting human or public welfare.26 That last phrase was taken seriously by intellectuals. Macdonald, who gave expression to it, avoided making any snide comments that ordinarily would have been his wont. If the Study Committee report reflected the foundation’s new emphasis on democracy and humanistic idealism, at the same time, and in keeping with the new outlook, the staff gave emphasis to shifting control of the foundations from the Ford family itself, along with its motor company, to the foundation’s own Board of Trustees. The staff recommendations went beyond this point in urging that the majority of the trustees be unrelated to the Ford family and have no formal or current connection with the motor company. The formal severance would be realized in April 1950, when the articles of incorporation were announced to specifically exclude the Ford family. And that action was taken at the suggestion of Henry Ford II. As for the chairmanship of the board, while Henry Ford II announced his intention to resign as soon as a successor was found, the staff, in the public interest, believed he should serve for an indefinite period. Still, family domination was to come to an end. As Gaither later noted, with the amendment action, “the trustees . . . passed control legally and irrevocably from the donor family.”

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Exclusion of the Ford family control ineluctably meant the severance of the localized program of charitable contributions. The Ford Foundation, as noted in a “Report of the Trustees of the Ford Foundation” on September 27, 1950, would steer a new course. Of the proposed “five areas for action” spelled out in the report, three would become the forerunners of its later international human rights programming. The first crucial action area was support of activities that involved “significant contributions to world peace and the establishment of a world order of law and justice.” It was the last part of the sentence that would carry decisive weight. A second action area focused upon programs “to secure greater allegiance to the basic principles of freedom and democracy.” The foundation’s approach was framed in the context of an intensifying cold war in which the Soviet Union was attempting to challenge the United States and democracy itself. Where the foundation stood in the emerging titanic clash was now made all too clear. Related to this action area was a third one that required the foundation to assume an extensive international program. The formulation of the third action area stipulated that the foundation would support activities “designed to advance the economic well-being of people everywhere and to improve economic institutions for the better realization of democratic goals.” Self-evident was the need to reach out to Third World countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. These nations were perceived as the potential battlegrounds for control of raw materials and markets. The foundation saw them as critical areas in the struggle between the Soviet Union and American democracy, which reflected the intensifying conflicts in these Third World areas. While the Study Committee report formally announced that the foundation “cannot be partisan” and must engage in “non-partisanship,” it would be enjoined “to play a unique and effective role in the . . . task of helping to realize democracy’s goals.” Clearly, nonpartisanship in the struggle against Soviet influence was not an option. Almost immediately after the new program of activities was adopted, the trustees began looking for a new president to replace Henry Ford II. This was less difficult than might be anticipated; as emphasis had already been projected for an international program, someone highly experienced in international affairs would be sought. Of course, top-level administrative experience was essential. And if that international and administrative experience related to, at least in an indirect way, advancing Western interests as opposed to Soviet interests, all the better. Paul Hoffman’s name would soon surface. He was the dynamic head of the ECA—Economic Cooperation Administration—which was the official U.S. agency for implementing the Marshall Plan in Western Europe. The business-oriented Board of Trustees was quite naturally interested in Hoffman, as he had been the head of the Studebaker Corporation prior to his administration of the critical Marshall Plan. Nor would he alienate liberals. Even though he was a Republican, he had strong leanings toward civil liberties and civil

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rights. Most important, in his job as ECA manager, he had been viewed as “a super salesman of democracy.” In 1950, he was described as “an almost unique combination of a hard-headed businessman and a practical idealist.”27 In October 1950, Hoffman indicated to Ford that he was “excited” about the planned foundation program but wondered whether Ford and the trustees “were prepared to take [public] criticism that will come if we proceed in a bold manner.” It would turn out to be a key question that his colleagues did not anticipate when some of Hoffman’s activities, or those of his appointees, would raise a storm in various communities. What complicated the negotiations with Hoffman was his insistence that the headquarters of the foundation be moved from New York to Pasadena, California, his personal home. The motivation for his insistence was the health condition of his wife. While the trustees were unsympathetic to the proposal, their strong support for Hoffman’s candidacy dissipated their opposition when they were faced by Hoffman’s determined and fixed precondition. But while the headquarters and principal leaders would be shifted, the administrative machinery, including staff, would remain in New York. (A third national office, mainly for fiscal purposes, would operate in Detroit.) Of critical importance was the authority given to Hoffman to disburse funds. As important as money disbursement was the authority given to Hoffman to appoint his four top staffers, or associate directors. The principal figure was Robert Maynard Hutchins, the “wunderkind” of the higher educational world who had served as dean of Yale University’s law school and later as president of the University of Chicago. Though very much appreciated by Hoffman, who had been a trustee for some time at the University of Chicago, Hutchins was seen as controversial, if admired, in the educational world and, particularly, the social-political world, where he was held to be arrogant, dogmatic, brash, and condescending. He viewed the 1950 Study Committee report as providing a panorama and opportunity for an especially gifted person, like himself, “to save the world.”28 With Hutchins’s special interest in education, two huge funds were created by the foundation after an initial meeting in Pasadena of top officials on January 4–5, 1951—the Fund for the Advancement of Education and the Fund for Adult Education. Though considerable funding and special staffing were required to operate these funds, which were largely devoted to the United States, a separate fund was established in keeping with the foundation’s special interest in world affairs and democracy. Created in the spring of 1951 as the East European Fund, originally entitled the Free Russia Fund, it was openly oriented to responding to the Soviet Union’s ruthless repression of freedom. Refugees and exiles from the Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe would now be helped and sustained in an overt manner. The Fund’s head would be George Kennan, a former top State Department expert on the USSR and, later, the writer of an authoritative, if pseudonymous, article on Soviet affairs for the major journal, Foreign Affairs. The

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Kennan-administered fund, unlike the other foundation funds, was located in New York City. Accompanying the new orientation of the Ford Foundation in 1950 and what helped make it possible was the enormity of its income derived from the Ford Motor Company’s stock. A later top official of the foundation, Francis X. Sutton, would write that “the sheer size of this new foundation was astounding.”29 In 1954, it spent more than four times as much money as the Rockefeller Foundation and ten times as much as the Carnegie Foundation. In 1951, it committed fifty-one million dollars in grants at a time when the president of Notre Dame University announced that the university’s total budget was $9.7 million. Or comparison could be made with the budget of UNESCO that year, which totaled $7.2 million. In 1954, the foundation, which had acquired $641 million in Ford Motor Company stock, promptly allocated grants worth $548 million to American universities, colleges, and hospitals. By 1960, the foundation’s capital grew to over three billion dollars. The foundation’s annual budget was also larger than the combined core budget of the entire United Nations and its specialized agencies. Macdonald, one of the great social critics of his time and a talented wordsmith, captured how the foundation acted as a powerful magnet for intellectuals. It was, he wrote, “a large body of money completely surrounded by people who want some.”30 Hutchins, who was no slouch in concocting and applying appropriate descriptive language, christened the foundation estate in Pasadena “Itching Palms.” Macdonald’s and Hutchins’s descriptions were hardly understatements. Requests and applications for grants poured in from all over the world. In Pasadena, the foundation received weekly between two hundred and five hundred grant requests, and during some weeks, the total reached one thousand. During the first two years, an estimate placed the number of requests in the tens of thousands. By 1951, the amount of grant funds requested reached seven billion dollars. The fact that Macdonald was widely known as a leftist on political issues when he was selected by The New Yorker to write special articles on the Foundation could not have failed to arouse considerable anxiety among the foundation’s trustees and some of its staff. Gaither, for example, wrote to a friend expressing fears that the writer would “trap him into an interview.”31 The Ford Foundation’s public relations director, Porter McKeever, later recalled that he had wondered aloud, “Is there any way to avoid it?” (i.e., planned interviews).32 A more mature judgment soon overcame McKeever’s fears, and he helped Macdonald in every way possible with interviews and information. However, when Macdonald’s three articles came out in book form, McKeever recalled, “there were screams all over the place.” And, indeed, Gaither never forgave McKeever for cooperating with Macdonald. Still, the book was praised in the authoritative Saturday Review of Literature as being “the sort of clean, original, analytic work” that “U.S. scholarship needs.” Even more significant was an unusual laudatory introduction for a reissue of the Macdonald book in 1989 written by a long-time Ford Foundation

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official, Francis X. Sutton, who became a vice-president of the organization. He praised the book for its “liveliness, independence and fair-mindedness.” What everyone who was connected with the foundation or who wrote about it recognized was that the foundation’s reputation rested upon the quality of its grants. Hoffman and his associate directors were determined to avoid treating the requests in an especially sparing manner, even if, to the outsider, the allocations appeared grandiose.33 The trustees early on established a policy of spending income without touching the principal. By virtue of a selection process built around twenty-three major projects that had been woven into the fabric of the foundation’s general purpose, the number of major grants was highly restricted. A total of 183 projects were supported during its first five years.34 It was widely known in political circles that what made the foundation extravagantly rich in the early fifties was the enormous income brought in by the Ford Motor Company that would afterward be cut off as a source. The year 1950 was a peak time for the automotive industry and the foundation’s income soared to over sixty-eight million dollars. At the same time, the value of the foundation’s net assets would annually increase by two percent. Thus, while its disbursement rate seemed huge—thirty million dollars in 1951, which stunningly equaled the total disbursement rate of the next five largest foundations—it constituted a pittance of the total Ford Foundation income that year. Of striking significance was the heavy emphasis placed upon the foundation’s overseas assistance to developing countries. The overt frame of reference for the development program was the promotion of peace. Projects would be supported that were supposed to reduce social and political conflicts in developing areas. In addition, they were designed to raise the standard of living for people in the local communities. But a less than overt motivation was also apparent. In a speech in New York in 1951, Hoffman, as the former Marshall Plan administrator, made it clear that those seeking world peace would have to recognize “the hard and relentless determination of the Soviet overlords to create tensions.”35 He went on to add that the Kremlin oriented itself to promoting subversion by “intensifying and multiplying tensions.” Nonetheless, Hoffman was realistic enough to recognize that the Soviet Union was not the only source of tensions. The post–World War II era had been breached in developing countries by a surge of nationalism, reflecting what Hoffman termed, “the determination of the common man everywhere to better himself.” An initial authorization of five million dollars was made by the foundation trustees for the overseas program. Hoffman made it clear that the foundation would provide assistance only in those countries to which they were invited. And that development assistance would include irrigation, agricultural advice and demonstration, encouragement of agricultural credit institutions and cooperatives, improvement of local industries, vocational education, health care and sanitation, and nutrition and child care. These development

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projects would become standard for the foundation operations in Third World countries. Dwight Macdonald was especially impressed by Hoffman’s international programs, particularly those geared to economic development. He called the Ford Foundation “the most globally conscious of the large foundations.” Of particular importance, he emphasized, was the foundation’s fundamental objective of being “problem-oriented.” In that capacity, it was able “to win allies and influence neutrals.” Its objective was not “research per se,” but rather, through concrete programs, to achieve “sympathy and understanding between us and the rest of the non-Communist world.”36 Among the several other international programs Macdonald strongly welcomed was the foundation’s financing of refugee work, including the three million dollars granted to all fifteen private agencies working through the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and the four million dollars allocated for the East European Fund to help the one hundred thousand exiles from East Europe. A companion program that he lauded was the “furthering [of] the exchange of ideas and persons between America and the rest of the world.” Specifically endorsed were the programs to encourage and finance “the study of foreign nations by American scholars.” For all of his jaundiced views of American capitalism and the antisocialist education it spawned, Macdonald still warmly greeted the Ford Foundation. Among developing countries, Hoffman’s attention was first drawn to India. A visit by him to New Delhi was followed by meetings with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his top aides, and separate discussions with members of the India Planning Commission. Hoffman was convinced after the trip that “Asia can and will be saved from Communism.”37 Appropriations of $6.5 million were made by the foundation in 1951 for projects in India, Pakistan, and the Middle East. A second priority of the foundation under Hoffman, a project in which Robert Hutchins was heavily involved, was the Free University of Berlin. Linked together here were two basic foundation interests—education and the struggle against communism. The Free University constituted a bastion in the defense of academic freedom by students and faculty as they faced great pressure from Soviet authorities. Indeed, it came into existence when the University of Berlin, located in the Soviet sector of Berlin, was reopened after the war. Confronted by the arbitrary introduction of Marxist-Leninist dogma, many of the faculty and students fled to West Berlin to start their own university. After the Free University was formed in 1948, the foundation granted it $1.3 million in 1951. Later, the foundation would provide additional funds to the university, which would become a major symbol of freedom in an area of critical importance to the West during the cold war. Other initiatives in promoting freedom were also undertaken by the foundation in West Germany. But none was more important than sustaining life for the one-quarter million displaced persons still living in camps in West Germany. Their numbers were augmented by a continuous flow of refugees from Eastern Europe. Responsibility for the welfare of this mass

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of humanity—with food, shelter, and clothing—fell on the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The foundation had already made a grant of nearly three million dollars in 1952 to assist the displaced persons and refugees. The new grant would become a significant contribution to be used by the High Commissioner’s Office. The warm relationship between the foundation and the UN agency would continue for many years. For the refugees, the grants proved to be of considerable significance in their resettlement into new communities. Hoffman had recognized that the task must be undertaken “to help repair the intellectual and moral damage that has been inflicted on many millions of freedom-loving people.” The foundation’s funding efforts during these golden years of 1951–53 were impressive.38 It was the judgment of the Ford Foundation’s historian, William Greenleaf, that “no other major foundation” could equal this extraordinary achievement. Equally important, of course, was the work of the East European Fund, which included a significant contribution aimed to help the placement of one hundred thousand refugees from the Soviet-dominated area of Eastern Europe. What was also held to be of considerable value was the Chekhov Publishing House, to which the foundation extended funding. Its publications of books and studies in a variety of different areas, beginning in September 1951, offered a major channel to the refugee community’s intellectual welfare. The publications also provided enlightenment to Americans, whether researchers, scholars, or ordinary persons, who sought information and documentation about the Soviet Union. The unusual publishing house also arranged for translations of prominent literary works. Its total income from grants was approximately one million dollars by the time it ceased functioning in September 1956. The director of the publishing house, Nicholas Wreden—a former refugee who also served in key editorial positions at E. P. Dutton and Little, Brown and Company—was much impressed by what the Ford Foundation had accomplished. He lauded the foundation as providing a “major event in the cultural history of the Russian immigration.”39 Fighting communism in the cultural field, as well as the Soviet influence in the political realm, was a principal concern of the foundation. Grants in humanities and the arts were frequently designed to help sustain this ideological and intellectual struggle. According to Kathleen McCarthy, a specialist in the cultural struggle, approximately ten million dollars was expended by the foundation in cultural grants during 1950–80.40 If this sum was rather modest compared to the two hundred million dollars expended on economic development projects, it was nonetheless significant. The publication of studies was designed to “dispel misconceptions” about the West held in Third World countries, as noted by Hutchins, or for “waging peace on the international front,” as it was perceived by Hoffman. Especially impressive was the impact of the publishing initiative in India, where the foundation launched the International Productions Program to publish top-level Western authors.41 Books were not the only weapon the foundation sought to promote in India;

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it also attempted to halt the loss or destruction of irreplaceable cultural materials and to enhance the national cultural content of museums and the performing arts in order to increase tourism and strengthen national pride.42 In the ideological and political struggle against communism, the principal instrument of the foundation would become the Congress for Cultural Freedom, even if the foundation initially gave it no support, and several years later a modest degree of support. Founded in June 1950 at a public rally in the British section of West Berlin, it was composed of intellectuals from throughout the Western world. Climaxing the rally was the proclamation of a “Freedom Manifesto.”43 The foundation was approached the following year by Sidney Hook, a leader of the Congress and one of the West’s leading intellectuals, who asked Robert Hutchins, the head of the foundation’s Fund for the Republic, for a grant of one million dollars. He was “curtly refused.”44 The style of the Congress was hardly that of Hutchins. But by 1953, the foundation was sufficiently impressed by the Congress’s publications, especially Der Monat, that it provided the funding for the latter. Initially, the magazine, which Sidney Hook called “the best cultural magazine in the entire world,” was published by the information services of the Allied High Commissioner for Germany.45 With foundation’s funds, it could then be published independently in a more neutral area of Berlin. In October 1954, the title Der Monat was more appropriately changed to An International Magazine. The Congress for Cultural Freedom also published a number of major political publications, the most prominent of which was Encounter. In addition to political literacy publications, the Congress initiated in 1955 the holding of seminars in various Western European sites that were attended by leading intellectuals. The foundation agreed to fund the programs of several of them. One of the leading foundation officials, George Kennan, who headed its East European Fund, wrote enthusiastically to a top Congress leader in 1955, noting that “few will ever understand the dimensions and significance of your accomplishment.” The huge, multimillion-dollar operation of the Congress for Cultural Freedom was struck a devastating blow when The New York Times, after a lengthy investigation in April 1966, published an exposé stating that the Congress was largely funded by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Confirmation came the following year, in May 1967, when a high CIA official, Tom Braden, wrote an article for the Saturday Evening Post that exposed in rather brazen fashion how the CIA planned and organized the Congress operation. That the exposure would sow utter chaos in the world of the Western European and American intelligentsia was self-evident. Suspicions and hostility toward the Untied States had already been growing as a consequence of the Vietnam War. The collapse of the Congress for Cultural Freedom appeared imminent. After a quick investigation of the Congress, the chairman of the government’s General Advisory Committee on U.S. Foreign Assistance Programs

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and who was also the president of Cornell University, James A. Perkins, wrote to the new Ford Foundation president, McGeorge Bundy, recommending that the foundation take over the funding of the Congress. His letter emphasized that the Congress “still would seem to be an important organization led by absolutely first class people and directed at a matter of vital importance for the future of the free world.”46 Perkins suggested that the foundation provide one million dollars for the Congress’s annual budget. The foundation, after considerable internal debate and soul-searching, agreed to provide a grant of nearly five million dollars for a five-year period. Dissipation of support from important segments of the European intelligentsia in addition to the continuous soul-searching at the foundation led to the decision to bury the Congress and replace it with a new leadership name and structure. The name of the organization was changed to the International Association for Cultural Freedom, and it was to be headed by Shepard Stone, who until then headed the foundation’s International Division.47 The organization remained totally dependent upon the foundation. But the changes were to no avail: the decline accelerated and the foundation would shortly end its existence. But, if the Ford Foundation was vigorously involved in combating the influence of international communism and its most obvious agent in the global community—the Soviet Union—it found itself, during the early fifties, a target of militant anticommunist forces. McCarthyism had become a major force in the United States, especially after communist North Korea, prompted by the Kremlin, had invaded South Korea. Rightist forces saw communism as a genuine and immediate threat to the United States. Suddenly, suspicions of the most primitive kind were articulated by prominent right-wing newspaper columnists warning that what may appear as innocent conduct only shielded espionage or dangerous subversion plans directed against American society. The atmosphere of the seventeenth-century charges of witchcraft in New England, as the playwright Arthur Miller would later elaborate upon in The Crucible, engulfed America. Intellectuals, some of whom held Marxist sympathies, and even others much less enthusiastic about Marxism found themselves to be suspected by cold war advocates of not being fully committed to American values. A wholesale assault on liberalism had taken hold with the House Un-American Activities Committee and the investigatory tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy, guiding legislative bodies as well as public opinion. Liberal-oriented foundations found themselves on the defensive. The Ford Foundation became an easy target even though its international program on aiding developing countries was fundamentally designed to prevent or halt Soviet influence from taking root. If nothing else, the foundation’s program moved in lockstep with administration efforts, under Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, to oppose communism. And the foundation’s program of assisting refugees, especially refugees from Eastern Europe, was aimed at exposing the ruthlessness of totalitarian behavior and its pulverizing assault upon freedom and individual initiative. Nonetheless, conservative and

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isolationist hostile suspicion of all aid programs grew along with negative views of all programs by the United States that carried an “international thrust.” Support of refugee programs was perceived in the same way, with the very image of the refugee generating an immediate hostility, even if most Americans, at one time or another, sprung from some foreign stock. The initial thrust against these foundations was made in the autumn of 1951, when the House Rules Committee approved a resolution prepared by Congressman E. Eugene Cox (a Democrat from Georgia) that called for a “full and complete” investigation of philanthropic foundations “in order to determine which such foundations . . . are using their resources for unAmerican and subversive activities not in the interest or tradition of the United States.”48 Not surprisingly, Robert Hutchins, head of the foundation’s Fund for the Republic, was regarded with special suspicions, as his liberal record at the University of Chicago and on social matters was generally perceived as lenient or “soft” on communism. Even if he replied sharply and clearly in committee hearings to hostile questions and with a ringing condemnation of totalitarianism, the right-wing establishment refused to be satisfied. What complicated the picture was that the foundation acknowledged that it had made mistakes in providing grants to a few individuals who could be perceived as radical. Other foundations also acknowledged making similar errors. During the final week of the hearings before the Cox Committee, Ford Foundation President Hoffman was called as a witness. His frank response to questions on communism impressed Cox himself. “You preach a fine doctrine,” he said, “and it is something which ought to be carried to the fireside and home of people.” Later, he told Hoffman, “you have made a very fine case for the Ford Foundation. As a matter of fact, you have made a fine case for all the foundations.”49 The final report of the Cox Committee, released on January 2, 1953, hardly conformed with the initial fears prompted by Cox’s early accusations against foundations. Indeed, the Committee was largely laudatory. Still, Hoffman, with Henry Ford II’s encouragement, would resign. He had become so heavily involved with Dwight Eisenhower’s campaign for U.S. president and later with the inauguration that his foundation tasks and responsibilities were dropped. Besides, the staff and the trustee leadership found Pasadena an inadequate site for administering a great foundation. Rowan Gaither took over as president. Despite the laudatory comments of Congressman Cox, the McCarthyite intimidation of the Ford Foundation had not yet ended. B. Carroll Reece, a powerful Republican Congressman from Tennessee who chaired the primary campaign of isolationist Robert Taft for president against Eisenhower, refused to accept the findings of the Cox Committee, of which he was a member. With a favorable house vote, Reece organized new congressional hearings in March 1954 to determine whether “foundations and organizations are using their resources for . . . un-American and subversive activities.” By then the witch-hunt atmosphere in Washington had diminished

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and the Reece Committee itself became a target of national amusement by the media.50 The critic Dwight Macdonald both recognized the phenomenon of intimidation and could anticipate its future course. He put it rather sharply as follows: “large foundations like large corporations, are timid hearts, and when they are frightened by some small but vocal minority they envelop themselves in a cloud of public relations.”51 Macdonald could not fail to note that, as compared with the Hoffman years when the foundation was oriented to a “readiness to experiment” with large sums, the organization under Gaither “has become more cautious, and that in a few years it may become indistinguishable” from other foundations.52 Still, by the mid-fifties, the foundation had withstood the slings and arrows of an outrageous ultra-rightist assault and—except for the removal of the Fund for the Republic and the other funds that had been, in any case, challenged by internal questioning—survived and appeared even stronger. It was an appropriate moment when Henry Ford II, who had long ago promised to give up his chairmanship of the Board of Trustees, could formally resign. He did this on April 18, 1956. Several weeks later, on May 8, Gaither was solicited to become a chairman of the board at a time when he was already serving as president of the foundation. What remained unfinished, however, was the selection of a new president, as the Gaither appointment to that position had been temporary to fill in for the hard-charging Hoffman. For two months, the Board of Trustees deliberated on the selection. Two qualifications were very much in the forefront of their thinking: that the new president ought to come from the field of education in keeping with the popular conception of the foundation as performing an education function, and that he ought to have considerable administrative experience. The choice fell upon Henry T. Heald, who had served as president of the well-known, technically-oriented Armour Institute (which in 1940 became the Illinois Institute of Technology) and later, in 1951, as chancellor and president of New York University. Heald assumed the post on October 1, 1956. Careful examination of the Annual Reports of the Ford Foundation indicates that not a single grant was awarded for “human rights” from its very beginning until 1974. And the phrase did not appear even once in the “Presidential Review” statements that appeared in these reports. Of course, assistance to refugees was a constant feature of foundation grant-making, and refugee assistance might be perceived as a “human rights” issue. Generally, however, the refugee problem was and is seen as a humanitarian issue, not a human rights one. Equally startling was a relative indifference to providing any grants with respect to the implementation of the first and most important human rights treaty, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It was unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 9, 1948, one day before the vote on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Of course, it was the genocidal practices of the Nazis against Jews, Gypsies, and a host of national groups in Europe that were integral to

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Hitler’s purposes and that made genocide a central element of World War II. And it was precisely this horrendous core purpose that provoked the postwar cry of “Never Again.” Strikingly, the Ford Foundation Archives offer the most vivid example of a request for a grant on the subject of human rights by a prominent scholar and activist, and its rejection by the foundation. Raphael Lemkin, the inventor of the term “genocide,” had written a major book on the subject in 1944 and then played a decisive role in chaperoning the genocide treaty through the UN General Assembly. He wrote to the foundation on December 1, 1957, seeking funding on a major project related to genocide.53 The letter is revealing in describing his personal background, as if it needed to be given in view of the media publicity surrounding the UN debate on the subject in 1948. The beginning of the letter read, “I am sure you know of the fact that I have coined the word ‘genocide,’ have developed the concept, have personally negotiated the ratification of this treaty with almost all the fifty-one ratifying powers.” Lemkin then went on to say that he had been “collecting material cases on genocide” and that for the last ten years, he had been “writing its history in antiquity, middle ages, and the modern times.” After spelling out his major thesis that “the main reason of genocide is conflict of cultures,” he emphasized that to finish his planned three-volume work on genocide, he needed “financial help to complete the research [and] put the manuscript in final shape.” The letter, along with his extraordinarily impressive curriculum vitae and a list of his major publications, was addressed to Don Price, a high foundation official. Two days later, on December 5, 1957, Price wrote back, acknowledging that he had “heard for a number of years of [Lemkin’s] impressive contribution in the field of genocide.”54 Price’s letter went on to say that the Ford Foundation’s “general policy” was “not to make grants to individuals for the preparation or completion of particular books.” The letter carried a certain abruptness and arbitrariness. Within a decade, genocide would make its appearance in Burundi and Nigeria, and soon thereafter in Cambodia. Still later, it would find expression in Iraq, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Significantly, the foundation became sufficiently interested in the subject in 1981 so as to provide a grant to Leo Kuper, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, to write a book that was designed to update the work of Lemkin’s Genocide Convention. Kuper was given over twenty thousand dollars for a two-year period in order to complete a study on “International Protection Against Genocide: Implementation of the Genocide Convention.”55 Lemkin himself was to die of a heart attack eighteen months after he made the request for assistance from the Ford Foundation. Finally, after a quarter century of neglect, “Human Rights,” along with “Intellectual Freedom,” was identified for the first time as a distinctive category in the 1974 Annual Report. Only three grants within this category received funding in 1974, for a total of $712,000. The single NGO that was identified within the category as receiving funding was the Minority Rights Group. Not only was no reference made to human rights in foundation

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literature or commentary, but no mention was also ever made of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Nor was there any reference to the UN Commission on Human Rights. Excluded, too, from foundation discourse were references to the human rights conventions of the Western European community and of the Organization of American States (OAS). The first time the foundation formally acquired a scholarly document on human rights was not until September 1973. It was prepared by the distinguished British scholar and academic lecturer on human rights, Rosalyn Higgins. The twenty-page document was entitled Human Rights: Needs and Priorities. The cover page indicated that it was prepared for the Ford Foundation’s European and International Affairs office.56 A preliminary remark by Professor Higgins indicated that the foundation had been “faced with ad hoc applications for support for research and teaching projects in the field of human rights.”57 Its response, according to Higgins, was to look “sympathetically” on human rights research projects dealing with “armed conflicts.” But overall, the foundation was to approach “with caution” concerning all other applications dealing with human rights, “until internal decisions could be reached” on how the foundation ought to respond. In view of the requests by grant applicants, a formal “request” was made of Higgins to summarize “the state of human rights work and the [possibility of] future extent and nature of any Ford support in the area of human rights.”58 Higgins must have surmised that the foundation had little experience and familiarity with the field. She began by observing that the human rights field is “gigantic” and “grows every year.” Moreover, the amount of research already done, she advised, was “prodigious.” After a kind of listing of basic documents and information regarding the human rights field, Higgins contended that what ought to be concentrated upon was not research in the human rights field, but rather the “implementation” of the human rights agreements or treaties that had been adopted or were soon to be adopted.59 If “implementation” was a priority item in the Higgins report, no effort was made to spell out how the foundation might play a role in advancing this objective. The only special task she would recommend was the promotion of human rights. With particular emphasis, she wrote, “I emerge from the preparation of this study with the strong conviction that one area above all others deserves urgent priority for the Ford Foundation and that is . . . the dissemination of human rights.”60 Significantly, absolutely nothing was done about the Higgins study. It was never referred to in any of the intensive debates on human rights that took place at the foundation during 1974–75. If it was even read by anyone at the foundation is not clear. Like a stone thrown into a stormy lake, no ripples could be seen. But the years 1974–75 did produce stormy debates in the foundation that were sparked by the dramatic military coup in Chile in September 1973. For the first time since its founding in 1936 and since it assumed “human welfare” responsibilities a quarter of a century earlier, the foundation became

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seized with human rights purposes and aims. The next three chapters will focus upon how the foundation made the violation of human rights in Latin America a primary concern, replacing economic development as its principal topic of interest and leading to the defeat of the right-wing authoritarianism of major military regimes in Latin America. Two subsequent chapters will trace the role played by the Ford Foundation in confronting the totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe during approximately the same time-frame—1975–90. The focus will be largely upon leverage provided by the Helsinki Final Act of August 1, 1975. One of these chapters will disclose for the first time details of a little-known foundation project involving a generally hidden from public view nongovernmental organization. As with the collapse of the military regimes in Chile, which had prompted the new human rights initiative of the foundation, the principal communist regimes of Eastern Europe in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary were overthrown by democratic revolutions in which the foundation played a not-so-insignificant role. The apartheid authoritarian regime of South Africa is the subject of the next three chapters. To be examined here is the extraordinary multiplicity of tasks undertaken by the foundation in helping to bring about the disintegration of the apartheid regime without recourse to civil war. Special attention will be paid to two major functioning nongovernmental instruments of the foundation—the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights under Law and its Southern Africa Project. How these groups functioned in bringing about an end to the authoritarian regime has never been closely examined and publicly aired. Stunningly, even as the foundation was nurturing initiatives that would bring down three of the most repressive global regimes, it was also engaged in a major revolutionary initiative in advancing women’s rights. The climactic point in these efforts came at the UN-sponsored Beijing World Conference on Women in March 1995. This occurred only one year after the first democratic regime came to power in South Africa and but a few years after democracies became dominant in Latin America and Eastern Europe. The final chapter of this book is devoted to the actions of the Ford Foundation during the early years of the twenty-first century. The first was a planned UN conference on racism, which turned into an embarrassment for the foundation on the issue of anti-Semitism. An initial stumble led to impressive rectification initiatives. The second part of the chapter illuminates the foundation’s continuing search for major breakthroughs in the human rights field, most notably in the field of “transitional justice” following the collapse of arbitrary rule in military dictatorships. In researching the account of the foundation’s significant achievements, the author relied largely on documentation offered by rich and extensive archival sources, supplemented by documents and interviews with officials of major nongovernmental organizations who were recipients of foundation grants.

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Chapter

2

C h i l e : A B re a k t h r o u g h i n Fo u n d at i o n Po l i c y

T

he date September 11 resonated profoundly in Latin America long before the traumatic Al Qaeda attacks struck New York and Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001, and the infamous term “9/11” formally entered standard English dictionaries. On that day in 1973, Chile—perhaps the most democratic country in Latin America—was staggered by an extraordinarily brutal military coup under General Augusto Pinochet. Repercussions were immediately felt everywhere, including on an extensive Ford Foundation program in that country and extending all the way to the foundation’s headquarters in New York. The effects would be enormous, transforming the foundation into a philanthropy with human rights at its core, rather than on its margins. Prior to the military coup, Chile fitted neatly into the foundation’s international program for development that stressed research assistance in the social sciences, which was geared to promoting education at various levels, as well as fostering the technical skills of management and administration in economic projects, along with ending sexual discrimination and maximizing gender opportunities. Few areas in the category of development could boast of the myriad social and economic progress as Chile had. Its long history of democratic institutions, like its enviable political pluralism involving a variety of parties with separate ideological orientations, and its comparatively strong economy with a vibrant middle class, were the envy of Latin America and of the developing world in general. Of particular importance, especially to the Ford Foundation, was Chile’s highly educated and sophisticated intellectual community, certainly rare in the Third World, and with perhaps some exceptions, outstanding even in Latin America. It was hardly accidental that the foundation placed a key office for the Latin American Southern Cone in Santiago, Chile. The foundation’s New York headquarters had extended grants to Chile, until 1973, totaling over six million dollars, including the remainder of a ten million dollar commitment given in 1965 for ten years to the University of Chile.1

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So effective had Ford Foundation grants been with individual scholars that, according to Jeffrey Puryear, a historian of the grant program in the area, the economic and social reforms initiated by the previous Christian Democratic administration of Eduardo Frei and extended under its socialist successor, Salvador Allende, could be considered very much the foundation’s product. Ineluctably, the nature and target of the military coup could not but profoundly affect the reform initiatives along with the work of the foundation’s Southern Cone office in Chile. In addition to a major assault upon key Chilean democratic institutions, the military focused upon, to a significant extent, the Chilean universities that had employed precisely the reformist scholars and researchers who had served as grantees of the foundation’s Santiago bureau. A half-year after the coup, the head of that office, Peter Bell, wrote to William Carmichael, a high foundation official in New York, noting that the bureau staff was “disquieted” and “dismayed” by the “junta’s disruption of long-established political and social institutions.”2 With universities and scholars as the target of the stormy military violence, the Ford Foundation was confronted with serious personnel problems related to grantees. The massive military intervention in university life began almost immediately. Within two weeks of taking power, the military announced that it would remove university rectors, the administrative heads of universities, and replace them with military-designated rectors. A “cleansing process” of suspected “leftist” faculty was initiated, accompanied by witch-hunts and the closing of institutes and departments. According to a study written by Puryear, a former program officer of the Ford Foundation Chilean bureau staff, at least two thousand faculty members of the leading university—the University of Chile—were fired by 1975.3 This constituted fairly close to a quarter of the faculty. Since many of the dismissed faculty members were recipients of foundation grants and, importantly, came from the intellectual stratum of society that the foundation especially favored, it was scarcely surprising that urgent emergency measures had to be undertaken. In October 1973, only a couple of weeks after the coup, the foundation’s trustees voted for a special appropriation to aid displaced intellectuals from Chile. Since some intellectuals had also been displaced at approximately the same time from the Soviet Union’s educational institutions, the grant, for reasons of geographical and ideological balance, embraced both sets of displaced intellectuals. Grants followed to nonuniversity academic bodies to help place the dismissed academics who had been forced into exile. Either new jobs abroad would be sought or graduate fellowships pursued. A total of some $230,000 was approved for this purpose on January 14–15, 1974.4 The emergency funding operation was handled not directly but rather through a regional organization of social science centers involving groups of emigrant scholars located, respectively, in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.5 The amount allocated during a two-year period came to nearly $375,000.6 Later, following the March 1976 military coup in Argentina, when another large group of social scientists was dismissed, the foundation approved an

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additional grant of one hundred thousand dollars to help these intellectuals relocate. Approximately three hundred scholars from Argentina were assisted in obtaining employment. A slight majority of the displaced were placed initially in various centers in Latin America, like Brazil, with the balance relocated in Europe and the United States.7 For younger social science scholars who had not completed their research tasks, the foundation organized a large graduate fellowship program. Dozens were given fellowships to enable them to obtain a master’s degree. Funding was also available for doctoral programs in Europe and the United States. The amount of the awards for graduate fellowships was quite large—$1.7 million between 1974 and the end of 1978.8 While a considerable number of Chilean intellectuals went abroad to escape official government pressure or to acquire a livelihood, the bulk of the threatened intellectual community chose to remain in Chile. Of course, the standard institutional means for their sustenance—the universities—were closed to them. But the dismantling of the major institutional source of their creativity, it turned out, could be and was replaced by an alternative source. In virtually no time at all, an entirely new institutional framework for displaced intellectuals had sprung up that took the form of private social-science research centers.9 Prior to the coup, only three such centers existed in all of Chile. By 1988, a reliable estimate placed the number of these research centers at no less than forty-nine. They employed a total of 664 professionals, 134 of which had done graduate work at major universities in Europe and the United States. In contrast, Chilean universities after the coup employed less than a third of that number of social-science researchers. The overall academic results of the Ford Foundation initiatives were more than impressive. Literally hundreds of books were produced by the academics at the new research centers. Strikingly, in addition, the centers published more than twenty new academic journals or bulletins. Being able to publish research findings was rather important for the academics. Initially, there was virtually no way for them to reach their colleagues, their students, or the public at large, as they were excluded from universities and bookstores openly refused to sell their publications. The Ford Foundation provided the initial funding assistance to enable the new research centers to begin and sustain operations in the seventies. In fact, the new research centers became major recipients of foundation funds in Latin America’s Southern Cone. Between 1975 and 1978, eleven of these centers in Chile, as well as several in Argentina and Uruguay, received $1.9 million.10 (Uruguay had been subjected to a military coup and dictatorship shortly before the Pinochet coup in Chile.) Another two hundred thousand dollars was awarded to small groups of scholars engaged in joint research. This was just the beginning. The foundation continued its assistance into the eighties with quite large sums. Between 1980 and 1988, it provided, on an annual basis, an average total of over eight hundred thousand dollars.11 There were, of course, other major donors from Canada, Sweden, and other countries, but the Ford Foundation’s basic role stood out significantly.

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Remarkably, the research centers would become the spawning ground for Chilean intellectuals to engage in political discussions, to debate strategies, and to formulate the democratic political program of the future. Their research in the areas of public opinion polling, for example, enabled them to anticipate democratic victories in the historic government referendum of 1990 and in the subsequent elections. Preparations could be made for democratic programs and structures. In addition, activists could begin preparation to run for political office. Thus, the research centers came to be the harbinger of the eventual democratic replacement of the Pinochet military dictatorship. To the extent that the Ford Foundation was a major factor in the creation and development of these research centers, it helped lay the groundwork of Chile’s democratic future. If the foundation had been “dismayed” and “disquieted” by the events of the brutal 1973 repression, it did not lead to an immediate change in policy for developing countries. Of course, important initiatives were taken to assist in providing new opportunities to scholars and intellectuals who had been on grants, whether abroad or at home. The creation of research centers as an alternative to university teaching was a climax for the initiative. But the assistance to grantees was hardly a radical departure for policy makers. A top foundation specialist on Latin America put the matter of the Ford Foundation’s role rather delicately when, in a memorandum to the foundation’s headquarters, he wrote that the Santiago staff could hardly “refuse to assist fellow men who are lawlessly persecuted.”12 But, while they were humanitarian and not revolutionary, the actions taken were certainly significant and unexpected. According to a foundation official in the Chilean office, “some in the Foundation disapproved of the lengths” taken by the Santiago staff “in assisting some politically controversial individuals.” The objectors argued that such assistance would “jeopardize the Foundation’s other more important activities.”13 The supposedly “more important activities” were those geared to economic development. Indeed, the question of priority for developing countries with the foundation’s policy’s inevitable corollary of cooperation with established Third World regimes or, certainly, avoiding conflict or collision with them was now beginning to pose unanticipated questions. Supposing such countries came under the rule of ruthlessly repressive regimes, what should the foundation choose to do? Should the foundation then pull out? Or should it stay and confront the possibility of being thrown out? The situation of Chile in 1973 was not an altogether new phenomenon. As early as the mid-sixties, the foundation was obliged to confront the issue of how far it had to go in cooperating with repressive regimes. Three regimes in which the foundation had conducted economic programs in the sixties had taken on a particularly repressive character. Indonesia, after a military coup directed against a communist threat, was transformed into the brutal military ascendancy of Suharto, accompanied by the crushing of all liberties along with mass genocidal killings of communists and Chinese. At approximately the same time, in Africa, a major leader in the liberation

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movement on the continent, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, had transformed his rule into a veritable dictatorship. In Europe, too, at least one former democratic state, Greece, though it was not in the category of developing societies, had been taken over by a military coup led by several colonels. Fundamental liberties were systematically assaulted and then crushed. Significantly, the foundation chose to discontinue or critically reduce its economic operations in these countries in the sixties.14 It had concluded that any association with these overtly antidemocratic and repressive regimes would prove embarrassing. Latin America was by no means immune from the tendencies toward military dictatorships during the sixties. Brazilian democracy was overthrown in 1964 and a similar development was beginning to unfold in Argentina. In 1968, Peru and Bolivia succumbed to military rule as had Paraguay a decade earlier in 1954. In most of Central America, one man prevailed. During the seventies, military dictatorships took control in Uruguay (1973), followed soon afterward in Chile and then in Argentina in 1976. As early as 1971, the foundation’s leading expert on Latin America, Kalman Silvert, offered a major rationale for later foundation decisions by drawing upon actions it had taken in the sixties in Indonesia, Ghana, and Greece. He wrote in a memorandum to the foundation’s headquarters in New York that if the Ford Foundation “cannot make a very strong case for distinguishing [its] activities from the support of politically repressive behavior in the host country, it should withdraw.”15 It was a compelling argument, but could the foundation afford to abdicate its responsibility in developing countries? Beyond the job-placement and fellowship programs and the support of the new research centers, the Ford Foundation’s regional offices, in the seventies, decided to also engage in a somewhat more risky and overt undertaking that, if only indirectly, carried overtones of an activist challenge to the repressive host regime. A former staffer of the Chilean regional offices disclosed that certain actions were taken with respect to scholars who had been imprisoned or held by the authorities without charges. The regional officer chose to formally notify the U.S. embassy that a grantee or someone involved with a Ford Foundation program had been arrested. The information was accompanied by a request that the embassy report back any pertinent news of the matter.16 Strikingly, this same procedure was to be followed in the event that an academic was discovered to be “missing.” The procedure had the potential for a positive outcome even if the regional office and the embassy had no power to affect the results of the case. Formal requests by the U.S. embassy for information, noted the former regional officer staffer, could not fail to “create [a] public record of the incident and [thereby] let the [Chilean] government know that a third party is interested in the fate of the persons involved.”17 Numerous academics in other countries pursued similar inquiries. In the judgment of the foundation staff, this type of formal inquiry “undoubtedly contributed significantly to reduce harsh treatment of the prisoner.”18 Whether the U.S. embassy went beyond formal inquiry of the Chilean authorities is by no means certain. The U.S. Ambassador to Chile, David

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Popper, was severely chastised by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger when he dared to raise human rights problems with the Pinochet authorities. Kissinger sardonically commented that the ambassador was not supposed to be conducting a political science lecture in a classroom.19 Recent official documentation disclosures scarcely suggest a vigorous response by the United States to the ruthlessness of the Pinochet dictatorship. Indeed, for those with a commitment to human rights, U.S. policy during and after the Pinochet coup was embarrassing. Only recently, Larry Rohter, the highly experienced New York Times correspondent in Latin America wrote from Santiago that “the moment” Allende was elected president of Chile in 1970, the United States “conspired with the military here to overthrow him. That resulted in the 1973 coup.”20 Indeed, Ford Foundation staffers both in Santiago and in New York, early on, had become keenly aware of the brutalities of the Pinochet regime and of questionable behavior by U.S. embassy officials. Richard R. Fagen, a prominent professor of political science at Stanford University who had spent eighteen months in Chile doing research and serving as a consultant to the foundation, sent, on October 8, 1973, an extraordinarily detailed report on developments in Chile to a high foundation official in New York, William Carmichael. The report was actually a copy of a long letter Fagen had written to Senator William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Copies of the report to Fulbright were sent to Kissinger, several key senators and congressmen, and close relatives of three American researchers in Santiago who had been seized by Pinochet’s military. In his covering note to Carmichael, Fagen related that he had sent a copy to Peter Bell, head of the foundation office in Santiago, with the cautionary suggestion that it be treated with extreme care in that city. In a separate personal letter to Carmichael, Fagen observed that the latter should be free to share it “as widely as you see fit within the Foundation.”21 While Fagen had completed his research and left Santiago for the United States in July 1973, two months before the coup, he sought to give Fulbright background information on the three young American researchers—Charles Horman, Frank Teruggi, and David Hathaway—who had been seized during the coup. All three had worked for Fagen, providing translation services in the preparation of his book. Fagen kept in close touch with the respective families of the three and, at the same time, sought information about them from available officials and informal sources. The account to Fulbright is a veritable day-by-day report of what happened to the three men—Teruggi was killed, Hathaway had somehow been released, and Horman had disappeared. In addition, the Fagen report provided insights into various persons in the U.S. embassy in Santiago, particularly those who manifested a virulent anticommunist stance. As it was written by an extremely knowledgeable source, although not an on-the-spot observer, the Fagen letter was remarkably informative about the Chilean situation; yet it was also especially revealing about embassy policy

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and practice. Fagen bitingly cited the following statement of an embassy official addressed to Joyce Horman—Charles Horman’s wife—who had inquired about her missing husband: “Probably [he] just wanted to get away from you.” That was how Joyce Horman recalled the comment. Fagen, in repeating it, wondered openly to Fulbright, “is this individual or bureaucratic sadism—or both?” In Fagen’s covering letter to Carmichael, he made explicit his contempt for U.S. policy with regard to Chile and especially with respect to incarcerated or disappeared Americans in that country. “Put bluntly,” said Fagen, “I see culpability in very high places in our government (as well as low places).” But even as he chastised official U.S. policy and practice, Fagen, as a former Ford Foundation consultant, was “pleased” to hear of the relocation of Chilean scholars. He added, “I have heard indirectly that Ford is backing this effort.” He was certain that the Santiago office would be a “key point in any communication net that is established.” In his judgment, “this is important work” in which he took personal pride and offered his personal “help.”22 Carmichael was impressed with Fagen’s report. After sharing it with Francis Sutton, a vice-president of the foundation, and another high foundation official, he and the others chose to send it to the Ford Foundation President, McGeorge Bundy, in a memo dated October 13, 1973.23 Carmichael did not think that the Fagen report called “for any action on our part” but he cautioned that if it were made public, it would “complicate our relationships” with some of the U.S. embassy officials. At the same time, he recognized that the Santiago bureau’s relations with the U.S. embassy officials were “already a bit strained.”24 While the Santiago office did not seek to get involved with official State Department policy immediately—other than with the relocation of Chilean scholar-grantees—six months later, the office would undertake a significant step. It concerned the foreign minister and later defense minister of Chile under Allende—Clodomiro Almeyda. He was identified by the Santiago bureau chief, Peter Bell, in a confidential memo to Bundy on March 28, 1974, as a former professor of political science at the University of Chile.25 Bell described him in glowing terms as a scholar and intellectual who impressed everyone with his sophistication, articulateness, and honesty. First, Bell noted how Almeyda had chosen to deliver himself to the Pinochet forces on September 11, 1973. Soon afterward, he was subjected to physical and psychological torture by the military. Almeyda’s wife, in a request to Bell for assistance to her incarcerated husband, related that Almeyda was in a very serious condition. In his memo to Bundy, Bell took the rather extraordinary step of asking the foundation president “to consider calling Henry Kissinger in order to ask his intervention.” Whether Bundy followed through on Peter Bell’s request is not known. Nor is it known whether Kissinger would have cooperated, given his general indifference to human rights violations and his comments to Ambassador Popper. Bell concluded his memo by observing that “a number of European governments have shown special

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interest in Almeyda’s case,” but that all of this would “not together carry the weight of an expression of concern by Kissinger.”26 Attached to the Bell memorandum were typed “notes” about the unusually talented Almeyda written by the knowledgeable activist and social-scientist consultant of the Santiago office, Kalman Silvert. These notes had been prepared on March 27, the day before Bell sent his memo to Bundy. Silvert reported that he had been informed by Mrs. Almeyda that “several months ago,” Willy Brandt, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, sent a “personal letter to Pinochet” expressing concern for the safety of Almeyda and other Christian Democrats who had been arrested. Silvert also had heard a rumor, according to his “notes,” that Kissinger, too, had “inquired about Almeyda,” but Silvert did not give this rumor too much credence.27 The episode appears to have had a rare happy ending. Two weeks after the initial Peter Bell memo, a second confidential memo from Bell was sent to Bundy.28 Dated April 9, 1974, it reported that Almeyda’s situation was said to have “improved.” Peter Bell expressed the opinion that the improvement in his prisoner’s status—which meant that adequate food, fresh air, and access to radio and books was available to Almeyda—was “probably” due to the “intervention” of Willy Brandt, the Catholic Church, and the U.S. government. The memo did not indicate the name of any person in the U.S. government who might have been helpful. It did, however, report that Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School and its Committee for Latin American Studies had offered a visiting professorship to Almeyda. Of particular importance was the fact that, according to the memo, the State Department had used its “good offices for conveying the information.” It is clear from the memo that Bell had been in New York while discussions were taking place at Princeton University, and he was keeping very much abreast of them. That he was personally involved in the proceedings appears most likely. Soon afterward, a top foundation executive in New York, David Bell, the vice-president of the Ford Foundation’s International Division, wrote a personal note to Bundy that carried a strong endorsement of Peter Bell’s various initiatives in Chile with respect to human rights. The endorsement was reported in the note, which is dated April 18, 1974, as having been made by Robert McNamara, the former U.S. secretary of defense who had become president of the World Bank. David Bell reported that McNamara had called that very morning with remarks “very complimentary” about Peter Bell who was “doing an excellent job.” McNamara noted that the foundation was “absolutely right” in what it was doing in Chile and ought “to remain active” there. Further illuminating the remarkably courageous role played by the Ford Foundation in Chile during the days of Pinochet’s military coup was a rare, all-but-forgotten episode in the classic film Missing, produced and directed by the great moviemaker, Constantine Costa-Gavras, in the early eighties. The film focused upon the efforts of the father of Charles Horman, the American freelance journalist who had “disappeared” in the very early days

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of the coup. The father, powerfully played by the distinguished actor Jack Lemmon, seeks everywhere, including the U.S. embassy in Santiago, for information about his missing son. Repeatedly frustrated by contradictory or utterly inadequate information, the father decides to visit the Ford Foundation office. Here he was provided with some breakthrough information. The foundation’s program adviser in economics related that he had acquired second-hand information that suggested that Charles Horman was killed in the National Stadium where thousands of liberals, leftists, labor leaders, and dissenters were incarcerated by coup leaders. This episode was by no means fictitious. In an interoffice memo soon after the movie appeared and had won strong critical reviews in the entertainment world and beyond,29 the Ford Foundation’s Chilean expert, Jeffrey Puryear, advised all the top officials of the organization that Horman’s father did “in fact” visit the foundation’s office in October 1973 and was received by the office’s assistant “representative,” Peter Hakim. Regrettably, at the time, the formal “representative” of the office, Peter Bell, was traveling abroad. Invited by Hakim to join the conversation was Lovell Jarvis, the program adviser in economics. Jarvis, the next day, called Horman’s father and related that he was advised by an unnamed diplomat from the embassy of an English-speaking country that Charles Horman had been shot and killed and then buried in the Stadium’s wall. Puryear, in a memorandum almost a decade later on March 17, 1982, commented that “this proved to be true.” The Puryear memo went on to disclose that the Santiago office as shown in the film was not genuine and that, actually, that movie scene was shot in Mexico City. Nonetheless, there was some talk by the film’s crew with local foundation officials about shooting the film in the real office. But the initiative, reportedly, came to naught after the Ford official asked to see the film’s script. In Puryear’s expert judgment, “much of the story in Missing” is accurate. But, at the same time, he accused Costa-Gavras of failing to “document serious charges” that the U.S. government “was involved in planning the coup” and, more disturbingly, “was aware of and approved an order to kill Horman.” Even, with this dereliction, the foundation Chilean specialist found the movie “gripping and provocative.” The following final judgment was then added that highlighted his own sympathies: “And it is a pleasure to find the Ford Foundation among the good guys.” That it was underlined, a device not frequently used in interoffice memos, was certainly revealing. To this day, the foundation retains a keen interest in the Horman case. His wife, Joyce, runs a “Charles Horman Truth Project” that is “financed,” according to the New York Times, “mainly by the Ford Foundation.” In December 2000, she filed a criminal suit in Chile seeking responses from the former U.S. secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, and other American officials about the alleged U.S. connection with her husband’s apprehension and death.30 Costa-Gavras’s film, which brought to life the Chilean horrors of September 11, 1973, was welcomed by the foundation. The Horman killing and the

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subsequent atrocities, after all, would help prompt a momentous shift in the foundation’s priorities. The public airing of the traumatic significance of that date and of the massive human tribulations that the coup had wrought remained a continuing purpose of the foundation. It expressed keen interest in the preparation, in the late twentieth century, of a powerful documentary of the events that occurred at the National Stadium from September 11 until November 7, 1973. The documentary, Estadio Nacional, was made by Carmen Luz Parot, the Chilean investigative journalist, and was based upon interviews with some thirty survivors of the thousands tortured at the Stadium.31 The interviews were undercut with period footage. For the producer, it was essential to remember the terrible reality of those horrendous days before “national reconciliation” could follow. “You cannot forget until you [first] know something that can be forgotten,” noted Parot. The film, released in 2001, received repeated recognition at international festivals. More significantly, it has been shown throughout Chile in universities, schools, and youth organizations. While it received its primary funding from the Chilean government, the Ford Foundation provided essential financial support with respect to the process of subtitling and distribution. In the spring of 1974, the situation on the ground in Chile remained dangerous, even if the local foundation bureau displayed remarkable courage— though necessarily limited—in its ability to defy, or rather circumvent, repressive government policy. The times were profoundly difficult and threatening. How should the Santiago bureau deal with its active and its present traditional responsibility? And, in view of a most uncertain future, how was that responsibility to be fulfilled in the forthcoming months and years? The issue weighed heavily on Peter Bell’s mind. At its most elemental level, how should the office staff function? It was the staff, after all, that stood at the very core of his regional operation. In a memorandum to Carmichael in New York on April 1, 1974, Bell proposed a radical shift in standard bureaucratic staffing.32 It was made necessary, he said, by the arbitrariness of dictatorial rule that had brought about the “disruption of long established political and social institutions.” While the past six months had “disquieted” and even “dismayed” him, the current cruel and brutal trends necessitated a most “pessimistic” outlook for the “foreseeable future.” He expected the “cleansing” process in universities, where the foundation had provided grants, “to broaden and deepen.” Under these circumstances, it was “unclear as to how much room there will be for independent, critical research in Chile.” Priority, of course, was given to the placing of scholars and grantees at places where they might continue their research. Peter Bell took pride in the scores of individuals who had been placed in research positions or provided with fellowships. Yet, with “the massive violation of guarantees . . . basic to scientific and educational institutions,” the office staff could not “recommend new grants to Chilean universities.” Therefore, it was essential, wrote Bell, to significantly reduce the bureau’s staff by almost half and to reduce office space. But such cutbacks were only seen as a beginning. In Bell’s judgment,

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the entire staff would have to be withdrawn for the time being, and the entire grant program would have to be handled by Ford Foundation “visitors” from New York who, of course, would be persons fully experienced on the circumstances in the area. Not only was there an aversion to awarding grants to universities, but the following two other factors also came into play: the deep “discomfort” of the local bureau staff “to be working under conditions of tension and alienation,” and the enormous psychological problem confronting staffers “caught between the eddies of collaboration and the rocks of subversion.” Yet, even as the staff was to be withdrawn—and this would rest with decisions taken by the vice-president of the International Division, David Bell, and President Bundy—the “visitors,” thought Peter Bell, would provide a “continuity of Ford Foundation personnel” if only to demonstrate the foundation’s “supportive attitude toward a ‘future’ continuation of scientific and scholarly work.” Decisions on staffing and about the future course of grantmaking in Chile were to be considered at a staff meeting in New York on September 16–19. Key players in both Santiago and at foundation headquarters were to be present, according to an interoffice memorandum prepared for Bundy on September 11, 1974.33 The headquarters’ perspective, as reflected in the memo, was different from that of Peter Bell. A very vital consideration—money—had taken hold in New York. The memo placed great emphasis on the “constraint” resulting from the “budget situation” of the foundation, a “situation” that was not yet clarified in the memo. In an interview much later, vice-president Francis Sutton related that the stock market that year had dropped very sharply, resulting in a severe drop in the value of the Ford Foundation’s stock.34 The negative impact upon the budget was inevitable. Under the financial circumstances, the withdrawal of staff from Santiago might have appeared particularly welcome. But it is clear from the memo to Bundy that New York officials thought of pursuing “selected new grants to Southern Cone institutions” even if they would necessarily be “much more modest” in scope. The author of the memo was oriented, or so he explained, to the continuing need to “expand intellectual opportunity” and “maintain lines of communication which would otherwise be broken.” Seeking, somehow, to make a public record about the missing or the disappeared, even when done with caution and restraint, clearly meant moving forward on human rights matters. The change in foundation policy did not come suddenly, but rather slowly and by small steps.35 By late 1974 and early 1975, a clear turn in policy had been consummated. According to David Heaps, an insider, “concern for intellectual freedom [and] human rights” would have “greater priority” than “economic and social development policies.”36 No revolutionary shift was intended; rather, the object was “to mitigate some of the worst effects” of the military dictatorship. What this meant on the local level was rather subtle, as the arbitrariness of the authorities could be dangerous. One tactic that could be pursued

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was to “probe actively the limits of acceptable behavior” and, at the same time, to “push the [military] government . . . to permit certain kinds of activity.”37 Regrettably, no detailed record exists of the effects of the “probe” and the “push.” Still, it was believed that foreign assistance institutions, like the Ford Foundation, were often “uniquely” able to influence local authorities through means of “protesting” restrictive policies or “protecting” threatened intellectuals.38 On the headquarters level, the tendency to urge cautious behavior was less necessary. The Ford Foundation as an institution did not confront immediate and dangerous threats. The absence of an imminent challenge meant the possibility of a more relaxed atmosphere, permitting a deeper inquiry into the past and the question of whether a fundamental shift in policy was required. A circumstance facilitating the need for such an inquiry was the very fact that Chile was not unique: rather similar acts occurring elsewhere in the world were pressing for a serious and significant shift in policy. A particular program officer at the foundation’s International Division who was keenly aware of parallel developments in Eastern Europe commensurate with those in the Latin American Southern Cone chose to examine and explore the connections. His name was David Heaps, and he was a longtime foundation staffer with an imaginative and perceptive view of Eastern European events and how they were related to developments in Latin America. At the very same time that his colleagues in Santiago were weighing how to proceed in Chile in order to reduce repression, Heaps became cognizant of what he would call “a pandemic phenomenon” in Eastern Europe and elsewhere around the world—an open and sustained assault on human rights.39 The most vivid expression of this assault was a vast increase in the number of political prisoners around the globe. The dissident movement in communist Eastern Europe offered tangible evidence of outrageous repression in the form of a hefty increase of such prisoners. Andrei D. Sakharov, the great humanist and physicist of the USSR, had indicated that in that country alone there were ten thousand political prisoners.40 To familiarize himself with the nature of the political problem, Heaps traveled to Geneva in May 1974 to meet with knowledgeable sources at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).41 The committee was deeply involved in quietly visiting political prisoners in countries around the world. Although its officials lacked a detailed database, they could speak with some authority about political prisoners, a topic that was a specific concern of the committee. The details gleaned by Heaps from the committee and other sources prompted him to suggest an alternative program for the anticipated, so-called “1980 Budget” of the Ford Foundation. The “1980 Budget” should not be considered an actual budget for the year 1980; rather, it was a series of documents examining the foundation’s long-term programmatic commitment.42 Clearly, Heaps was angling for a radical shift in the foundation’s future that would diminish economic assistance and move toward human rights. In a memorandum to David Bell, the vice-president

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of the International Division, on July 17, 1974, Heaps criticized the priority given in Ford Foundation regional offices to combating hunger and fighting for economic justice. “Human welfare” as described in the original and basic documents of the foundation in 1949–50, according to Heaps, warranted a reinterpretation and, therefore, the fundamental modification of priorities. After a review of “the pervasive abuse of human rights” around the world, Heaps concluded that if there is to be an improvement in this “pandemic” situation involving political prisoners, then human rights must be considered “just as indispensable to the civilizing process as the mitigation of hunger and economic injustice.”43 This new language was nothing short of startling. He began his memorandum by stating the purpose of “an alternative programme interest.” Later, almost with a kind of mea culpa formulation, Heaps wrote, “we have never displayed any systematic concern with . . . the pervasive abuse of human rights.” It was time to confront the new reality. Even as he called for a shift in priorities, Heaps pointed to the direction the foundation should take to remedy the priority imbalance. He called attention to the fact that only a few nongovernmental organizations and scholars were currently working in the field of human rights. It was precisely through the subsidization of human rights NGOs and scholarly research that the foundation could seek a major remedy for the unfolding, horrifying abuses of the day, especially the spread of the seizure and sometimes torture of political prisoners, by a number of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Heaps, of course, could not fail to be aware of the fact that the foundation embraced a large number of staffers who thought in traditional terms about the functions of regional offices and the priority given to fighting poverty and economic injustice. To force a shift away from the centrality of economic concerns was certain to prove at least psychologically disconcerting and ideologically disturbing. He anticipated that the established and conservative staffers would contend that placing human rights advocacy on the same level as promoting economic programs would only jeopardize the latter; the foundation’s historic and traditional priority. For Heaps, such an attitude was simply “inhumanely technocratic.”44 The Heaps memo became a shot across the bow when it was circulated with the rest of the “1980 Budget” to the foundation staff, including those in Latin American bureaus. Apparently, Heaps had allies with a similar view to his own. Thus, one important foundation regional staffer in Latin America, James Gardner, wrote to Heaps himself on October 7, 1974, saying that he found his July 17, 1974, memo “particularly interesting” as it “raises the right issues.” Gardner asked to be informed by Heaps on his “plans and progress.” The next day, October 8, 1974, Gardner sent another prominent regional staffer, Robert Edwards, a copy of Heaps’s memo, emphasizing that it had raised some interesting issues.45 The response in other quarters of the foundation was quite positive. At the very top level, the Heaps perspective was thought to warrant serious attention even if it marked a potential radical shift in traditional foundation policy. The foundation executives went

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beyond mere circulation of his proposal. Heaps was asked to expand his thinking into a lengthy essay on human rights to be presented to a meeting of the International Division in September 1975. That step was to trigger a major transition in the history of the Ford Foundation. Gardner’s view was especially significant. He was a specialist on issues of law, having graduated from Yale Law School after earlier completing undergraduate work at Harvard University. When he wrote to Heaps, he was head of the foundation’s office in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In his laudatory memo, Gardner placed considerable emphasis on the need to use law as a weapon to advance human rights and welfare objectives. He returned to this point in a memo dated February 7, 1975, that was sent to his colleagues working on the Chile problem, both locally and on the international level.46 His focus at this point was upon a proposal advanced by a certain scholar, David Trubek, who was seeking funding for a book linking law to human rights and development. Almost immediately, in commenting upon the Trubek request, Gardner moved to Heaps’s new and revolutionary argument about prioritizing human rights. Gardner did not see the issue quite the same way as Heaps did, but it was clear that he was seeking to raise the level of human rights in the hierarchy of values at the Ford Foundation. Trubek had evidently proposed an inquiry of a possible “trade-off” between development and human rights. Priority, in the Gardner perspective, belonged to human rights. Human rights, or as he also put it, “the rule (and misrule) of law issues” were due process, fixed entitlements, and an autonomous judiciary. Without such rule of law elements, and, therefore, without basic human rights, development could not prosper. For Gardner, there was a critical “international flavor” to the issue that would make it of concern to U.S. diplomacy. The pursuit of human rights, he thought, would be “problematic” when dealing with “developmental matters.” If the United States were to focus on development as it engaged in “political interventions,” its “attention to issues of human rights” would, at most, prove to be quite “frail.” He recalled to his colleagues how Secretary of State Henry Kissinger brushed off U.S. Ambassador Popper when he “raised the issue of abuse of human rights by the new [Chilean] regime.” The proposed Trubek study was seen as warranting foundation interest and support. But it was also apparent, whether or not the Trubek proposal was accepted, that the foundation was beginning to confront the need to prioritize human rights even as it continued to support development projects. As important as the demanding call for a fundamental shift in emphasis from development to human rights, if not more so, was an emerging recognition that nongovernmental organizations with special interest in human rights were the key to making that shift viable. Governments were unlikely to be responsive. Third World regimes, as Heaps noted in his breakthrough July 1974 memo, were all too often human rights abusers, especially if they were failed states or were wracked by civil conflict and sharp social cleavages that had eventually led to military dictatorships. Major developed countries

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were indifferent. Even an advanced industrial state like the USSR was a major abuser, thought Heaps, while its challengers from the democratic world were, in his view, all too frequently inclined to play the Machiavellian card. International institutions like the United Nations, wrote Heaps, were so riddled with cold war cleavages that human rights progress was all but paralyzed. It was hardly accidental that the Ford Foundation had rarely made reference to the UN and its various organs, including the UN Commission on Human Rights, that were subjected at that time to sharp criticism by nongovernmental human rights organizations. Heaps’s comment about the UN and other “official” international agencies was contemptuously harsh. He described them as: “ineffectual and tendentious.” If the topic of human rights was addressed at all, statements and resolutions by the UN and its Commission of Human Rights constituted “pious platitudes except in special situations politically congenial to majority blocs of particular countries.” Heaps was referring to the prevailing alliance at the UN between the Soviet Union and Third World countries. How, then, was progress to be made? Heaps sought the solution in the efforts of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that were “seriously and devotedly concerned” with human rights abuses worldwide. The trouble was, as his July 1974 memo noted, that these organizations were “few” in number and “none of them . . . has adequate material and human resources to meet the magnitude of prevailing needs.” Such a perspective could only have wrought a totally pessimistic outlook about the future. But a Third World trip, specifically to Latin America, by a foundation vice-president, David Bell, resulted in a distinctive positive approach that could correct this somewhat limiting perspective. Writing in a memorandum prepared on May 29, 1975, Bell declared that “he was much struck by the significance to Chile of [international] human rights organizations.”47 It was one of the local groups connected with the Catholic Church’s Archdiocese—the Committee of Cooperation for Peace (or Ecumenical Peace Committee)—that provided Bell with crucial documentation about significant possibilities offered by local and international NGOs. David Bell came back to relate to his colleagues in New York that “the visits and reports” of Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, and the Human Rights Commission—an official body of the Organization of American States (OAS)—stimulated “international political and economic support from those trying to work inside Chile on human rights problems.”48 Bell’s comments compelled a modification in Heaps’s initial perspective. In his Draft Report on Human Rights, published a year after his very influential memorandum, he would concentrate upon the value of human rights NGOs, though this emphasis would come after a presentation on the urgency of the subject of human rights. The new Heaps manuscript would mark a turning point in the transformation of Ford Foundation policy, even though formal policy change would not come until the following year, and only after a detailed in-house elaboration was made upon and certain alterations were made to the Heaps thesis. The

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essay by Heaps was unusually large, and was quite possibly one of the largest in foundation history, encompassing sixty-six typewritten pages and approximately twenty thousand words. An obituary story in the New York Times after his death on June 10, 2000, emphasized that “his work contributed to a decision by the Ford Foundation to start a large-scale international human rights program.”49 During his lifetime, Heaps was hardly known in human rights circles. Still, his major unpublished work testified to how an individual, even a fairly obscure one, can alter the role of a leading institution that, in turn, can spark an entire era of social change. Born in Winnipeg, Canada, he served with the Canadian Army in Europe during World War II. After winning the military cross for bravery, he joined the Ford Foundation in 1959. During the sixties, he served as the foundation’s representative in a number of African countries. Later, during the early seventies, he was active as a program officer for the foundation in its New York headquarters. But it was his landmark report in August 1975 that produced a huge impact. As the New York Times reported, his “findings” led to the foundation forming “an ambitious human rights program, now one of the largest in terms of budget and personnel.”50 Heaps’s Draft Report on Human Rights can be divided into the following four major components: a review of the assault on human rights around the world, an analysis of the international standards of human rights, a survey of international human rights NGOs, and an inquiry into whether and how the Ford Foundation should become directly involved in the human rights struggle. While not systematically detailed, the review of abuses of human rights nonetheless displayed a rather serious effort in the accumulation of data that reveal how “capricious and arbitrary abuse of individual rights no longer is an eccentric deviation from an accepted social norm.” On the contrary, arbitrary abuse “has become an endemic characteristic in the exercise of state power during the modern age.”51 What is focused upon was not the broad gamut of usual human rights abuses, but rather the more egregious forms of abuse by official state actions, such as summary and extrajudicial arrests and detentions. Torture and extrajudicial killings could have been added, but, perhaps by accident, were omitted. What was not omitted and, indeed was emphasized, was the fact that the “principal victims” of egregious abuses were “often those very intellectual elites to whom Foundation programs are directed.”52 A vivid illustration of the problem of abuse was provided by the “growing proliferation of political prisoners.” Both the increase of authoritarian rule and the accompanying political instability were certain to result in an escalation in the number of abuses rather than their diminution. A recent study at the time by the Joint Committee for the Reappraisal of the Role of the Red Cross that documented the increase was cited. The emergence of new and unstable states had significantly increased the number of abuse victims. It was reported that “arbitrary detention has become a standard method of handling dissidents and dissidence.” Indeed, the method “virtually girdles the globe.”

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The vast increases could not but egregiously strike at Ford Foundation programming. The study showed that the large-scale abuses and detentions took place precisely in many, “if not most” of the countries in which the foundation “retains an active program interest.” The paper by Heaps had no hesitancy in listing a dozen or so countries that fit this category. Indeed, estimated detention figures were provided on a continent-by-continent as well as a country-by-country basis. The estimates appeared to have come from several sources, including mainly Amnesty International, the International Committee of the Red Cross, major news media organizations, and, for information on the Soviet Union, from Andrei D. Sakharov.53 Data on detention were followed by an analysis that was quite new to the Ford Foundation. The question that was suddenly examined in a major internal study was, “are there international criteria for human rights?” After observations about various differences of opinion concerning what constituted human rights—a discussion that reflected various ideological positions—what was called the “Holy Grail of a universally acceptable definition of human rights” was discussed. And, of course, Heaps was referring to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. Why the Universal Declaration was neglected by the foundation for all these years was not clarified in the essay, although it did correctly emphasize that the UN and its various commissions and agencies were “practically impotent when not politically tendentious in the defense of human rights.” Heaps noted that that Declaration, “warts and all,” remains “the one universal document in existence.” Nothing was said in the essay about the International Covenants on Human Rights, which, unlike the nonbinding Universal Declaration, was binding upon contracting parties. Since the covenants would not formally come into force until 1976, it may have seemed inappropriate to make reference to them.54 All of a sudden, the foundation document had discovered that NGOs and the international community had a “basic code governing the conduct of states toward their citizens,” and that its provisions could now be “cited as accepted criteria for public response and remedial actions.” If, then, the international community was seized by an escalating assault upon human rights, and if the assault was as self-evident as the standards or criteria of how rights were clear to all, who could or should assume responsibility for drawing world attention to violators and abusers of human rights? The answer was almost self-evident. Governments could not be relied upon, even when they have solemnly ratified international human rights treaties or have claimed commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For these same governments either “ignore or violate them in practice.” As for the United Nations, its halls “resound with pious platitudes” and its agencies remained “ineffectual and tendentious.” One exception was the positive, if limited, regional work of the OAS’s human rights commission.55

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It was a “small platoon” of NGOs whose “members are pitifully few,” according to Heaps, that carried on the critical work and “essential effort of energetic exposure and mitigation of human rights abuses.”56 These prominent NGOs were given special attention, but, as would be noted by Heaps’s description of them, they hardly suggested the kind of potency needed to take on the “pandemic” of abuses. The first was the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose most pertinent work involved political prisoners. While its activity was globally widespread—during 1958–75, it had investigated conditions in sixty-five states with some 1300 visits to over one hundred thousand political prisoners—it deliberately and consciously shunned any publicity and disclosures, except if the abusive government chose to comment about an investigation. The committee saw itself as a protector of the abused in prisons and therefore, through agreement with the host states, it maintained the utmost “confidentiality.” While the committee’s usefulness beyond the certain protection it provided the political prisoner was limited, it nonetheless faced problems for which the Ford Foundation could extend help, Heaps believed. The most pressing one was its lack of any “serious research and documentation center.” Of almost equal seriousness was the veritable absence of an in-training facility for its new investigators, whether at its headquarters in Geneva or in the field. Discussion with top ICRC officials indicated that Ford Foundation assistance would be forthcoming for training purposes. Far more in keeping with the foundation’s purpose was the role of Amnesty International, with its fairly large membership. Its public exposure work at the time was regarded as its “essential strategy” and, internationally, was considered unequalled. “More than any single organization . . . Amnesty [had] been responsible for creating an international public climate of concern for political prisoners.” While its achievements and its public exposure strategy were impressive, the Ford Foundation could provide little assistance, as the bulk of this NGO’s funding came from its sizable membership through dues and contributions. Nonetheless, noted Heaps, it was seeking to create a documentation center (recommended also to Heaps by the ICRC) that might serve it as well as other human rights organizations. Such a center could provide the basis for the preparation of a definitive volume, perhaps to be published on an annual basis, of the state of human rights violations around the world. The third major NGO was the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), composed of a limited number of prominent judges and lawyers selected by their peers. Although preeminent in earlier years, its reputation had been deleteriously affected by the 1966–67 public exposure of covert CIA funding of international organizations, which included the ICJ. The Ford Foundation, in 1968, came to its financial rescue with a grant of $250,000, enabling the ICJ to adjust for a year’s transitional period to a more modest level of operations—an annual budget of $130,000.

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Although the ICJ had earlier enjoyed an eminent career in advancing the rule of law by an activist policy of public criticism and exposés, its now more limited budget obliged a certain restraint. Its new director, Niall McDermott, had concluded that its traditional policy was no longer appropriate or effective. Rather, ICJ would now pursue the method of quiet discussions and representations with well-placed individuals in certain countries on how best to maximize legal guarantees of human rights in those countries when they were in jeopardy. In this context, ICJ’s immediate agenda called for holding a conference in Eastern Africa in the seventies involving the top levels of governments in that area in order to explore means of devising legal protection for human rights in one-party states. The idea was more than merely intriguing. With virtually all of Africa and most Third World states considered authoritarian in character, was there a way of instituting a modicum of human rights in them? Precisely because the possibility of limited success existed for such probing—the presidents of both Tanzania and Zambia had approved the conference—the foundation was asked to consider a “modest addition of funds” to the ICJ budget. The outcome could be an enhancement of that NGO’s “capacity to explore the possibility of working with national authorities to devise appropriate measure[s] to protect human rights in developing countries.” In addition to the three key NGOs, several other NGOs were reviewed and commented upon. What had been the favorite of the Ford Foundation— the International Association for Cultural Freedom (IACF), which had succeeded the Congress of Cultural Freedom—was now recognized as no longer relevant for dealing with the new and urgent human rights problems confronting the international community. Its time was past and the foundation was mainly allocating fairly sizable grants to it to preserve the tradition of conferences and publications designed to emphasize the strength of freedom of the individual and free inquiry. IACF contacts with intellectuals and scholars in Eastern Europe constituted, said Heaps, “a precious and often solitary link with beleaguered individuals.” At the same time, significant doubt existed in the foundation’s leadership about the continuation of IACF as “the central instrument of Foundation concern with human rights.” An unusual proposal was then advanced: support for this NGO ought to continue until “a broader and more systematic Foundation entry in this field is authorized.”57 It was no wonder that, even at this early stage, a perceptive analyst was anticipating the creation of an NGO for Eastern Europe. In but a couple of years, the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee would be created. That IACF was finished was a foregone conclusion. Another favorite grantee was the London-based Minority Rights Group (MRG), a tiny international NGO that was a one-man operation. On an extremely modest budget, MRG was less an advocacy organization than a kind of educational instrument for enlightening the international community about the myriad ethnic, racial, and religious groups inhabiting the earth. Its publication of studies, mainly in the form of booklets about minority

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problems, was impressive, although no one could say that it seriously impacted the various minority problems in a significant manner. Still, as the only NGO in the business of highlighting what, for the foundation, was a burgeoning issue, whether in the United States or elsewhere in the world, it warranted continuing financial support. Hardly a favorite of the foundation at the time was the International League for the Rights of Man (later called the International League for Human Rights). The authoritative Draft Report expressed doubt about the league’s “capacity to achieve serious implementation of programs.”58 But the only problem to which it referred was the league’s “severely limited resources and staff.”59 Might this not be rectified by an infusion of funding? The question went unanswered even though the League was recognized as “the only international” NGO “located” in the United States, and one that had “a close relation to the United Nations.”60 Precisely because of its knowledge of the UN, the League might be expected “to exercise a more penetrating and constructive influence upon the UN in the human rights field than was believed to be possible in the early seventies.”61 The other NGOs listed by Heaps were quite small. The list included the Writers and Scholars International, which produced the valuable journal about and for dissenters in East Europe, Index on Censorship; the Centre for the Study of Religion and Communism; the International Press Institute, which the foundation had supported since 1958 with the total of grants given until 1970 reaching $1.7 million; the International Institute on Human Rights (based in Strasbourg, France); and, finally, several human rights bodies associated with the official Council of Europe. Whatever was expected from the various NGOs in Heaps list was hardly commensurate with the scale and extent of human rights violations. Only Amnesty International had the wherewithal and the purpose to conduct vigorous public campaigns against abusive regimes. But this NGO had a policy of not accepting funds except for special programs. This, of course, limited any relationship with the prominent NGO, which in 1977 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Significantly, David Heaps’s brief biography at the foundation noted that he was actively involved as a private member with Amnesty International. Later, toward the end of the century, Amnesty International changed its policy about receiving funding and the foundation would contribute grants to the organization. If there were limitations on what NGOs might accomplish in countering the pandemic of human rights abuse, Heaps thought that the overall aim of the foundation must be to target this threat. At the same time, arguments were advanced by others as to why the foundation ought not to be involved in the fight for human rights: were it to become involved, it could openly jeopardize and even endanger the development programs it was pursuing. Moreover, it was questioned, in various quarters, whether the Universal Declaration of Human Rights could be perceived as a standard by most countries and societies.62 The bulk of the Third World countries did not even exist in 1947–48 when the Universal Declaration was discussed and created.

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While effectively set forth, these arguments were nonetheless totally rejected by Heaps. At the core of the rejection was his basic theme that “governments which tolerate or foster injustice are likely to be equally unconcerned about economic injustice.”63 Nor should the argument be countenanced that concern about the rights of individuals has the narrowest of targets— intellectuals and scholars. In fact, the “one principal germinal element over the long pull [was] for the balanced growth of any society.” An extraordinary admission followed: “The Foundation in its policies and actions has implicitly accepted this premise and has therefore emphasized the development of institutions of higher learning and training to develop such individuals.”64 Ineluctably, then, the Ford Foundation must unhesitatingly pursue a double objective; on the one hand, it must provide assistance to selected international and national organizations in both developed and developing countries to aid judiciously victims of oppressive policies; and on the other hand, it must support programs of education, public information, and research to illuminate the burgeoning threat endangering the international intellectual community. Given the double objective to be pursued, the foundation was required to embrace and support the work of the various available and interested NGOs. Heaps did not exclude the need to create new NGOs if existing NGOs did not measure up to the responsibility of combating human rights abusers. In fact, this objective would be later pursued by the foundation. Besides embracing and supporting NGOs, Heaps believed, the foundation must have an additional responsibility: the coordination of the work of the NGOs and the consolidation of their efforts. The perspective hardly accorded with the reality of the competing NGOs that jealously guarded their independence. But, as perceived in the Draft Report, there existed “an urgent need” to coordinate and consolidate the NGO community in order to “maximize effectiveness.”65 While the argument was logical, it was not accompanied by suggestions of how it was to be realized. If explicit details on strategy were avoided, there was no such hesitancy on budgetary proposals. The Draft Report specifically recommended an initial allocation by the foundation of five hundred thousand dollars annually, an amount beyond current limited institutional commitments, for human rights purposes. The figure was not thought to be too burdensome, as it would constitute only one-half of one percent of the 1978 foundation budget, which totaled one hundred million dollars. Even as it represented a quite modest sum in relation to overall foundation expenditure, it would, nonetheless, serve to “validate a fuller Foundation commitment to human rights.”66 Indeed, the sum would signal a major breakthrough for future human rights activism by the foundation. At the time, however, it was only a proposal that had to be acted upon.

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Chapter

3

Fo u n d at i o n Po l i c y ac r o s s L at i n A m e r i c a

T

he Draft Report by David Heaps, along with his earlier memorandum, may have constituted a breakthrough in Ford Foundation thinking with respect to policy and programs. But the revolution had yet to be consummated. The key staff leadership had to provide its endorsement and, just as important, the foundation’s Board of Trustees had to accept the historic change. From the time of its effective “human welfare” operation more than a quarter-century earlier, the words “human rights” had not appeared in the foundation’s annual reports nor in the traditional Presidential Reviews. Indeed, reference to the historic Universal Declaration of Human Rights had never appeared in official Foundation documents. Moreover, staffers, especially in regional offices, were accustomed to the traditional functions of grant-making in which development was stressed and support for specifically overt human rights programming was minimal. William Carmichael, a former top staff official of the foundation, wrote in 2001 that the proposals of Heaps stirred “considerable debate.”1 Recalling Heaps’s remarks on the traditional need to refrain from activities that might be viewed with disfavor by host governments, Carmichael said that “reactions . . . were mixed concerning the diminution of development significance.”2 The doubts and uncertainties about Heaps’s proposal were not surprising given the kind of “divergent courses” that the foundation’s “overseas programs were then pursuing in different parts of the world.” The same mixed reaction applied to Heaps’s “strong arguments” in favor of foundation “support for human rights research and related activities” by U.S. and Europe-based organizations. An initial personal reaction to Heaps’s Draft Report was made by another key foundation vice president, David Bell, head of its International Division. It came in a short paper of “Comments” dated August 20, 1975, only days after the Heaps monograph was completed and distributed.3 The “Comments,” while finding the Heaps paper “challenging and persuasive,” were, nonetheless, significantly critical. The target of the criticism was not at all the main thrusts of the Heaps thesis—the need to address human rights abuses and

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to support organizations combating those abuses. On the latter point, Bell emphasized that “the Foundation ought to undertake a broader and more sustained interest than we have in the past” on those human rights NGOs that Heaps had elaborated upon. But, in Bell’s view, the very listing of the NGOs left much to be desired. He found the Heaps list “unduly short.” Several NGOs that the foundation had supported, like the International Broadcast Institute and the Institute of Race Relations in London, were not mentioned. Nor did the list include various organizations in the field of international law that the foundation had supported, presumably including the American Society of International Law. “What should we do about them in the future?” Bell asked. Moreover, if Heaps was “persuasive” in arguing that the world needed better means for accumulating knowledge about human rights and for acquiring better ideas for strengthening human rights in practice, he failed to address the question, “how might this be done?” Should the foundation support a series of research and training centers? Or should it support research by leading scholars in the field? Or should it underwrite the holding of international conferences on the subject? Or the preparation of publications on it? Clearly, “operational” recommendations had not been dealt with. Bell was also dissatisfied with the preoccupation in the Heaps paper with international human rights organizations and their external influence on individual countries. For a foundation with offices in numerous areas, what should it do within countries “where human rights and intellectual freedom are under pressure?”4 In this context, Bell wondered about what had been learned in the various areas where the foundation had offices. How did these offices cope with increased pressure, and what can be learned from them as to how the foundation reacted to pressures against human rights? If the foundation had successfully coped with the assault on the intellectual freedom of social scientists in, for example, South American countries like Chile, can the same be said about whether and how the offices defended humanists and other intellectuals? The foundation had supported the International Association for Cultural Freedom, which had dealt with assaults against those in the humanist field, but, as the problem of abuse against humanist intellectuals was “growing,” and given the fact that the IACF was no longer “an adequate instrument,” what alternative if any, existed? In Bell’s judgment, Heaps also failed to address a crucial matter of principle. In responding to attacks on intellectual freedom, should the foundation lay its cards and concerns openly on the table? What did experience indicate about the appropriateness of this direct approach? Clearly, Bell was less than enthusiastic about the depth of the Heaps inquiry. Finally, Bell was also dissatisfied with the neglect in the Heaps paper of vital analytical inquiries, such as an evaluation of the kind of pressures that now existed in the world against human rights and freedom, and, more importantly, of which pressures would be especially appropriate for the foundation to tackle. In this context, Bell drew the “implicit conclusion”—as it was indeed what others might very

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well have concluded—that the Soviet Union and China “are beyond our reach.” Even, more sharply, and a bit caustically, Bell questioned Heaps’s overwhelming “central attention” to political prisoners, which apparently was not thought to be a priority of the foundation. In fact, this was the view of Heaps. He drew much of his analysis from ICRC and Amnesty International reports. But for Bell, this would be a much too narrow source of documentation. The following concluding remarks by Bell illuminate his perspective: “My own off-hand guess, for example, is that while we should help as we can with respect to political prisoners, the natural central focus for the Foundation is elsewhere, and our comparative advantage is more likely to be in sustained attention to the tangled issues of free inquiry and expression.”5 The comment could not have been clearer. Free inquiry and free expression were precisely the aim of the foundation from the beginning, particularly as it supported the work of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its successor organization, IACF. Bell was similarly insistent that totalitarian communist societies must not be immune from human rights criticism, although he was in error in holding that the Soviet Union was not a target of the Heaps discussion on political prisoners. (Heaps had cited Sakharov as a source for his observation that there were some ten thousand political prisoners in the Soviet Union.) Political prisoners, however traumatic an assault upon freedom, could not be the exclusive concern of the Ford Foundation leadership. For Bell, the next steps in the struggle for a new landmark approach would come at a conference of the International Division scheduled for the next month, in September 1975. Regrettably, a record of the September meeting was either not prepared or was lost. But, judging from Carmichael’s later comments, professionals directly involved in development programs in Third World countries were concerned lest advocacy of human rights compromise the role of foundation regional offices with their respective governments and, therefore, lessen the priority of the foundation’s historic focus upon economic and welfare issues, whatsoever the importance of human rights. Apparently, too, to judge from a paper prepared by Heaps shortly after the September meeting, participants had expressed concern about the “imposition” of Western “values” upon prevailing “ethnocentric” perceptions of Third World countries.6 Heaps also recalled that the phrase “cultural imperialism” was used by critics who accused his lengthy essay of justifying “intervention” by outside elements. Whether posed in terms of preserving ethnocentric values or resisting “cultural imperialism,” foundation representatives at the September meeting, according to Heaps, gave emphasis to the “rights of groups or collectivities” as “frequently” superseding the rights of individuals. Heaps’s undated short paper was evidently inspired by a meeting he had had with Sutton and another high foundation executive, Craufurd Goodwin. He began his paper with reference to a “discussion” that he had recently had with these two colleagues. That discussion prompted Heaps to prepare a kind of outline of a new “draft report” that would assume the character of a “revised paper.” He was intending to offer suggestions for the revision, but

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at the same time, he wanted to make it clear to his colleagues that he thought their remarks were “overly oriented toward issues of theory and conceptualization.” While Heaps was prepared to recognize the differing perspectives of local foundation officials from those at headquarters, he was quite reluctant to accept criticism offered with vague terminology posed in purely abstract, conceptual terms. Nor would he be willing to retreat from his principal argument about the uniqueness of the current human rights threat and, therefore, the need to depart from traditional foundation approaches. He was willing to acknowledge that the foundation might have been concerned about various human right abuses, whether “implicitly,” or, at times, “explicitly.” Nonetheless, the issue of “political prisoners” had to be seen, he said, as “highly significant,” and it could not be “ignored.” Heaps took as his principal point of departure a comment made at the September meeting by a particularly influential member of the foundation’s Board of Trustees—Soedjatmoko. He urged that “the Foundation be true to itself.” What precisely Soedjatmoko may have meant is not clear, but it appears to have referred to the foundation’s liberal tradition and policy. Heaps stated that while the problem of “political rights”—by which he meant “political prisoners”—could not and should not be the “exclusive concern” of the foundation, it was nonetheless “reflective of the broader issues subsumed in political and fundamental rights.”7 Bell’s charge that Heaps had neglected other rights detailed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not found acceptable. Bell would agree to “some reference” in the planned foundation paper to the Universal Declaration and its “precedents” for an “acceptable global code of conduct.” So how then was the foundation to accommodate the Heaps perspective? This was a key question in the Bell critique of the Heaps paper. Heaps proposed that the planned November draft make a distinction between international programs emanating from New York and programs emanating from the field and dealing with specific country or regional problems. While Bell appeared to urge a universal, across the board foundation approach, Heaps sought separate approaches. On the international level of programming, Heaps was less than precise and concrete. He said nothing about international NGOs, a topic to which he had given so much attention in his own Draft Report. Instead, he seized upon two ideas that had been advanced by some NGOs, but this time he avoided using their names. One idea called upon the foundation to “assist in developing research and documentation” concerning human rights violations. It was Amnesty International and, to a lesser extent, the ICRC that had advanced the idea of a common research center that the foundation might fund. The idea, had it ever been realized, would have evoked complications almost from the beginning due to the competitive character of NGOs. In fact, the proposal never took on a life of its own. A second idea provided for assistance to “more benign or non-repressive one-party systems” in order to protect individual or group rights. Heaps’s

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statement was an awkward reformulation that, initially, had been advanced by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) for dealing with rights abuses in Eastern Africa. The political leaders of Tanzania and Zambia had agreed to a conference on human rights sponsored by the ICJ. Both countries were headed by presidents who could be reelected forever, with less than impressive records on human rights and with power overwhelmingly centralized. Heaps, without rejecting the idea, wondered aloud about the need for “a study of means” to assist in realizing the objective. The following courses of action were proposed, none of which was unique or even new: assistance to intellectuals or scholars, including refugees; support for interdisciplinary studies in universities; publication of an international volume on human rights; and “building or strengthening structures or constituencies where free inquiry could be maintained.”8 The last suggestion was so vague that it bordered on meaninglessness. It was evident that Heaps was running out of ideas and could not effectively respond to Bell’s queries. But if he had little to add to his original paper, in the international dimension, he did think it advisable to advance a suggestion that might have “facilitated” the plan for new ideas to satisfy Bell’s questions and comments. He urged inviting “an outside advisory group of outstanding thinkers in this and related fields who could meet periodically to assist the Foundation.” It turned out to be an utterly inadequate proposal that even disappointed Heaps himself. But its inadequacy should have been anticipated. Where would these “outstanding thinkers” come from, given the limited number of experts at the time either in academia or in the NGO community? Toward the end of Heaps’s short paper on what the final staff draft ought to contain in response to the Bell memo and the September meeting, he strongly urged that his initial Draft Report analysis of NGOs be included “in the body of the document . . . or included as an appendix.” This, of course, had been his most distinctive reference to regional offices other than to reiterate the need to “determine realistically the art of the possible.” The task of preparing the report for the foundation’s trustees, a step that would guide them to an entirely new level of policy and practice in the human rights field, fell to the organization’s leading intellectual, Francis Sutton. Heaps’s Draft Report would be significantly revised to take account of Bell’s comments and the discussion of the foundation’s representatives in the fall. But the Sutton paper would also incorporate hard intellectual analysis of the challenges confronting the international community in the areas of concern to the foundation, and a projection into the future of where the foundation should move and how it was to get there. At the heart of the study, and guiding it, was a philosophical outlook that reflected the liberal tradition that, for several decades, had served as the foundation’s moral compass. Entitled Human Rights and Intellectual Freedom, the Sutton study—which ran seventy pages and over twenty thousand words—was released in November 1975 as an “Information Paper” designed for the foundation’s Board of Trustees’s meeting the following month, in December. Its front page labeled

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it “confidential” and “for internal use only.”9 Oddly, no author was identified on the paper, and some copies of the document in the foundation archives actually, if mistakenly, identified the author as “Heaps.”10 Indeed, an in-house history of the revolutionary and landmark development in Chile, prepared by Scott Busby in December 1989, specified that the “Information Paper” was drafted by “Heaps and Francis Sutton for the Trustees in November 1975.”11 However, Alan Divack, the foundation’s chief archivist made it clear that Sutton was the author of the text of the “Information Paper.” Sutton, in an interview a dozen years later, provided further details. He was the deputy vice-president of the foundation’s International Division and was asked by his superior, David Bell, to prepare the paper because he was considered by Bell a “gifted” writer. Given Bell’s critique of Heaps’s Draft Report, that was not too surprising, although Sutton recalled that Heaps felt that Sutton had “muscled him aside.” At the same time, Sutton did observe that Heaps had prepared the appendix of the “Information Paper” that focused upon human rights NGOs.12 As noted, Heaps vigorously fought for the inclusion of his section on NGOs either in the text or in an appendix. The following opening sentence of Sutton’s “Information Paper” sharply distinguished it from Heaps’s Draft Report: “The Foundation has long been devoted to the cause of human rights and intellectual freedom.” The thrust of the Heaps essay was precisely the opposite; Heaps argued that human rights had never been on foundation’s radar screen, although “intellectual freedom” had been there from the very beginning. So what was the point of the intense staff self-examination that Sutton acknowledged had been going on for eighteen months in “discussions” and “explorations”? The answer would come shortly after the opening sentence as follows: “But we have not been satisfied that we are reacting with appropriate sensitivity and wellgrounded judgment to the many disturbing situations that we encounter.” It was not something new that the foundation was being asked to embark upon but rather, in keeping with its tradition, it was being asked to determine what more had to be done. Sutton seemed to play down the gross abuses that Heaps had stressed, including the great increase in the number of political prisoners that were seized by regimes on virtually every continent. Rather, the “Information Paper” put the issue in the mildest of ways as follows: “there is now a lively international concern with rights and freedom that is part of the human aspirations of our time, and we would like to join in this concern.” What, therefore, was being sought was hardly a radical transformation in the foundation’s policy, but rather the “seeking [of] better policy guidelines and identifying possibilities for new or extended program actions in the field.” The proposed change was to be perceived by no means as a radical breakthrough but rather as a modest improvement in policy guidelines. Bell’s critical comments on the Heaps paper had presaged the softer approach when he wondered aloud what the foundation had been doing or not doing

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to cope with the urgent abuses on the international scene. The object of both essays was the “future,” as Bell had requested. But Sutton’s “broad guidelines for what we may do in [the] future” would be shaped quite differently from that conceptualized by Heaps. They were, however, in total agreement about one thing—the special and new attention to international NGOs “concerned with human rights and intellectual freedom.” Yet, while Sutton would underscore the newly-embraced importance of international NGOs, he would insist upon linking the new thrust to what had gone before. The proposed new policy guidelines were to be linked to the history and nature of Ford Foundation programming. To accomplish this linkage required a certain stretch of imagination and a fierce determination to almost equate human rights with intellectual freedom, for the reality was that, prior to 1973–74, the phrase “human rights” was not used by the foundation. Indeed, the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights had been notably absent in foundation discourse. Fortunately, Sutton could seize upon the language of a new international agreement to connect the older emphasis upon intellectual freedom, which reflected cold war attitudes and concerns, with the broader issue of human rights. The so-called Helsinki Final Act or Helsinki Accords, adopted and signed on August 1, 1975, by all the states of Europe along with the United States and Canada, set forth a new standard of conduct for all the states of Europe including the communist states of the Soviet empire. That standard specifically demanded adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as to the UN’s legally-binding International Covenants on Human Rights, which would come into force the next year, 1976.13 The Helsinki Final Act was by no means an exclusively human rights document. In large part, it was an agreement to guarantee and make permanent the post-war borders in Eastern Europe. It was the Soviet Union that first advanced the idea and hoped to use the accord to protect its security and, to a lesser extent, promote trade and scientific exchanges with the West. The democracies of Western Europe saw the Soviet demands as an opportunity to press for human rights. As a consequence of the bargaining process aimed at formalizing détente and reducing cold war tensions, a “decalogue of principles”14 in the Final Act was adopted with Principle VII calling for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and making specific reference to the Universal Declaration and the International Covenants. Three so-called “Baskets”—or distinct sections of the Act—were set up to assure the appropriate balance to underscore détente. Basket 1 covered security, Basket 2 covered trade and exchange, and Basket 3 covered certain human rights, notably the free movement of people and ideas, which the democracies interpreted to mean freedom to emigrate and to travel, as well as the free expression of ideas. Sutton, in justifying the foundation’s updating of past concerns, singled out several current developments, among which Basket 3 was seen as underscoring why “freedom and human rights seemed now to be returning as a

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major subject of public concern, weighing more heavily on international affairs than they have for some years.”15 Still, the Board of Trustees meeting in December 1975 was not intended to focus upon human rights policy all over the world; rather its primary concern was Latin America, where developments in Chile in September 1973 challenged the old and fundamental policy of the foundation dealing with the priority of development in combating poverty in Latin America and throughout the Third World. Even as it were to focus upon the human rights issues flowing from the military coup in Chile, other military developments would reinforce the new concern. The Board of Trustees, at its end-of-the-year meeting in 1975, authorized a new, more activist human rights policy, including an unprecedented expenditure of five hundred thousand dollars for specifically human rights purposes. At the heart of the new policy was support of human rights NGOs. That it would be a difficult problem in Chile was self-evident, given the ruthlessness of the authoritarian-military regime of Pinochet. Indeed, the Santiago office of the foundation felt obliged to shut down and move its operation to Lima, Peru. From there, priority had to be extended to local Chilean NGOs. Where would they be found? Fortunately, within months of the board’s decision, an NGO appeared in Santiago that had a solid and respectable basis of support and, at least initially, of sustenance. It was the Vicariate of Solidarity, created as part of the Archdiocese of Santiago. Established in 1976 as a successor to an Ecumenical Peace Committee that had been formed immediately after the September military coup, the Vicariate began functioning almost without delay. What had laid its foundation and enabled it to engage in public, if limited, human rights activity was the Archbishop of Santiago, Cardinal Raul Silva Henriquez. Its principal function, from the beginning, was to defend those arrested and detained by the military rulers. As a respect for law remained characteristic of Chilean and Latin American courtrooms, a certain legal window was permitted to be open. And the fact that the central Catholic Church organ was its administrator, in a country where almost everyone was Catholic and, therefore, no direct assault upon its institutional life would be anticipated or tolerated, gave the Vicariate a remarkable autonomy. Strikingly, no such church-administered organization existed anywhere else in Latin America. And nothing quite resembled it anywhere else in the world. It could be expected that the Vicariate would become a major recipient of Ford Foundation grants.16 It must be emphasized that the foundation was aware that Cardinal Henriquez was himself committed to liberal and human rights objectives. But, equally significant was the fact that he was unusually active in dealing with secular power, including the military authority. At the center of the Vicariate was the Judicial Department, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez, who had served as vice-minister of justice during the Christian Democratic administration of Eduardo Frei, which had preceded the Allende socialist regime that Pinochet had destroyed. Gonzalez later taught labor law at the University of Chile. His judicial department was quite large, with a permanent staff of

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thirty-nine persons, including twelve lawyers and a number of social workers and medical professionals. According to a foundation staff report, the department was “highly regarded both within Chile and abroad.”17 In addition, some fifty private lawyers in Santiago worked with the Vicariate on a regular basis, but were remunerated at discount rates. A second important Chilean NGO appeared two years after the Vicariate was created. It was the Chilean Human Rights Commission (CHRC), which would soon become a significant grantee of the foundation.18 According to a later foundation staff report, the CHRC, at its founding in 1978, identified itself as a totally secular organization, distinct from the Vicariate and comprised of representatives from major pre-war Chilean democratic parties— including the Christian Democratic Party and the Socialist Party (but not the Communist Party). The commission quite early established a tradition of documenting abuses, but its purpose would ultimately become publicizing information about human rights violations, both nationally and internationally, through prominent international human rights NGOs. Its reports, whether issued monthly or annually, were to be considered accurate and, they were therefore highly regarded as objective. Precisely because of their accuracy, undoubtedly, a number of members of the commission’s Executive Council and staff would be harassed and detained during Pinochet’s rule. In the case of the Executive Council’s principal leader, Jaime Castillo, the state’s punishment took the form of expulsion from Chile for a three-year period. Chile, of course, was not alone in facing a serious rightist military problem and, therewith, confronting the Ford Foundation’s overseas development and agricultural aid programs with disturbing and threatening challenges. Three years after the Pinochet coup in Santiago, civil war broke out and intensified in Argentina, which had been governed since the mid-sixties by the military. Left-wing guerrilla forces, heretofore biding their time, were now engaged in a major effort to confront the military regime, which in turn triggered powerful right-wing forces in the Argentinean military to react with potent weaponry, arms, and trained manpower ranging from official military service units to the dangerous paramilitary death squads. As the conflict spread, geographically embracing key sectors of the Argentinean community, foundation executives in both New York and the regional office of Buenos Aires faced once again a repeat of the traumatic challenges of 1973 in Chile. Richard Dye, a key official in New York, joined by trustee Soedjatmoko, journeyed to Argentina to obtain a closer view of the scene to which the international media was giving especially prominent attention. A confidential interoffice memo written by Dye on June 25, 1976, to William Carmichael summarized the threat.19 Once again, for the Ford Foundation, the emerging issue centered on intellectual refugees. The trend, “from a human rights and intellectual freedom perspective,” Dye found, “appears to be negative.” This was an understatement and he knew it. His report showed that precisely the refugee communities of “mostly Chileans and Uruguayans” residing in Argentina were subjected to “growing attacks.” And, as the attacks grew

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increasingly “acute,” the “plight” of foreign refugees could not but worsen. The United Nations appealed to various countries to open their doors to permit immigration, but the response was inevitably limited because of the saturation of the local job markets. That the foundation’s assistance program would be heavily burdened was self-evident. The number of intellectuals and academics among the refugees was considerable. Earlier grants to the Latin American Social Science Center (CLACSO, in the Spanish lettering) to handle the Chilean academic flow that had been arranged and funded by the foundation, Dye reported, were “virtually exhausted,” as were the funds for “small programs” in the Southern Cone. But the assault on the foreign refugee communities was only a segment of the overall danger. Confronted by the right-wing military threats, Argentinean intellectuals (in addition to the foreign intellectual refugees) were now facing a definite threat to their very existence as perceived dissidents, radicals, or subversive communists. A “growing number,” noted Dye, “have either been forced to flee the country because of explicit or implied threats or . . . feel they must make contingency plans.” Affected, he observed, was the agricultural economics group in Buenos Aires, as well as the important Center for Urban and Regional Studies. Many from these two groups were foundation grantees. The director of the institute that housed the Center for Urban and Regional Studies, according to Dye, was warned to leave and was advised that “he should stay away at least for several months.”20 While thus far the number of Argentinean intellectuals endangered was much smaller than the number in the refugee community, their anxiety was nonetheless deepening. This was especially the case with those who were of Jewish background. References to anti-Semitism were rare in foundation staff reports, but once again, as in an earlier 1974 report, Dye had no hesitancy in calling attention to “an ugly outbreak of anti-Semitism”—a periodic Argentinean phenomenon—that was “appearing frequently in recent weeks.” Dye warned that the unfolding and disturbing picture was certain to “severely tax” existing programs, their capacity, and their budgets. Of particular concern to the foundation was the unusual research center, CLACSO—the Latin American Social Science Center—with which it had a special relationship through a host of grants. Even though the center had a regional character rather than being seen as exclusively national, it was already being subjected, said Dye, to “close scrutiny by the authorities.” The former executive secretary of the center had fled to England “after receiving several warnings.” In addition, CLACSO was visited by “armed personnel” to seek out “information,” and the center’s “employment exchange” records were seized. Of special pertinence was a report of a robbery of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Buenos Aires. The taking of the records at the UN office could be used to identify and threaten refugees. Shortly after the robbery, a round-up of some twenty-five refugees took place. Plans were developing for urgently relocating the academic center to

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possibly Catholic University in Quito, Ecuador. The implications for the foundation were certainly clear. Dye observed that CLACSO was “unlikely to be able to play the same broad role in assisting . . . the flow of academic refugees from Argentina as it did for Chile.” Its role in response to the Chilean military coup and the dictatorship that followed could hardly again be replicated. How the foundation would respond to the unfolding refugee crisis remained uncertain. Just prior to Dye sending the confidential memorandum, Soedjatmoko, the other foundation visitor to Latin America, addressed a special meeting of the foundation’s Latin American staff members that was designed to reveal to them basic perspectives on intellectuals. The Indonesian trustee highlighted and expressed deep regret about the deepening schism in Argentina and perhaps other Latin American governments between those intellectuals who worked as technocrats for the Argentine government and those who worked independently and, at times, were critical of the Latin American governments. What disturbed him was the unwillingness of the latter group “to recognize the need to keep in touch across the boundaries of whether one is in the government or opposition.”21 He believed strongly that the two intellectual groupings could somehow reach an agreement with each other that would prove beneficial to both. The failure to reach some understanding between them was deeply regretted by Soedjatmoko and led him to blame the failure on “the Latin American passion for intellectual absolutes.”22 This trustee’s perception of the difference was more than a bit puzzling. In his view, it involved the conjoining of “technical competence with ethical infantilism,” which could lead to “polarization [that] will only accelerate” and result in the opposing parties moving onto “a pathological tangent.”23 Surely, he could not have thought that those who pursued a kind of moral or ethical course in the social-science research institution should compromise their findings to placate government bureaucrats, however intellectual the latter were. And, indeed, he made it clear that the foundation’s position “in relation to the question of human rights” in the Southern Cone of Latin America made him “often quite proud of being part” of the Ford Foundation.24 This pride appeared to run counter to his earlier theme about accommodating government intellectual bureaucrats. But it was at this point that a burst of realism enabled Soedjatmoko to resolve the contradiction. What made the foundation policy ultimately effective, he said, and what enabled the intellectual critics to hold their own independent views, was the fact that his organization was “an American foundation, and only because [it is] American, [and] in Latin America, [the United States] still has an overwhelming power it can apply.” But the Latin American experience could not be easily replicated anywhere else in the Third World. Elsewhere, Soedjatmoko observed, there was “no tradition of overwhelming American power.”25 Thus, a moral posture by the intellectual who was a foundation grantee in Latin America could scarcely be applied to Indonesia, India, or parts of

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Africa. It was this reality that prompted him to welcome a harmonization of conflicting interests among intellectuals. When Dye raised the question with Soedjatmoko as to whether the different types of responses by the foundation to different countries was not more “a matter of a question of tradition” rather than a power issue, the Indonesian held to his position. He contended that the “reluctance to move against these [independent intellectual] groups and against the foundation, I think, has something to do with the reluctance at angering American public opinion and the American government and American Congress.”26 For foundation staffers in Latin American regional offices, he said, needed to have no hesitancy about being brutally frank. He remarked to his listeners that Latin American governmental responsiveness to American pressure was not to be considered surprising, “especially in the light of their needs for military hardware, credits, and so forth.” It was a most perceptive comment. In making this statement, Soedjatmoko found himself rethinking a position he had taken on the Latin American budget at the trustees meeting. He acknowledged that he had voted for cutting that budget, given, as he put it, “the very pressing priorities in Asia and Africa.”27 Now, after traveling throughout Latin America, he recognized that the absolutist action of making wholesale cuts without taking account of how valuable the foundation was seen to be in Latin America was an error in judgment. Still, he must have been acutely aware of how the drop in price of foundation market shares acted as a powerful restraint upon the Board of Trustee’s thinking. When asked what the future held for Latin American activity by the foundation, he would comment, “we can only hope that the stock market will improve to give us some breathing space.”28 Whatever the stock market situation in the seventies—and it was not encouraging—the foundation could not but be seized by the political situation in Argentina. One month after Richard Dye’s first confidential interoffice memorandum to Carmichael, he sent a second one following another quick field visit.29 Dye was again struck by “the continued violence and terror and the fundamental political instability and uncertainty.” Not surprisingly, given the xenophobia of the Argentine military, “the worst plight by far,” Dye found, was of the non-Argentine refugees, especially those without a legal residence. At least ten thousand persons were to be found in this category, and they were hounded by “brutal terror and official pressure.”30 Dye summarized the steps being taken by various governments and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which was reported to be “doing what it can to get them out.” Canada had agreed to take a thousand, and others expected to be helpful were the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, and New Zealand. Deep concern was expressed by Dye that the United States had not indicated as of yet a positive response. In his view, what the foundation could effectively do was limited, except perhaps to arrange for “a few strategicallyplaced phone calls in Washington emphasizing the need for prompt action on a refugee parole program.”31

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As for the foundation grantees, Dye found the situation “reasonably stable for the moment,” though “they are worried, even frightened.”32 Circumstances required him to speculate about the future. Were the situation to worsen, and if the “demand for assistance to affected academics and intellectuals grows sharply,” Dye felt it incumbent upon the foundation to provide funding for CLACSO’s refugees as it had done for Chilean refugee intellectuals in 1973. Important, too, should matters worsen, was for the foundation to once again set in motion “the international placement network for academic refugees who need relocation.” This would require, he added, “some money” for fellowships, relocation travel, and for covering administrative costs.33 In Dye’s opinion, a key role could be played by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, should the situation worsen. He found that his preliminary contacts with the UN refugee office in Buenos Aires were most encouraging. Dye advised his mentors at foundation headquarters to be prepared to provide some funds, as “a little money might go a long way here.”34 The statement was an upbeat one, characteristic of a foundation staffer’s hopefulness, despite the spread of authoritarian brutality. It was his clear recommendation that foundation colleagues, whether in New York or in field offices, continue with their positive approach. The option of succumbing to external terror was to be rejected. In the end, human rights might yet prevail. An evaluation by Nita Rous Manitzas, a staffer from the Southern Cone, in February 1980 validated, though with considerable caution, the Dye thesis.35 Manitzas pointed out that the foundation, since September 1976, had provided funding of $343,000 for activities in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay that enabled its intellectual grantees to work or be relocated, and to sustain a basic economic life. Of this amount, $150,000 was allocated in September 1976, supplemented by an additional $193,000 in September 1978. The following conclusion of the review of regional office operations was summarized near the beginning of the evaluation: thirteen separate projects financed by the foundation “have been, on the whole, highly constructive.” Even in circumstances of “prolonged repression,” it was found that the foundation could and did “respond effectively and with relative speed and flexibility.”36 What was evident to the observer was that the foundation’s projects “have played a significant role” in obtaining and preserving “a measure of critical, constructive, intellectual ‘space’ and dialogue in a stringently authoritarian setting.”37 It was apparent to Manitzas that the “still blatantly repressive” character of military rule in the three countries continued to prevaile in 1980, even as “the level of outright terror has certainly abated.”38 Instead of overt terror, a “more subtle process of institutionalizing a closed, authoritarian [system] . . . has been inexorably advancing.”39 This was especially apparent in the economy, the educational system, and indeed, “across the board.” The foundation’s program was initially guided by two considerations, both

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driven by intellectual freedom and human rights. First, through a package of “emergency” grants, the massive flow of academic refugees who could not safely stay in their home countries was facilitated. The second goal was aimed at assisting the “beleaguered intellectual communities”40 that remained. The foundation also sought to preserve the remaining pool of well-trained scholars, many of whom had been expelled from their university or government jobs. In order to preserve the pool, the process of independent intellectual inquiry had to be maintained. Otherwise, the scholars would be lost to research and its positive potential. What would result would be a “lost generation” of serious scholars and researchers. In pursuit of these goals, grants had to be awarded to international research centers and private research institutes, whether at home or abroad, that might sustain significant cadres of social scientists. As an alternative, individual scholars would be assisted in obtaining graduate training abroad. Whatever the locale for investigatory research, the grants given under specified projects were not to be frittered away or made irrelevant by encouragement of purely or partly artificial research studies. On the contrary, they were to be made highly relevant and had to be approved by documented, written endorsement provided by two program advisers from the foundation’s Latin American field offices or from headquarters. In addition, an evaluation report on the research study was to be prepared by an outside consultant who was to be selected for his or her expertise. The geographical breakdown of the foundation allocation, not unexpectedly, extended priority to Chile, where authoritarianism first struck. As of January 1980, $207,800 went to Chilean projects, $75,000 to Argentina, and $40,600 to Uruguay, which had also been taken over by a military coup shortly before the Pinochet seizure of power. The expectation was that fairly modest funds could be allocated to hold together “displaced clusters of social scientists” that would “yield a publishable manuscript” at the termination of foundation support. Manitzas thought that the formula used and its built-in flexibility, while unquestionably an “experimental venture,” could produce “a high pay-off” even if the “risk” from a scholarly viewpoint was considerable.41 Manitzas had no doubts that it would succeed, for it was “the willingness to take such risks that has distinguished the Ford Foundation” from other philanthropic organizations.42 Grants in the early eighties reflected a change in the new foundation policy brought about by a change in its very top professional leadership. In 1979, McGeorge Bundy stepped down as president and was replaced by Franklin Thomas, who had not been reared in the Boston upper-class tradition that had a special interest in foreign policy. Instead, Thomas was a product of middle-class New York City life where, as a black lawyer and intellectual, he had to face and overcome discrimination and bigotry. Foreign affairs was not his primary concern, while human rights was. Although the Bundy regime saw a basic foundation shift from democracy-building to human rights in general, the shift in policy-making had not yet made human rights the centerpiece

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of the foundation structure. Now, during 1980–81, human rights was declared to be one of six major programmatic themes of the foundation. Heretofore, human rights was identified publicly as a mere sub-category of concern in the foundation’s international work. Of course, beginning in 1973, human rights had become a crucial element in policy discussion and strategy formulation in the foundation, but as of yet without formal decisions by the leadership and the Board of Trustees. The human rights focus from 1973 onward was reflected in sudden ad hoc actions growing out of crises in Chile and later in Argentina. What was lacking was official authoritative pronouncement and programmatic specification.43 The formal revision of 1981 marked a major transformation. In the newlyestablished organizational structure of the foundation, “human rights and social justice” were identified as one of six major themes for future grantmaking, as well as a principal unit of the critical Program Division. The new unit was to be paired with a second prominent theme and unit—“governance and public policy.”44 Thomas, in his “Presidential Review” for the 1980 Annual Report, gave emphasis to the shift as follows: “fundamental civil and political liberties, and economic, social and cultural rights are at the center of the Foundation’s vision of a just and humane world.”45 This core policy consideration of the foundation had never been declared before. Thomas went on to clarify the linkage with the old priority as follows: “in many settings, work to establish or protect these [human] rights can reinforce and complement efforts to reduce the poverty and suffering of the disadvantaged.”46 Thus, the new core policy became intimately tied to the initial primary motivation of the Ford Foundation in which “human welfare” had been seen as predominant. Thomas here was echoing the penetrating observation of David Heaps that human rights was crucial to any notion of “human welfare.”47 The issue of human rights, centrally, was reflected in the budget from 1982 onward both annually and over the long run. From 1950 through 1981, all human rights expenditures in the vital geographical area of Latin America totaled $2,543,000, or only one percent of total program expenditures in that region.48 In sharp contrast, for the year 1982 alone, the grants for “human rights and social justice” totaled $1,330,000, or more than half of the total expenditures for the previous thirty-one years in Latin America. The 1982 human rights expenditure figure in Latin America constituted twenty-four percent of the total foundation expenditures in that geographical area. During the following year, 1983, the figures soared even higher. According to former foundation executive William Carmichael’s essay, written in 1999 (and published in 2001), the foundation had committed itself to expenditures of two hundred million dollars for the last quarter of the century.49 This was his conservative estimate. Carmichael went on to add that, during the quarter-century ending in 2001, much larger percentages of the annual budget, in most instances, were made to human rights by foundation offices in Latin America than by their counterparts in Asia and

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Africa. The former foundation executive, who had played a major role in the implementation of the organization’s Latin America policy, revealed that, during the eighties, several foundation staffers with experience in Latin America were reassigned to key positions in Asia and Africa, where human rights was not considered a major part of regional office functions. The intent of this move was to stimulate grant-making for the human rights field in those geographical areas.50 Of the (estimated) approximately two hundred million dollars the foundation expended on human rights grants in all geographical areas during 1976–91, Carmichael believed that most of the money was given to broadly-focused human rights NGOs based in the United States, Europe, and developing countries. But a sizable percentage was also provided to NGOs that dealt with specifically delineated subjects and target groups. Examples would include women’s rights, ethnic minorities, refugees, migrants, and indigenous people. Or, the grants might have been allocated to NGOs that focused on specific issues, like freedom of expression, labor rights, or reproductive rights. A fourth category of recipients was new public service law groups and individuals in developing countries, and organizations extending such legal services. A final category of recipients was academic research and universityacademic centers designed to train human rights specialists or others who might wish to examine aspects of international law. Examination of the foundation’s Lima, Peru, budget provided an insight into specifically its Latin American priorities. Lima, after the military coup in Chile brought about the closing of the Santiago office, became a major source of operation for the Southern Cone and Andean region. Not surprisingly, given the ongoing human rights abuses in the region, generally the largest portion of the Lima budget (fifty-five percent) was committed to the defense of and promotion of civil and political rights. With the area experiencing a large number of cases involving arbitrary detention, torture, and disappearances, the huge expenditure was hardly unexpected. With the foundation’s new stress on civil and political rights beginning in the late seventies, it was logical that, on the local level, legal services would come to occupy a central role. It was understood, of course, that the purpose was “to use the legal system to bring about social change.”51 Ordinary persons would now be provided with legal information that, heretofore, was only available to the affluent. Law would be used to affect the implementation of social entitlement programs and to help the disenfranchised participate in these programs. Promoting respect for the rule of law stood at the heart of the foundation’s purpose, internationally and locally. As always, special attention would be placed upon the needs of poor women and disadvantaged ethnic-racial groups. In addition to the Lima office, another Latin American foundation field office, which had not been very much involved in civil and political liberties before this time, would begin devoting greater attention to human rights. The Mexico City office, beginning in the early 1980s, shifted its priority concern to “human rights and social justice” in keeping with the Ford

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Foundation’s international policy.52 That naturally followed from the fact that Central America was considered part of the Mexico City office jurisdiction, and that area was confronted with a severe worsening of its human rights situation. In Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, torture and massive killings had become endemic, especially since 1984.53 In focusing upon these growing and terrifying concerns, the Mexico office now gave priority to providing support to groups researching and monitoring the massive killings and similar human rights abuses. A second objective was to promote public education on human rights abuses. Women’s rights was a special priority of the Mexico City office, as it was throughout the foundation’s programs. But this issue took on a sharper and more intense form when the subject became applicable to the Central American region where women held a lower, or “second class,” citizenship that carried particularly harsh ramifications. Even before basic civil liberties, with their primary focus on legal services, were to become a primary concern of the foundation, its Brazilian regional office was plagued by particularly brutal examples of human rights abuses. In the mid-seventies, it had been inescapably burdened with the consequences of military brutalities in the Southern Cone since it served as an escape center for academics and researchers fleeing Chile and later Argentina. In Brazil itself, the so-called “abertura”—political opening—for disadvantaged groups to mobilize on behalf of their own needs had entered the political agenda. Legal services served as a major leveraging device, particularly as they related to organizational empowerment projects. The projects varied in nature and scope, embracing such distinct groups as women, Afro-Brazilians—a category not available elsewhere in Latin America—indigenous groups mainly in forest areas, and the poor. It was the object of the Brazil office, in applying legal services, to support community groups and intermediary organizations representing the various distinctive categories.54 If the initial priority of the Brazilian office was economic and social rights, later, even without the emergence of police violence, torture, and political assassinations, the regional office moved toward the program of advancing civil and political liberties. As noted, it was local human rights NGOs that served as the base of the Ford Foundation’s operation in Latin America. NGOs within the area serviced by the foundation’s regional offices and funded by them kept human rights alive when repression descended upon the Southern Cone. However, the foundation did not operate alone in locating the NGOs and relating to them. While well-informed staffers at the regional offices provided valuable documentation about and to the NGOs, the regional offices themselves or the foundation headquarters would recruit at times very knowledgeable specialists from academia to pursue detailed investigations that were then made available to the staff. Their reports would provide invaluable source material that could not easily be replicated. Characteristic of these reports was a study prepared by Professor Margaret Crahan of Occidental College following a detailed tour she made to Chile, Argentina, and Peru during a two-week period in November 1982. She was

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remarkably well-versed on the three areas and extremely knowledgeable about the subject she was investigating. She shared her fifty-page study, “Human Rights in Latin America,” with William S. Saint, the key figure in the Lima office, who then sent it on to William Carmichael via Jeffrey Puryear. The report was intended to keep the key people within the Latin American “loop” fully informed on the subject. But it went well beyond this objective. So impressive was the report that Saint called it “a genuine tour de force on human rights issues in the region.” In Saint’s judgment, it was “substantive, analytical and full of provocative observations.”55 The conclusion reached by the “consultant,” as Prof. Crahan was identified, was rich in both observations and recommendations. She found that the “most notorious human rights violations have declined in Chile and Argentina.” Nonetheless, in these two military regimes, “the mechanisms of repression remain in place” requiring, therefore, that both “the legal defense of rights and the publicizing of violations” continue to be strongly supported by the foundation.56 Crahan was even more tough-minded than this standpat proposal indicated. In her view, “much more attention has to be paid to the stimulation and funding of studies on specific reforms for judicial and political structures.” It was her judgment that an increased focus on reforms was essential “to create greater barriers to state repression.” The final comment suggested that she anticipated the collapse of the two military regimes and was proposing methods for precluding their reappearance. She warned against permitting a “culture of fear” to once again take hold and, in this context, she urged “the promotion of research and networking” concerning the “culture” of repression in order to prevent its resuscitation. A final comment by Professor Crahan carried a foreboding about the immediate future in Peru, a country whose institutions she had perceptively studied and found seriously wanting. Earlier in her paper, she had warned that the situation there was “more critical than in Chile and Argentina and could rival the crisis in Chile from 1974–75 or Argentina in 1976–79.”57 She proved to be correct in anticipating the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori in Peru. She had no hesitancy in advising the Ford Foundation to engage in “greater preparedness for a human rights crisis in Peru.” It was clear that Professor Crahan was a great admirer of local NGOs in Chile and Argentina. Her concluding remarks called upon the foundation “to continue substantial support” to the Vicariate, the Chilean Human Rights Commission, the Academy of Christian Humanism—groups all located in Chile—and to the Center for Legal and Social Studies in Argentina. But even prior to her strong recommendations about NGOs, the Latin American specialist had completed a twenty-page survey of each NGO that could not fail to impress other specialists.58 About a dozen NGOs in Chile were carefully evaluated, their strengths and weaknesses weighed, and their future impact prognosticated. Examining each on an alphabetical basis (in the Spanish language), the author selected three for the concluding paragraph that had a specific appeal to the foundation. What was singled out about the

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Academy of Christian Humanism, however, was especially intriguing. This group was preparing syllabi for six separate academic human rights courses, and she found that those involved in the syllabus preparation were “the most exciting group.” While she had no “specific proposal” to offer the foundation for consideration, she strongly recommended that “they should be encouraged to submit one or more” projects, as they served valuable educational purposes. The Chilean Human Rights Commission had already sent in a proposal to the foundation that Crahan had been asked to evaluate. Here, she offered general comments. Unlike her findings about the Vicariate or the academy, she considered that the commission “serves as a clearing house for information” and, at the same time, acts as an instrument for bringing together leaders from various sectors of society. Therefore, in being more “politically diverse” than the other two Chilean groups, it has become “a model of a multi-class non-partisan rights organization.” Even if its strength, unlike the Vicariate, did not lay in publicizing human rights violations, it had, “together with Vicariate, the most credibility and the greatest political impact nationally and internationally.” Professor Crahan recommended that the commission be “encouraged,” presumably through grants and otherwise by the foundation, so that, eventually, it could “facilitate the transition to a civilian government.” This could not be the task, she thought, of a church-based organization, like the Vicariate. She concluded, rather presciently— it was only 1983, after all—that “over the long term the Commission has perhaps more potential for impact in promoting the return to the rule of law and civilian government.” In consequence, she concluded that she “strongly” supported assistance to the commission. The Vicariate, a creation of Chile’s liberal Catholic Church, had already acquired a reputation internationally. But Professor Crahan could not keep from lauding it as “the core of the human rights movement in Chile.” In fact, she noted that its impact had gone well beyond Chile: “Vicariate has served as a model for effective denunciations of violations, mobilization of public opinion and dissemination of data via the international press.” But beyond its media efforts and the shaping of pubic opinion, its “most important ongoing work is their court work together with [its] research on legal issues.” For some time, the foundation had accorded recognition to the value of its legal initiatives and breakthroughs. And, of course, no issue was more important to the organization than attention to legal issues and the rule of law as a defense for human rights. Argentina was already a step ahead of Chile by late 1982 in moving to civilian government. The Falklands War against Great Britain by the Argentine military rulers and the devastating defeat of the Argentinean navy in that year virtually demolished the status of the military chiefs who occupied the seats of power in Buenos Aires. With the demolition of its heroic military image, the country’s transition to civilian rule was all but certain. Yet Professor Crahan was hardly optimistic about significant progress in the human rights

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field in Argentina “unless institutionalizing the protection of human rights is consciously focused on in the next few months and thereafter.”59 She was acutely aware of how human rights had fared under civilian governments in Argentina, and, therefore, positive expectations were hardly warranted. This prompted her, not surprisingly, to urge the foundation to provide “strong support” to those organizations seeking to reform the government, especially the judicial system. Keenly aware of the foundation’s orientation, she observed that “funding should capitalize [on] maintaining and expanding resources for the legal defense of rights” as well as the creation of mechanisms for promoting “the rule of law and political participation.” Special attention was given to the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), headed by the well-known democratic activist, Emilio Mignone. It was the center, Crahan wrote, that was “doing the most important human rights legal work . . . and is highly effective.” She went on to note that CELS had documented and publicized human rights violations, especially the infamous disappearance of 6,500 Argentineans. It had effectively selected test cases in order to illuminate whether the court system would be true to its purpose. And CELS published studies on general legal questions and had given extensive attention to the enormously pressing problem of the “disappeared.” At the same time, it had vigorously sought out writs of habeas corpus and strongly defended political prisoners. Because Professor Crahan did not believe that the emerging civilian government could be anything other than “weak,” it was critical to promote “the development of legal and political forums . . . [for] rights in the future.” It was in this highly legalistic context that she recommended that the foundation provide funding that “should emphasize institutional” elements, especially involved with “legal and related research activities.” She said that she had already spelled out to the foundation “specific recommendations” in a December 10, 1982, memo. Legal concerns were not Professor Crahan’s exclusive interest. She commented and offered suggestions on a half-dozen other Argentine NGOs. None received as much attention as the famed Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, whose weekly demonstrations in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires had helped arouse the conscience of the democratic world. As the professor accurately noted, the “Mothers” “have had a major impact on Argentina and [upon] international consciousness and [they] serve as a moral barometer of changes in the human rights situation.” While they focussed upon the “disappeared,” they also have been especially attentive to the impact of repression on the families of the “disappeared.” Indeed, the “Mothers” had set up a fund for the education of the children of the “disappeared.” Given the dynamism of the “Mothers” group, Professor Crahan correctly anticipated that they would not “fade away” after the return to civilian government. Interestingly, she sought to figure out some way that the foundation might prove helpful to the organization even if it did not “fall within the guidelines for funding.” She offered the recommendation that the foundation seek out ongoing “other sources” to help the “Mothers,” including,

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specifically, European church sources to provide funds for the education of the children of the “disappeared.” The extent to which her recommendations were followed by the foundation is not known, but to judge from the enthusiasm her report received from a top official, William Saint, it was certain to fall on sympathetic ears. The recipients of Saint’s covering memo, Jeffrey Puryear and William Carmichael, if anything, were deeply interested in and concerned about human rights in the Southern Cone. Professor Crahan’s survey, with its special focus on local NGOs, was the culmination of the foundation’s shift in its human rights policy flowing from the Pinochet military coup of September 1973. If the immediate objective of the foundation was the quick rescue of civilian academics and intellectuals, many of whom were grantees of its overseas development program, the longterm aim was to vigorously fund local groups in defense of human rights. In an internal study produced in the early nineties, Margo Picken, a leading program officer on human rights in the foundation, highlighted the impact that the ruthless repression in Latin America during the early and mid-seventies had had upon the foundation. She emphasized that foundation executives had become “concerned about mounting threats to life and liberty, pervasive discrimination based on race and creed, and the cruel treatment meted out to ethnic minorities and indigenous people in many parts of the globe; and the widespread suppression of intellectual freedom and the free exchange of ideas and information.”60 Picken, who had had access to the Ford Foundation’s internal discussions and archives, observed that the foundation had “realized that the effectiveness of its development assistance programs was severely impaired in places where governments were engaged in a pattern of massive repression and disregarded the basic rights of their citizens in violation of their own and international law.”61 A fundamental change in the priorities of regional offices, at least in Latin America, had taken place. Until the mid-seventies, the very limited human rights grants, such as assistance to legal services or funds to support the independent media’s covering of human rights issues, according to Picken, were perceived as an act that “complemented [the] work on issues of poverty and inequity,” which, of course, was intertwined with “development assistance and international economic areas.” The extraordinary transformation of Ford Foundation policy was already made clear. The centerpiece of the transformation was an unusual and distinctive group of local human rights NGOs, especially in Chile. Their fairly sudden appearance provided the foundation with an indispensable channel that made its new policy realizable. But the local organizations were only one side of the required equation. What would bolster the work of local NGOs, and give them invaluable and powerful political support, would be the active involvement of international human rights NGOs. It would be the international NGOs that would carry the burden of the following critical foundation objective: “to strengthen the understanding and appreciation of international human rights law.” The point was at the heart of President

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Franklin Thomas’s comments in the 1980 Annual Report of the Ford Foundation. In his “review,” he emphasized, referring to the foundation that “we will support institutional arrangements most likely to sustain pluralism and safeguard minority rights.” It was a basic statement of democracy that had stood at the intellectual heart of the foundation from the beginning.

Chapter

4

Th e “H u m a n R i g h ts L o b by ”

W

hile the core of the struggle for human rights ineluctably rested at local levels, upon NGOs, in such areas they could not but operate with difficulty in authoritarian societies. If, in Chile, some might be protected by the Catholic Church, this might not be the case in other authoritarian places. But their ability to function effectively, over the long run, was severely limited. Of critical importance was whether and how the international community would offer and provide a modicum of protective assistance to prevent the military regimes from imposing evermore repressive measures and, perhaps, even encouraging those regimes to embrace some modest, if limited, reforms. Impacting international public opinion would come to be seen as essential, if only to assure local NGOs, as well as the democratically-oriented citizenry, of a certain support and encouragement. The Ford Foundation was keenly aware of the need to affect world opinion so that it could be exerted as defensively instrumental on behalf of the embattled human rights local NGOs. Margo Picken, in her internal history of the foundation, pointed out that the transcendent importance of human rights as compared with anti-poverty development programs in Third World areas had to be central to “policy-making.”1 Ford Foundation President Franklin Thomas, in his 1980 annual report, made explicit how the organization understood the interrelationship of international NGOs with local NGOs. He wrote, “[while] we will support local organizations that are active in various countries in the defense of individual rights,” these NGOs would be backed up by regional and international organizations and, in this way, “we will aim to strengthen the understanding and appreciation of international human rights law.”2 The provisions of the latter quote were, of course, a specialty of international NGOs. In dealing with Latin American countries and with the human rights abuses of their rulers, NGOs would inevitably have to focus upon the United States. It was only the United States that exercised the economic and military influence that could affect the policy of Latin American regimes. With respect to trade, for example, almost half of the exports made by the United States to developing countries went to Latin America. A Ford Foundation report in 1997 stated that the United States was “the region’s most important external

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factor.”3 It noted, too, that the United States had “the largest voice in shaping the policies of multilateral institutions in the hemisphere such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.” In addition, the United States was a heavy supplier of military goods for Latin American armies and, indeed, provided their officers with advanced training. Cuba was an exception, with the USSR playing a crucial role following the Fidel Castro seizure of power in the late fifties. Even as the Ford Foundation had turned to human rights considerations in 1973–74 in dealing with Latin America, by a striking coincidence, human rights emerged as a critical concern during precisely those years in the U.S. Congress, specifically in the House of Representatives. In March 1974, an extraordinary document was published by a congressional subcommittee that soon would have a very significant and, to an extent, revolutionary impact upon U.S. policy in the area of international human rights. Entitled “Human Rights in the World Community: A Call for U.S. Leadership,” the report was prepared by a panel of the influential House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. Its Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements, headed by Congressman Donald M. Fraser (a Democrat from Minnesota), held unprecedented hearings on U.S. human rights policy; a total of fifteen hearings with over forty witnesses were held between August 1 and December 7, 1973. As some of the most important congressmen sat on the subcommittee and its parent body, the report was certain to attract attention. Notably unusual was the phrase in its title, “Call for U.S. Leadership.” It reflected an angry rejection of the Nixon administration policy, of which Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger was a principal architect, and a demand for a radically new orientation in American policy.4 Early on, the congressional report took aim at its administration target as follows: “The human rights factor is not accorded the high priority it deserves in our country’s policy.” The rebuke then became sharper: “Too often, it [human rights] becomes invisible on the vast foreign policy horizon of political, economic and military affairs.” Referring indirectly, but clearly, to the secretary of state, the report noted, “proponents of pure power politics too often dismiss it [human rights] as a factor in diplomacy.” This disregard for human rights was bitterly denounced as harmful to America’s interests and image in the world as follows: “The prevailing attitude has led the United States into embracing governments which practice torture and, unabashedly, violate almost every human rights guarantee pronounced by the world community.”5 A striking feature of the subcommittee’s report was the attention it gave to the role of nongovernmental organizations. Especially stunning was the appreciation rendered by Chairman Fraser in the report’s Preface to a staffer, John Salzberg, who was said to be “indispensable” by bringing to the hearings and the report “the special expertise” of “practical experience in the field.” Salzberg earlier had served as the UN representative of the Genevabased International Commission of Jurists, a point emphasized by Congressman

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Fraser. International NGOs were praised in the report as “a vital contributor to the international protection of human rights.”6 An entire section was devoted to lauding their independence and objectivity and to providing a description of how Amnesty International, in particular, functioned. Significantly, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), based in Geneva, was a major grantee of the Ford Foundation. Congressional irritation with Kissinger’s indifference to human rights issues and, at times, his actual or seeming support of military dictatorships— whether in Latin America, South Korea, or the Philippines—fed a growing revolt. It initially had been spurred by American policy toward Vietnam, which was perceived as cynical and immoral, supportive of only a corrupt military regime in Saigon. The Watergate scandal aggravated the executivecongressional confrontation, with Congress increasingly prepared to challenge the “imperial presidency,” including the foreign affairs area, traditionally regarded as the prerogative of the executive. The Foreign Assistance Act of 1973, especially Section 32, pressed by Congressman Fraser, broke new ground. For the very first time, U.S. legislation declared, “it is the sense of Congress that the President should deny any economic or military assistance to the government of any foreign country which practices the internment or imprisonment of that country’s citizens for political purposes.” Fraser’s subcommittee, in its “Call for U.S. Leadership,” specified in its formal recommendation that the State Department should withdraw “military assistance and sales” along with certain “economic assistance programs” from “governments which are committing serious violations of human rights.”7 The new Foreign Assistance Act was designed to formalize the “call for U.S. leadership” and provide it with a statutory legitimization. In September 1974, Fraser sent Kissinger a letter signed by 105 members of Congress warning that their support for legislation extending foreign aid would be affected by the degree to which State Department policy displayed concern for human rights in recipient countries. The warning was formalized in legislation enacted as Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act. It required the president, except in “extraordinary circumstances,” to “substantially reduce or terminate security assistance to any government which engaged in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” Angered by the dilatory tactics of Kissinger regarding the security assistance legislation, and concerned about growing atrocities in Chile, Congress moved to new levels of human rights legislation. Economic assistance by the United States, too, like security assistance, would now be conditioned by the recipient government adhering to basic human rights standards. Freshman Congressman Tom Harkin (a Democrat from Iowa) won support for legislation denying economic assistance to any country that consistently violated internationally recognized human rights. The amendment was identified as Section 116 of the International Development and Food Assistance Act.

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The assault upon traditional executive prerogatives continued into 1976 with the adoption of Section 301 of the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act. In keeping with the recommendation of the “call for U.S. leadership” but now extending it, the legislation established within the State Department the position of coordinator of human rights. The new statute also required the secretary of state to submit reports every year on the human rights practices of each country that the department wished to be a recipient of security assistance. At the same time, the State Department was warned that, were the reports not satisfactory nor submitted within thirty days, Congress could reduce or end security assistance to a particular human rights violator by adoption of a joint resolution. Congressional toughness in the human rights field was also shown in 1976 with respect to international regional lending institutions in which the United States was represented. New specific legislation obliged the U.S. executive directors at the InterAmerican Development Bank and the African Development Fund to vote against loans to governments that engaged in gross violations of human rights. Such action could kill the request for a loan. Later, it would be extended to other international lending institutions. It was no accident that NGOs played a central role in the adoption by the Congress of the unprecedented international human rights legislation. How they functioned was disclosed and detailed by a key State Department official, Sandy Vogelgesang, whose study, funded by a grant from the Council on Foreign Relations, closely examined U.S. human rights policy. She found that the “human rights lobby” in Washington, comprising representatives of a number of religious groups, labor unions, and international NGOs, was “often . . . a decisive factor propelling” human rights developments in Washington.8 From a mere handful of groups in the early 1970s, the “lobby” grew to about 50 organizations, who exercised “considerable clout,” according to Vogelgesang. One legislator called them a “dogged bank of human righters” who packed considerable importance. Several represented religious groups. Particularly singled out was the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), headed at the time by Joseph Eldridge. An offshoot of the National Council of Churches, WOLA, with a small staff, nonetheless was able to provide the principal witnesses and documents for congressional hearings and assisted Congressman Tom Harkin in drafting much of his legislation.9 Eldridge, a Methodist minister, had served on church missions to help the poor in Latin America, but in September 1974, he returned from Chile. WOLA had been created that year by “a broad coalition of religious leaders and academics,” as later described by a Ford Foundation interoffice memorandum.10 Eldridge would disclose several years later how he had “conspired” with John Salzberg to “recommend witnesses” to the Fraser subcommittee.11 His lobbying turned out to be crucial. A scholarly analysis of a key human rights amendment of 1975 revealed that Eldridge, together with an NGO colleague, actually prepared the “first draft” of the bill.12 The

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same analyst concluded that WOLA and the other NGOs had played crucial roles in raising the “saliency of human rights issues.” That the Ford Foundation would find WOLA to be an especially useful NGO for advancing human rights in Latin America could be anticipated once President Thomas in 1980 indicated the value of international or regional NGOs in complementing the role of local human rights NGOs. In the same year, the principal foundation staffer on human rights, Bruce Bushey, explained why WOLA should be given an eighteen thousand dollar grant for a twelve-month period beginning in September. Bushey’s interoffice memorandum, dated July 28, 1980 and addressed to Vice-President Sutton, called WOLA “one of the country’s leading sources of information and political analysis on human rights situations in Latin America.”13 The memorandum went on to observe that WOLA was “unique” in its access to primary source materials dealing with human rights in Latin America. This uniqueness was reported to be a “result of well-established credibility” in “political and religious circles” of Latin America. Rarely did an NGO win such powerful endorsement by a foundation staffer. In his concluding paragraph, he wrote, In my opinion, the Washington Office on Latin America is one of the halfdozen most important human rights groups and I believe this grant will be among the wiser investments of Foundation funds that I have had the opportunity to recommend during my tenure as the Foundation’s Program Officer dealing with human rights.14

Elsewhere in his comments, he wrote, “[WOLA] has a reputation as the most effective human rights organization operating in Washington, D.C.” A more enthusiastic recommendation would be difficult to find. What impressed Bushey and the foundation was the extraordinary dedication of WOLA’s obviously idealistic staff, described in the memorandum as “exceptional.” All six of its program officers were reported to have had “extensive experience” living in the Latin American countries they monitored. So strongly were they committed to human rights, noted Bushey, that they took “minimal salaries.” The figures given in the memo were staggeringly low. In the memorandum’s thumb-nail sketch of the NGO, Bushey described that WOLA, after accumulating its data from mainly religious centers in Latin American countries, then transferred the valuable data and information to religious organizations in the United States, as well as to professional, civic, and political groups. Among the recipients were members of Congress, their staffs, and appropriate policy-makers in the State Department. In Bushey’s view, WOLA was “the Capitol’s clearinghouse on information” related to human rights violations in Latin America. Of particular importance in WOLA’s “clearinghouse” role was its publication, Update, which was distributed to several thousand individuals, including people involved with other NGOs, academics, officials on every level of government, and those serving in some official capacity with religious bodies,

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mainly Protestant. In addition, some four hundred copies were sent to Latin America, specifically to key outposts on human rights issues and sources of its documentation. Bushey reported that his friends in major NGOs— Amnesty International, the International League for Human Rights, and the International Human Rights Law Group—considered Update “an important guide” in their decision-making process when they dealt with “atrocities in Latin America.”15 The modest grant to WOLA was to enable it to perform three objectives that it had presented to the foundation. The first involved a “domestic outreach” program, enabling its staffers to travel to various regions of the United States and to meet with local religious groups whose national offices were the principal funders of WOLA. In their travels, staffers, like Eldridge, would also seek to meet with other religious bodies that might become activists on behalf of WOLA concerns and programs. At the same time, the new groups could become potential funders of WOLA. A second objective was to advise and prepare for local groups a special new issue of Update that would offer, in an in-depth manner, a focus upon particularly Argentina and Guatemala and also upon U.S. policy toward these two countries where human rights violations were common. In several Latin American areas, such as Brazil and the Caribbean, WOLA’s contacts were either minimal or nonexistent. To respond to this vacuum, the third objective of the grant would enable WOLA staff members to travel to these areas in Latin America. They would establish contacts with groups in these areas and, in addition, strengthen contacts that had already been established with local religious groups. “Networking” was the term used by WOLA, and it was designed to encompass human rights groups and research centers. As expected, the “networking” process would enable Update to acquire new sources of documentation as well as readers. That the grant was but the beginning of a close relationship between the foundation and WOLA would soon become evident. On September 15, 1983, the formal recommendation was made to President Thomas that a new grant totaling $220,000 for a two-year period be awarded to WOLA, a huge jump over the initial allocation.16 This time, the recommendation was made by two foundation vice-presidents, Susan Berresford and William Carmichael. Clearly, satisfaction with the early work of WOLA ran high.17 In evaluating WOLA’s efforts, foundation staffers took special account of the “considerable difficulty” it worked under to “combat . . . [political] conditions” prevailing in the Southern Cone and in Central America. The authoritarian regimes and military dictatorships made resistance to oppression problematic at best. Widespread human rights violations, reinforced by significant restrictions on free expression and political rights, precluded vigorous public initiatives. The most tormented of repressive forms, like torture, disappearances, and summary executions, enjoyed a brutal dominance. Nonetheless, local NGOs, like the Vicariate in Chile, were functioning and becoming stronger, and some social-science research centers were already

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able to pose issues and raise public concerns. In Argentina, an activist democracy was re-emerging after 1983, and elsewhere, encouraging steps were being taken to remove the most virulent of repressive regimes. In this context, foundation staffers were impressed with “effective initiatives in support of human rights” undertaken by WOLA. Among the assets, foundation staffers noted WOLA’s “highly-committed staff” and its “strong reputation” as a “reliable source” of accurate and timely information concerning human rights and governance issues. Of special importance, WOLA was reported to have “reached out to make solid contacts” with a variety of Latin American human rights organizations. Significantly, WOLA was found to have taken advantage of the recent, if limited, progress in the area of human rights to begin “monitoring and promoting democratic and pluralistic forces.”18 If details were not disclosed, foundation staffers had no hesitancy in revealing and in praising how WOLA’s impressive information program worked. Routinely, it provided Congress, the State Department, and the White House with documentary information on human rights developments and the new recent progress in democratic initiatives. At the same time, WOLA was portrayed as a storehouse of documentation to all human rights organizations and to visitors to Latin America. The critical information function had deepened through luncheon seminars, publications, and frequent conferences that WOLA organized. In attendance were congressional staffers, State Department officials, journalists, academics, and leaders of other human rights groups. Whether at luncheon seminars or at conferences, the organization, through its contact with key institutions in Latin America, could and did provide platforms for major continent-wide or local institutions dealing with human rights. The information was bolstered by its invaluable newsletter, Update, now with a regular circulation of over six thousand. At the same time, organizations in virtually every country of the region had come to “rely on WOLA for information regarding the implications of political events in the United States for human rights in Latin America.”19 That the latter information was of critical importance to local groups in Latin America cannot be overemphasized. Foundation staffers found that its documentation “considerably facilitated the work of these groups” inasmuch as “no other organization” provided such services. This service was augmented by a distinctive function that staffers emphasized. It was found to be necessary to explain to the various local groups and individuals in Latin America who were interested in human rights and democracy but were lacking personal contacts with American officials and institutions. Their aim was to help Latin Americans understand the complexity of the U.S. political process. In this way, “struggling” rights groups, trade union leaders, and politicians with democratic political agendas would be “able more easily and more comprehensively to present their concerns to a U.S. audience.”

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The contracting function was hardly an academic exercise. During 1983, WOLA set up appointments for a top trade union leader of Venezuela with U.S. congressmen. It also set up appointments for visiting members of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo of Argentina seeking help for “disappeared” family members as well as for groups of Catholic bishops from Chile and Brazil, and for a delegation from the Latin America Council of Churches. Even a delegation of twenty representatives of the Brazilian National Congress sought out WOLA for assistance in reaching contacts in Washington, DC. There was yet another function that WOLA had assumed—an “advocacy” role—with international and regional human rights institutions. It provided documentation on human rights violations to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva and to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington, DC. In providing information on human rights abuses, WOLA also urged these bodies to make formal inquiries about a particular country’s violations of human rights standards. A significant result came from the OAS Commission, which investigated and, in turn, issued “powerful reports” on Uruguay and Paraguay.20 The fact that WOLA was situated in Washington enabled it to have a close link to the OAS body that was based there. In addition, the location permitted it to approach and raise pertinent human rights issues with the Washington embassies of Latin American regimes. In 1983, it organized and led a delegation of religious and academic groups to meet with the Uruguayan ambassador about his government’s promise to restore the democratic government, which had remained unfulfilled. On another occasion, it arranged for a group of Chilean exiles seeking permission to return to their homeland to meet with Chilean embassy officials. As the harsh repression of the seventies began to diminish, foundation staffers welcomed WOLA’s plan to engage “in the promotion of human rights and democratic processes.” In that context, the foundation found the enlarged WOLA staff, now numbering eleven full-time employees as compared with six in 1980, to be especially impressive in their high degree of training in and about Latin America, as well as in being skilled professional promoters. There was no reluctance to provide the group with a grant over ten times greater than the earlier grant. Indeed, so effective had WOLA become that its total annual budget had increased to some three hundred thousand dollars, so that the foundation grant would constitute only a third of its budget. A network of approximately forty religious organizations along with small foundation and individual grants picked up two-thirds of the budgetary items.21 WOLA’s value was later found to be especially significant. A two-year grant awarded at almost the end of the century stated that WOLA, “with Foundation support, played an important role in all major U.S. policy debates about human rights and democratic development in Latin America.”22 The amount allocated was almost three times greater than that awarded from

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1983 until 1984, the figure jumping from $220,000 to six hundred thousand dollars. This constituted a great tribute to WOLA’s work. Among the attributes of WOLA, nothing was said about any impact it had upon American public opinion. Press and other media reportage about its activities were notably absent. WOLA’s strong points did not encompass media coverage. Nor did the foundation grant make any claim that the NGO had wrought a change in policy, whether in Washington or in practice in the authoritarian regimes in Latin America. Of course, these two features were related, if not interwoven. How could change in policy take place without public opinion in the United States being aroused by conditions of repression? That these questions would come to affect foundation thinking about the kind of NGO urgently needed to cope with the human rights problems of Latin America was self-evident. What ineluctably highlighted the issue was the coming to power in January 1981 of Ronald Reagan as president of the United States. Human rights concerns in Latin America were not registered in his campaign and programs. Indeed, his initial appointment of the top government official to deal with human rights was a person who appeared to be opposed to the use of human rights as a government instrument. The appointment, which required ratification by the Senate, turned into a burdensome embarrassment when a prominent victim of Argentine repression, Jacobo Timerman, who had been brutally tortured by the military rulers of Buenos Aires, showed up at the confirmation hearings.23 Immediately, he became a star off-stage commentator. Interviewed by the press, Timerman registered a strong negative view of the selection, which promptly killed the appointment. The NGO that would fill the need for an unusually influential human rights lobbyist on Latin American affairs was Americas Watch, a new creation in 1981. The autobiography of its creator, Aryeh Neier, together with a personal interview with him and with a key foundation official during the eighties, Shepard Forman, vividly illuminates the various elements that went into the making of this new NGO and the shaping of its purpose. Americas Watch had been preceded by the founding of the U.S. Helsinki Watch—the first Watch group—in 1978, which was intended to deal with human rights matters in Europe, mainly Eastern Europe. This subject will be examined in detail in the next chapter. Despite the similarities of the Watch names, the objectives and the motivations of the two groups were very different: As early as the fall of 1978, Neier made clear that his immediate aim in international affairs was to create an active lobbying group for Latin American human rights issues. Until 1978, he had served as the director of the American Civil Liberties Union. It was then that, according to his memoirs, he received a telephone call from Robert Bernstein, the president of Random House, who headed a lobbying group for freedom of expression in the publishing industry—Fund for Free Expression. Bernstein, at the time, had agreed to establish the U.S. Helsinki

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Watch and he wanted Neier as his vice-chairman. Neier, with little interest in Eastern Europe, as he recalled in an interview, commented, “I said I would if I could create Americas Watch alongside.”24 Neier, while preparing to leave the ACLU after a fifteen-year stint, continued to serve as a visiting professor at New York University and a fellow (later director) of the New York Institute for the Humanities. His role as vice-chair of the Helsinki Watch was largely administrative and, of course, part-time.25 Latin American human rights remained, in the meantime, very much on his mind. He had earlier actively served with the well-known NGO, InterAmerican Association for Democracy and Freedom, and, in that capacity, had already come into contact with human rights activists as well as public officials from various parts of Latin America.26 The election of Ronald Reagan as president in November 1980 prompted Neier (along with Bernstein) to hasten realization of his original plans. It was time to “work more directly in public policy,” he wrote in his memoirs. His administrative position in the Helsinki Watch, he thought, “would provide a good platform to oppose the new administration’s appalling policies on international human rights.” He moved quickly to establish Americas Watch as a growing concern by asking an especially prominent New York attorney, Orville Schell, to chair the proposed body. Schell was a senior partner of a top law firm with elitist credentials that served as counsel to major U.S. corporations. Schell could be particularly appealing to the foundation. In addition, he had served on various fact-finding missions to Latin America. (Schell was also to serve as vice-chair of Helsinki Watch. This permitted Neier to contend to liberals, “our goal was not the opportunistic” goal of merely applying human rights rhetoric for “Cold War purposes.” But he himself rarely ventured into the day-to-day work of the Helsinki process; instead, as he noted, Americas Watch “consumed the lion’s share” of his own time.27) The anticipated work of Americas Watch, as envisaged by Neier, coincided with the foundation’s new program on human rights, enunciated the same year as the Reagan presidency. The foundation’s Annual Report of 1980 had explicitly indicated its strong commitment to human rights and social justice. A little earlier, as Picken’s in-house study showed, the foundation had come to the recognition that the “effectiveness” of its initial program of development assistance was “severely impaired in places where governments were engaged in a pattern of repression.”28 The principal focal point of foundation policy, as noted by Picken, was now Latin America.29 In surveying repression around the globe, Picken noted, conditions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were far too oppressive for foundation offices to even open let alone function; in Asia, where the foundation did have offices, the governments were hostile to challenges from NGOs on human rights issues. In Latin America, a certain threshold of sustainability existed, even if it was tentative. Here the foundation could and did operate on a “dual approach to grantmaking”: on one level were the grants to local groups, like the Vicariate; on the other was the funding of international NGOs based in the United States.

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It was to this “dual-level approach” that a critical foundation decision, made on June 5, 1981, was oriented. The decision took the form of an interoffice memorandum entitled “Human Rights and Impact,” written by Shepard Forman, director of the new program on human rights and social justice, and sent to Vice-President Susan Berresford. Forman, an American scholar of Latin American affairs, who had completed his doctoral research work on Brazil some years earlier, first took note in his memo of the local NGOs, like Vicariate, that had “enabled these organizations to organize research and analyze and disseminate information” from their archives. Also noted was the foundation’s support of the World University Service that helped maintain the reputation and livelihood of Chilean exiles. Further cited was a mission to Argentina by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and the Bar Association of New York City. Forman thought that the mission had “helped awaken consciousness in this country [the United States] to problems of mass disappearances in Argentina through reports to congressional committees and the Organization of American States.” The Argentine experience with the Lawyers Committee and the N.Y. Bar Association pointed to the direction that Forman sought to go with respect to international NGOs. His emphasis was clearly upon NGO activism. Even as he noted the “difficult situations in the developing world,” he stressed the need to maximize public attention, internationally on human rights abuses. That Neier would similarly want to pursue an activist course was certain. In May 1981, he began giving Americas Watch full attention. At the time, he left the NY Institute for the Humanities and NYU. Americas Watch’s first proposal for a grant came in early September 1981, a few months after Forman had indicated his overall perspective. It was quite brief, only five pages. A rather staggering figure was proposed for a three-year grant: $973,000. The work of the new organization would cover only civil and political rights. As Neier would repeatedly insist, economic and social rights, unlike “practices of government,” are not “susceptible to evaluation in accordance with internationally recognized standards.” At this point, Neier clearly focused on why the creation of a new Watch group was essential. He argued that the U.S. Helsinki Watch, which inevitably focused on the totalitarian regimes of Eastern Europe, therefore “[did] a disservice to our cause for the United States to distinguish in the conduct of its foreign policy between abuses in hostile totalitarian countries and abuses by friendly authoritarian countries.” This would suggest that “the latter [abuses] were of no great moment to us.” Since the foundation in the eighties often emphasized that stirring of “cold war” emotions ought to be avoided, Neier thought that he would touch a sympathetic chord with reference to it. He explicitly noted in his formal request to the foundation that a predominant focus upon the Helsinki Watch would “appear to be a Cold War exercise.” This certainly would have been of little concern to Bundy, who as part of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations was very much involved in cold war activities. His subsequent interest in exposing Soviet brutalities and weakening the Kremlin’s international impact in the next chapter, which reveals how he became a strong advocate of employing

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the human rights provisions of Helsinki against the Soviet Union and its satellites. Bundy would retire from the foundation in 1979. The most significant Neier proposal, and one that would carry decisive weight with the foundation, dealt with the nature of the expected membership of Americas Watch. The initial signal was given with the appointment of Orville Schell. Elitist, top-level personalities with great influence in a variety of policy-making areas would constitute, Neier said, the “new constituency” that would address Latin American human rights abuses. Neier went on to say that Americas Watch would be composed of those “well-connected with the congress, the executive branch of government and the press.” Thus, he contended, with an apparent awareness of what the foundation was seeking, Americas Watch would be “in a position to enlist prominent persons in the United States in support of beleaguered human rights groups elsewhere in the Americas.” The letterhead of the new NGO, with its list of prominent elitist sponsors, would reveal what Neier called “clout,” a term that foundation staffers would emphasize. It could be used effectively to command attention from the media and policy makers. At times, the role of the “new constituency” was made explicit by Neier in ways no other NGO could imagine. He noted that in dealing with “questions . . . about military aid, economic aid, cultural exchange, trade, or visits by foreign dignitaries, we [will] try to see that human rights practices are taken into account.” “Clout” would even be used to influence businesses so that the corporate world would play a role in responding to human rights abuses. As a climactic point, Neier noted that he would aim to facilitate the development of the inter-American human rights movement. All this would be accomplished, wrote Neier, without intruding into the work of other foundation grantees. Americas Watch would “complement rather than duplicate their work”; its primary focus would simply be to “engage a new constituency . . . to promote human rights.” Forman was anxious to approach the Neier proposal with two key concerns. The first was the question of whether the proposed NGO would have adequate ties to the Latin American region so that its information for the media and policy-makers could evoke a strong, favorable response; and the second was his request that under no circumstances should the international NGO be seen as overriding and diminishing local NGOs. On these questions, a new Forman memorandum—dated September 11, 1981, and addressed to Franklin Thomas through Vice-Presidents Berresford and Carmichael— initially revealed grave doubts among the foundation staff about Americas Watch.30 At the very beginning of his memorandum, Forman referred to a luncheon that he had had with Neier, Bernstein, and Adrian DeWind, another very prominent New York attorney. The date of the luncheon was not specified but it probably occurred after his receipt of the original Neier proposal. Apparently, the discussion at the luncheon suggested that there was “a certain potential for difficult negotiations,” presumably because “Bernstein’s

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expectations probably [exceeded] our enthusiasm” about the proposal as “currently conceived.” Neier, in his memoirs, recalled that in May 1981 when he took over Americas Watch, he sensed or was informed that foundation program offices were reluctant to even consider his proposal, as they did not know who comprised the group and what their credentials were in the field of Latin American studies. Forman, for his part, initially stressed in the memo to Thomas that in the prior creation of the Helsinki Watch, the negotiations had taken place directly between Bernstein and Bundy, thus eliminating the research work and planning of foundation staff. Forman found that this “two-tiered approach” at “staff and executive levels” had an “unproductive” consequence, as it led to “implicit encouragement for Bernstein not to take staff-level questions seriously.” Forman sought Thomas’s “concurrence” in having staff convey comments to the Bernstein group that could diminish its excessive expectations. That Forman wanted to avoid a high-handed and private approach to Americas Watch is self-evident. It was not that Forman was unhappy with Neier’s plans. In his letter, he stated almost immediately that, in principle, the establishment of Americas Watch was necessary as a means for promoting human rights throughout the Western hemisphere. He took note of the fact that reputable human rights advocates, such as the OAS Human Rights Commission President, Tom Farer (who was also a Rutgers Law School professor), had endorsed the proposal. It was also endorsed by the Inter-American Human Rights Court Judge, Thomas Buergenthal (now a member of the International Court of Justice). Still, the proposal had to be sent out to the various regional offices of the foundation in Latin America for their evaluations. Besides, he had to be concerned with the “hefty price tag” as spelled out by Neier for the “range of activities” anticipated for Americas Watch. The proposed threeyear budget specified $259,000 for the first year, $324,000 for the second, and $390,000 for the third. William Carmichael and Jeffrey Puryear were expected to evaluate the proposal as well as to seek the views of the foundation’s regional offices. As Neier was pressing for a firm answer to his request, Forman proposed that until he heard from the field, Americas Watch could get started, but for the time being, it should only expect to receive one hundred thousand dollars for a twelve- to eighteen-month period. Such a financial strategy, he added, would provide the necessary time to evaluate the Watch group’s progress and its “style of operation.” The time frame delay for a full evaluation by all parties might also “induce some cost consciousness” and result in the “tailoring” of its “range of activities and organization structure.” Scrawled on the bottom of the Forman memo were the letters “OK,” followed by the initials “FT,” which clearly suggested that President Franklin Thomas agreed with the approach. On September 23, 1981, Neier submitted a second proposal to Forman, taking account of the latter’s concerns in a cover memorandum. Some of these

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concerns were the outgrowth of a series of discussions that the two had had after the Forman memorandum to Thomas on September 11. Forman also wanted to know who would be staffing the proposed body. Neier indicated that Juan Mendez, a former Argentine civil liberties lawyer who had been imprisoned by the military rulers before immigrating to the United States, would direct Americas Watch in Washington where it would seek to lobby Congress and the administration. Another professional on Latin American affairs, Pamela Falk, who was already known to Forman, was to head up the New York office that would deal with media coverage. Aware that Forman and his colleagues were concerned about the “hefty price tag” for the new Watch group, Neier explained in his covering letter that he had already begun discussions with several other foundations, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, to support the operation. He expected to raise half of the new NGO’s budget from these additional sources. Stress, however, was placed less on funding than on the heavy influence that Americas Watch would exert through the “clout” of its leadership. The “new constituency,” Neier explained, was “an important characteristic” of Americas Watch, as it would be composed of individuals with “clout” who were prepared “to use that clout to promote human rights.” A positive evaluation from the foundation would be forthcoming soon after Neier’s additional submission. On November 9, 1981, almost two months to the day after Forman’s interoffice memorandum, a major foundation regional official, William Saint, wrote to Jeffrey Puryear that the head of the foundation’s Lima regional office, Antonio Munoz-Najar, had met several days earlier with Neier and was rather impressed.31 According to Saint, the Lima office initially had had a “cautionary response” to Americas Watch but, after the meeting with Neier, the key office staffer “came away with a significantly favorable impression.” What particularly impressed the Lima office was Americas Watch’s familiarity with the Latin American scene. It “possesses greater knowledge of contacts with human rights groups within the region . . . than was initially apparent,” reported Saint on information received from Lima. In view of the fact that Forman had dispelled foundation concerns about how well-versed Neier and his associates might be about Latin American human rights issues, he and foundation staffers would be relieved that the regional office report was encouraging. Saint also took note of the favorable attitude toward Americas Watch by local informal networks of NGOs. “These groups,” he wrote, “view AWC [Americas Watch committee] efforts with some degree of legitimacy.” And, with respect to the other concern of the Ford Foundation that no international NGO might seek to overwhelm or endanger the local NGO, assurances were given by Neier that the local Latin American NGOs would be able to exercise “veto power” over the very proposals made by Americas Watch. What especially impressed Saint were the delineated plans for the separate Washington and New York offices of Americas Watch. He welcomed the idea that the Washington office would “serve the obvious function of coordinating

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and orchestrating efforts to make U.S. foreign policy more responsive to general and specific human rights concerns.” As for the New York office, he expressed enthusiasm for the idea that it would “mobilize ‘clout,’” for working with the media and tapping “the large reservoir of socially concerned lawyers for pro bono legal work frequently required for human rights cases.” It was the final judgment of Saint, after ascertaining the views of the Lima regional office, that its meeting with Neier had gone a long way to “dispel doubts.” Grant appropriations could now move forward. Approval was given for a grant of $180,000 in 1982 to Bernstein’s Fund for Free Expression. Foundation staffers summarized the purpose of the grant as follows: “To create an influential constituency for the Latin American human rights movements in the United States.” 32 The grant went on to recognize that the human rights scene in Latin America had become “especially troublesome in the last 15 years.” Development work no longer could effectively address economic and poverty matters since human rights abuses had become “particularly alarming because they [occurred] in one of the most economically advanced parts of the developing world.” The Ford Foundation staff’s comments on why the sizable two-year grant was given to the Americas Watch was elaborated upon in some detail. Remarkably, it echoed the language used by the grantee, Aryeh Neier, to an unusual degree. The major motivation was to help organize a group with “clout” that would influence U.S. foreign policy to show “concern for these human rights violations of deep interest to Americans.” For the moment, the staff continued, human rights appeared to have been relegated to “a minor role within the East-West ideological debate” with “the danger of being submerged within ‘cold war’ politics.” One consequence was that “the numerous human rights groups in the [Latin American] region that took courage under the previous [Jimmy Carter] administration” now found it difficult to get a sympathetic hearing in the Reagan administration and constantly risked suppression in their own countries. “Clout” was critical for a breakthrough to media as well as power centers. With this reasoning, the next logical step was to seek to affect U.S. policy. The staff spelled out in the grant the intended strategy: “The Foundation’s underlying strategy has been to help establish and strengthen human rights groups within the region and [then] to link them to international nongovernmental organizations that can work within them to improve human rights conditions.” It was a strikingly revealing disclosure of the assumptions and presumptions of the foundation about how to make human rights progress in Latin America. The comments about Americas Watch were rather extraordinary. It was considered to be one of the “most promising of . . . regional groups.” The term “regional” was applied to its special focus on Latin America. Laudatory formulations were used to characterize the organization. It was described as being composed of a “diverse set of private sector figures, human rights activists and Latin Americanists.” Neier was said to have “an

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excellent track record in civil and human rights activities in the U.S. and abroad,” and he was praised as having “developed the credibility and contacts in U.S. officialdom and media necessary to work effectively.” In view of the unusual attributes of Americas Watch and its key personnel, how could anyone complain, then, about the “hefty price tag” that the foundation assumed, even when it lowered considerably—at least initially—the rather huge expenditures sought by Neier? At the center of Americas Watch’s role and expected impact, as revealed by the foundation’s staff in its grant comment, was the NGO’s ability to apply external pressure—through the U.S. government and the international media—upon Latin American governments that systematically violated human rights. That crucial impact on the U.S. government was to be a blend of “private suasion with public attention.” The “clout” of the group could also be shown by private arrangements of “quiet conversation” with key and senior government officials and with officials in the private sector, for example, in the business world or in think tanks. Whether and how this was possible with top Reagan officials, whether in the White House or in the State Department, was not examined in the grant’s comments, except in one instance having to do with Chile. The grant pointed out that Americas Watch had been “instrumental” in getting the State Department and high-level congressional delegations to Chile to focus upon police arrests in that country. Neier himself was reported to have testified before Congress about repression in Chile, and he then traveled there, a gesture “hailed by Chilean human rights advocates.” Far more significant was the impact of the Watch upon the media. The foundation staff, in its grant comments, expected the NGO to ensure that the media “gave appropriate and accurate coverage to human rights problems.” And this it did brilliantly, getting newspapers to cover its reports and activities. This was especially implemented through fact-finding missions frequently undertaken by Americas Watch leaders and staff to “trouble spots” in Latin America. They would be expected, noted the foundation grant, to obtain “firm and balanced information on human rights conditions” that would be credible to observers abroad. If Americas Watch thought it appropriate, key U.S. officials would be encouraged to undertake fact-finding missions. Thus, U.S. congressmen as well as the assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs were persuaded to add the important NGO, the Chilean Human Rights Commission, to their agenda of scheduled meetings in Santiago to hear firsthand from independent sources about human rights abuses. Meetings with this NGO ordinarily were not part of official U.S. trips during the Pinochet era, when such contacts were viewed as hostile. The ability of Americas Watch to encourage and arrange such visits could not fail to help justify the “hefty price tag.” The grant of $180,000 was to cover six fact-finding missions and the preparation of three or four major reports, as well. The grant was also intended to help the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights in Costa Rica convene a regional meeting of local human rights groups that would also be attended by international groups dealing with Latin American issues.

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While a major proposed objective of Americas Watch was to “maintain an on-going relationship with the State Department so as to enhance its understanding of human rights issues in Latin America,” this could rarely be accomplished during the Reagan era. State Department officials, especially those who were political appointees, often regarded the reports and meetings of Americas Watch as imbalanced and prejudicial to U.S. interests. Apparently, this failing of Americas Watch did not affect the foundation’s attitude. Neier recalled that the foundation staff was generally happy with his operation. Only once did he receive a negative report about his attacks on U.S. policy with respect to Central America. The report was prompted by a series of editorials in the Wall Street Journal criticizing Americas Watch for its reports on Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Neier remembered that Jeffrey Puryear, a key figure in the foundation. approached him and asserted that “there were people in the Ford Foundation who were expressing concern about this,” referring to the editorials. Apparently, Neier remained unconcerned about the criticism. In his memoirs, he considered that the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page was “always very right-wing” and, therefore, “really hated” Americas Watch. On the contrary, he took great pride in the work of his organization. “Americas Watch,” he wrote “made its mark and made its mark quite substantially.” Besides, no interruption in the foundation’s funding to the group took place. What was decisive for the foundation was the Americas Watch’s ability to deliver. In the foundation staff’s comment on the grant to this NGO, it chose, at one point, to compare it with several other international NGOs dealing with Latin America, including WOLA. The grant report noted, “Americas Watch is distinct in its ability to reach influential actors within the United States government and in the media and to respond quickly and effectively to problems in a large number of countries.” If that was not laudatory enough, the foundation staff went on to say, “They have developed strong ties with various national Latin American human rights institutions and are increasingly able to organize support for these groups in the United States.” Nor did the staff express any concern about the future funding of the organization. To the contrary, they stated, “Given Neier’s skill and track record” in raising sizable funds, “the group’s fund raising strategy holds considerable progress.” The impact of the work of the human rights NGOs, both local and international, would be felt within a decade of the Pinochet coup. This was noticed by foundation consultant Margaret Crahan in November 1982. She wrote that the “more notorious violations of human rights have declined in Chile and Argentina.”33 That the international NGOs served as a valuable supporter, even protector, of the activist local NGOs was enthusiastically commented upon by the foundation office in Lima in 1985. The international organizations, the Lima Program Review observed, extended vigorous “support” to the local NGOs.34 An analyst of the foundation’s activity in Latin America, writing toward the end of the decade, commented, “these [international] organizations continue to play an indispensable networking

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and back up role for national [i.e. local] human rights organizations.”35 Even when local NGOs, under circumstances of intensified repression, could not provide even the basic documentation on abuses, the analyst added, the international NGOs somehow managed to perform that function. But, of course, it was the local NGOs who were on the frontline of the struggle and played the decisive role in affecting changes locally, especially in Chile, which had provided them with a rich democratic heritage to sustain their spirit and activity. Strikingly, the foundation stood in the forefront of sustaining their activism. In August 1986, the foundation gave the Vicariate a grant of two hundred thousand dollars for a two-year period.36 The “Precis” in the grant recommendation emphasized that the foundation funds would be used for the protection of individuals detained for political reasons by the armed forces.”37 Significantly, two years later, a quarter-million dollar grant was given for a specific new task for the Vicariate that emphasized the blossoming of the embryonic democratic movement within Chile and the anticipation of a major democratic breakthrough. As noted in the grant’s “Precis,” the new funding would, as in the past, “provide legal services for human rights victims being fined in civilian and military courts.” But, in addition, the grant would enable the Vicariate “to prepare cases for the public record and for possible use when independent judicial processes [were] eventually reactivated.” What was being projected was a future “when civilian government returns” and “more than ten thousand cases . . . could be pursued.”38 The “Precis” actually spoke of the Vicariate “computerizing its documentation of the human rights records it had been accumulating. Later they would be used for a national truth commission and court cases. The projection of a set of circumstances into the future was not accidental. A consultant to the foundation, in July 1988, had called the foundation’s attention to a contemplated “plebescite” for October 1988 whose “outcome” was uncertain, but that, nonetheless, indicated that the Vicariate and other Chilean human rights NGOs were at a “critical juncture.” The staff report citing the consultant’s analysis commented that “the past several years” had seen an “abatement . . . of the harshest [military] abuse” and a “growing prospect for a democratic tradition.”39 What then had to be anticipated was “the prospect for a transition to democracy.” The two grantees and smaller allies proved to be remarkably successful in building a potent and effective national human rights movement. On March 11, 1990, sixteen years and six months after the military coup, power was transferred from General Augusto Pinochet to Patricio Aylwin, a Christian Democrat who had led a coalition of opposition forces to an electoral victory the previous December. The date of the significant democratic achievement in Chile coincided with the collapse of the Soviet empire and a partial breakthrough to democratic rule in Russia proper and in the various separate republics of the USSR, which would itself fall apart in December 1991, and a remarkable shift in the destiny of the former apartheid state of South Africa

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to democratic rule (to be fully realized in 1994). The Ford Foundation had been extraordinarily active in steps leading to climactic events in three separate continents at approximately the same time, although in quite different ways. By the last decade of the twentieth century, the foundation could derive enormous satisfaction from its role. As the twentieth century neared its end, appropriately enough, the head of the foundation’s Chilean office, now back in Santiago, commented: For more than two decades, the Ford Foundation has supported the struggle for human rights throughout the world. In the Southern Cone of Latin America, during a period of repressive military regimes, we were privileged to accompany courageous groups that created a national movement to protect basic human rights and constituted an unprecedented form of moral opposition to dictatorship.40

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Chapter

5

U . S . H e l s i n k i Watc h : Th e Fo u n d at i o n i n E a s t e r n E u r o pe

Developments in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America beginning in 1973

constituted for the Ford Foundation leaders one of two critical concerns that prompted a revolutionary shift in the organization’s general policy and in its grant program. That concern was about authoritarian societies in which the military played a decisive role. The other critical concern was about Eastern Europe under Soviet domination, where totalitarianism prevailed and had struck heedlessly and pitilessly at fundamental human rights. While the Pinochet seizure of power illuminated the urgent need for a special and new focus upon human rights in Latin America, the second concern was prompted, initially, not at all by a military act, but rather by a peace-oriented accord aimed at reducing tensions in Europe between the democratic West and the communist-dominated East. Called the Helsinki Final Act and adopted on August 1, 1975—two years after the Pinochet military coup—it expressed a new détente. The Final Act was not intended to be a treaty; rather it was intended to take account of the conflicting views of the West and the East over security and human rights concerns. Adopted by the so-called Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), it embraced all the states of Europe as well as the United States and Canada by virtue of their link to NATO, the military alliance of the European and North American democracies. Two years of diplomatic bargaining brought the act into existence. The initial idea had been promoted by the Soviet Union, which sought to formally legitimize the new post-war borders, thereby enlarging especially the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent, communist Poland. Legitimization of the new borders in Eastern Europe also meant formal recognition of the Democratic Republic of Germany, or, East Germany. “Inviolability of borders,” the primary Soviet objective, was, however, balanced by the inclusion, at the West’s insistence, of Principle VII, which demanded “respect for human rights and fundamental freedom.” Principle VII was the thesis whose implications constituted a fundamental challenge to totalitarianism. The “freedoms” specified in Principle VII included “thought, conscience, and religion or belief.” Equally challenging

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to totalitarian regimes was the inclusion of Basket 3, which emphasized the Act’s theme of “freer movement of people and ideas.”1 Initially perceived as but a modest instrument of détente, the Helsinki process, through several intergovernmental meetings of the CSCE, took on an increasingly potent human rights dimension that ultimately produced breakthroughs in the form of democratic revolutions in 1989 in the Eastern European “satellites.” The restraining shackles of the communist regimes collapsed and the subsequent elections brought democrats to power. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union itself disintegrated. What greatly contributed to the historic and revolutionary changes was the role of nongovernmental organizations, most notably those formed in Eastern Europe, which were greatly assisted by newly established Western NGOs sponsored and sustained by the Ford Foundation. It was in Moscow that the idea of forming a nongovernmental organization specifically oriented to the Helsinki process first was developed.2 The originator was Yuri Orlov, a prominent physicist and member of the Armenian Academy of Sciences who, in 1975, had helped form the USSR chapter of Amnesty International. If other dissenters and opponents of Soviet rule—like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sinyavsky—saw in the Helsinki Final Act a capitulation to Soviet strategic interests and a betrayal of human rights aspirations, Orlov was struck by its useful, if modest, human rights features such as Principal VII and Basket 3. When the Kremlin chose to publish the entire text of the Helsinki accords in the government newspaper, Izvestiia, in September 1975, various readers, according to a chronicler of the dissident movement, “were stunned by its humanitarian provisions.”3 For Orlov, an invaluable lever had been handed to the democrats.4 “It was the Soviet government itself that gave us something to work with,” he observed. An extraordinarily perceptive analyst, he alone quickly recognized that “if the Soviet government said [Helsinki] was important, it was, in fact, important.” Initially, Orlov proposed—on the basis of the recommendation of his colleague, Anatoly Shcharansky—that dissident and democratic members of the Soviet intelligentsia should invite their friends and colleagues in various Western countries to form NGO groups that would monitor compliance with Helsinki’s human rights provisions everywhere. Once this was achieved, he thought, he and his associates in Moscow “[could] create the same sort of [NGO] committee at home with less risk of persecution.” But he soon rejected this approach and discarded the already prepared appeal to Western intellectuals. Orlov had concluded that liberals in the West were so preoccupied with disarmament issues that “nobody in Europe [would] care” about human rights. The alternative had become clear. “If we wanted compliance with the Helsinki Final Act,” Orlov understood, “it was up to us to monitor it.” He formed the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group on May 12, 1976, with about a dozen courageous activists who would accumulate a mass of carefully assembled data on all facets of Helsinki human rights abridgements made by the Kremlin.

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Moscow’s Helsinki Watch Group took special note of a Final Act provision calling upon the citizenry of member states to assist in forming NGOs in all states that would check on the compliance of their governments with the provisions of the act. From these separate national NGOs there would emerge, the group’s statement hoped, “an International Committee for Support.” It took several years before this remarkable vision would take root, first by the creation in the United States of a Helsinki Watch NGO and, a decade later, the creation of the International Helsinki Federation. In the meantime, the Moscow group prepared and distributed an extraordinary amount of detailed and valuable documentation on human rights compliance— or rather, on noncompliance—by the Soviet Union. A modest twenty-six documents were provided for use by the West at the Belgrade review conference in 1977–78. For the later Madrid review conference, which would occur during 1980–83, the group prepared the striking figure of 138 documents.5 Even as the significance of the Helsinki Final Act and its human rights provisions quickly were grasped by Orlov and his colleagues in the USSR, so, too, did elements of the democratic intelligentsia in Poland recognize that they now had a concrete focus for their opposition to the Polish Communist regime. The first expression of the new core of dissidents was an “open letter” sent on December 5, 1975, by fifty-nine intellectuals, artists, writers, and scientists to the Speaker of the Parliament and the Council of State. The manifesto, taking note of the Helsinki Final Act and its reference to the International Covenants on Human Rights, demanded fulfillment of the freedoms of expression and of conscience. In concluding the manifesto, the signers observed that the various freedoms “confirmed at the Helsinki Conference” had “today assumed international importance.” A crucial linkage implied in the Helsinki document then was emphasized: “Where there is no freedom, there can be neither peace nor security.” The formal nongovernmental organization that would give expression to the views of the manifesto was the Committee of Workers Defense (KOR).6 It came into existence in September 1976, although as a coalition of intellectuals. The then-unnamed committee was already functioning as early as June, providing assistance to workers in Radom, Poland, who had been fired from their jobs after they went on strike. The bond between intellectuals and trade unionist workers was to be the distinctive feature of Polish dissent as it developed into the mass organization, Solidarity. But the key standard to which KOR would cling was the Helsinki accord. The activist and electrical trade unionist initially employed in the shipyards of Gdansk and later head of solidarity, Lech Walesa, was to clarify and highlight the Helsinki linkage in his autobiography. After noting that “freedom of expression” was a “central freedom,” Walesa commented that it was “a direct corollary of the Helsinki agreement.” He saw himself “as part of a vast pattern,” and he “began to recognize an international dimension to our [Polish] problems.” In that recognition, he said, he “learned of the existence of human rights groups abroad to whom we could appeal.”

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The activism of KOR was accompanied by the formation of the Polish Helsinki Committee (later called the Helsinki Committee in Poland). It became the principal channel to the West for documented information on human rights violations accumulated by Solidarity offices throughout the country. Solidarity, as the successor to KOR but with a greatly enlarged membership drawn from the working class, functioned until December 13, 1980, when the military coup of Marshal Wojciech Jaruzelski banned it. But its underground leadership continued to assemble and transmit documentation to the West. Czechoslovakia’s principal human rights nongovernmental organization, Charter 77, was formed but a few months after Poland’s KOR. On January 6, 1977, the new group distributed a petition of 240 signatories listing in detail the violations of human rights in Czechoslovakia and demanding adherence to the Helsinki accord and the UN human rights covenant, which the Prague government had ratified the previous March and, ironically, published in the press in October 1976.7 Intimate linkage of Charter 77 with the Helsinki accord was made explicit in a letter signed by the group’s leaders, Vaclav Havel, Jiri Dienstbier, and Vaclav Benda, and smuggled out of the prison in which they were incarcerated. Sent to the CSCE Madrid review meeting in December 1980, the letter said that “the creation of this [Charter 77] movement concerning human rights” was held to be “entirely in harmony” with the Helsinki accords, as the text of the latter had made “evident.” By 1988, Charter 77 was exerting such a strong public impact that it could hold large public demonstrations against the regime and garner petitions signed by thousands. In November 1988, the group formed the Czechoslovak Helsinki Committee. During strikes and demonstrations twelve months later, Charter 77 veterans created the Civic Forum, which, after organizing mass rallies and negotiating with the authorities, proceeded to take power in a coalition government on December 10—Human Rights Day.8 The “Velvet Revolution” had brought the NGO outsider to the very seat of authority. In the course of a little over a decade, a vast transformation had taken place in Eastern Europe. But the potential had scarcely been apparent when the Helsinki Final Act was signed and the first review conference in Belgrade was being planned. In fact, it was precisely the review conferences that offered a stage for detailing the deprivation, discrimination, and repression in the communist societies of Eastern Europe. Such airing of documented facts was precisely the means for triggering the public outburst in Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, and later Bucharest. An American NGO that was virtually created by the Ford Foundation was to play a valuable role in assisting the new Eastern European NGOs to ultimately prevail. Key parts of the Final Act, Principle VII and Basket 3, could not but focus international attention upon the plight of dissenters and minorities. Western democratic leaders, especially in the United States under President Jimmy Carter, could be expected to raise the matter at the Final Act’s first follow-up conference scheduled for October 4, 1977, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Several months before the Belgrade meeting, the foundation’s program officer on

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human rights, Bruce Bushey, wrote a letter emphasizing how the foundation was supporting “Helsinki issues.”9 While the foundation was keenly aware of the human rights features of the Final Act, it could not and did not initially conceive of the Belgrade meeting acting as a major agent of human rights change. There was, after all, a central theme of the Helsinki Final Act—security—that was covered mainly by Basket 1. In addition, the Final Act embraced Basket 2, covering trade. Unlike developments in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America, Helsinki offered a banner and a broader frame of reference that ineluctably could diminish human rights abuses. Much would depend on what would happen at Belgrade and the nature of the response. Emerging ultimately from these uncertainties was the new nongovernmental organization, U.S. Helsinki Watch, with whose creation the foundation was intimately linked. Indeed, without the foundation, that NGO and, therefore, its subsequent extensions and recreation as Human Rights Watch, would not have seen the light of day. U.S. Helsinki Watch was very much the mythical Galatea shaped by a Ford Foundation Pygmalion. This NGO, in fact, was far more than a mere appendage to a contemporary event. The internal essays and debates of the mid-seventies in the Ford Foundation on future strategy with respect to human rights, following the David Heaps initiative, repeatedly refer to certain international human rights NGOs as viable targets of foundation grantsmanship. But what comes through in these discussions and essays are the severe limitations of the particular NGOs surveyed to perform the functions to which the foundation aspired. The creation of U.S. Helsinki Watch, it would turn out, was the fulfillment of the dream of the top Ford Foundation leadership. Yet even before U.S. Helsinki Watch was created, a least two groups— neither quite organized as formal NGO structures, but with their eyes set upon the Helsinki process—were looking to the foundation for the financial support that might transform them into agencies that would be intimately linked to the Helsinki process. How the foundation responded to them offers a sharp insight into what considerations moved the foundation to offer grants. The most prominent of the two groups was the National Conference on Human Rights, the leading figure of which was Bayard Rustin, the brilliant organizer of the massive Martin Luther King march on Washington, DC, in March 1963. As early as 1977, several months prior to the Belgrade follow-up meeting, Rustin and several advisers from Freedom House, the AFL-CIO, B’nai B’rith, and the International Rescue Committee had projected the idea of a broad-based NGO linked to the Helsinki process at a meeting in New York. On June 3, 1977, the idea for such a group was initially projected. Rustin, together with several colleagues, wrote a letter to dozens of organization leaders who had been previously involved in civil rights activities in the United States, calling attention to the Helsinki accords as they affected Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the United States.10 The letter emphasized that the human rights provisions of Helsinki “[had] become a rallying point

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for dissidents in the totalitarian countries,” which, in turn, “[had] aroused a supporting response in the West.” Particular focus was placed upon the forthcoming follow-up meeting of the thirty-five Helsinki signatories in Belgrade scheduled for October. The Rustin letter urged that a conference be held for those Americans who had served “in the forefront of the struggle for human and civil rights” in the United States to consider ways “in which . . . dissidents [in totalitarian countries] [could] be supported by activists in the U.S.” In Rustin’s judgment, as expressed in the letter, it was “the duty of those who have waged these [civil rights] struggles” and have won significant progress in the United States to assist the activists in similar struggles in other countries. He envisioned that a U.S. meeting of NGOs, which was projected for September, one month before a Belgrade assemblage, would formally create a Helsinki-oriented NGO. Invitees to the U.S. meeting would be civil rights and humanitarian leaders, intellectuals, and political figures, as well as those active “in the field of human rights.” A couple of months after the June meeting and the drafting of the letter, on August 8, 1977, the key figures of the various organizations, comprising a steering committee of the proposed National Conference on Human Rights, met in New York to plan a major national meeting entitled “Helsinki and Human Rights.” Besides representatives from the already listed organizations, others came from Amnesty International, the Council on Religion and International Affairs (CRIA), the Center for War and Peace Studies, and the International League for Human Rights.11 Rustin, a product of both the civil rights and later human rights movements—he headed the A. Philip Randolph Institute of which the AFLCIO was a principal sponsor—outlined what he had in mind. The decade of the sixties in the United States was his principal focal point, and the model he saw as the basis of a new movement oriented to the Helsinki process was the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. That civil rights conference, as Rustin emphasized, was a “coordinating body” for all the groups—liberal, labor, ethnic, and religious—involved in the civil rights struggle. The newly proposed National Conference would similarly coordinate the work of various human rights and civil rights groups. He reminded the participants that statements made by the proposed new organization would be reached only on the basis of consensus, just as this was the case with the Leadership Conference that had emerged in the sixties. According to the summary of the proceedings, available in the Ford Foundation Archives, the response of the participants was “generally favorable,” although a number noted that the Helsinki human rights efforts, because they involved foreign countries as well as U.S. diplomatic policy, would have a “greater complexity.” Apparently, as early as March 1977, Rustin had made contact with the Ford Foundation about funding the broad conference of NGOs whose participants were mainly drawn from the civil rights movement, but also including liberal and labor groups. Shortly afterward, a key assistant program officer at the foundation working on Eastern European issues, Felice Gaer, began making formal inquiries into the plans of the Rustin group. A handwritten

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memo from Gaer, dated March 14, 1977, to the principal human rights program officer of the foundation, Bruce Bushey, indicated that she was not overly enthused about the makeup of the group.12 She feared that among the leadership elements of the group and, apparently, among those proposed as speakers at the forthcoming conference, there were several who had a distinctly cold-war orientation that she found to be objectionable. Singled out for criticism was Carl Gershman, the head of Social Democrats, U.S.A., a role that made him appear quite “political,” given the Social Democrats’ intense anti-Soviet sentiment.13 She had counseled the group leadership, she reported, to seek out a speaker who would present a more balanced picture, without the usual inclination to cold war invectives. And, she reported, she could not “jump for joy” about a suggestion that the anticommunist Freedom House, a major conference coordinator, be made the recipient of the foundation funding for the conference. Nor did Gaer find the group’s plans adequate; indeed, they were seen as “very sketchy indeed.” Notwithstanding her objections on both form and substance, she vigorously endorsed Rustin as “smart and sensitive” and she recommended that the foundation provide the leadership of the proposed conference with nine thousand dollars, which had been requested for the purpose of organizing the meeting. Nothing was proposed for funding a permanent operation of the Rustin group. Bushey, himself, according to Felice Gaer, was less than enthusiastic in giving priority to funding operations related to the Helsinki Final Act.14 As a lawyer, he was especially interested in the binding international covenants on civil and political rights as well as economic, social, and cultural rights, both of which had just come into force in 1976. The Final Act, an international agreement, was perceived by him as legally less than consequential since it lacked the binding features of an international treaty. To give it significant credibility, in his view, was unwarranted, particularly at a moment when the legally binding covenants had gone into force. But in the realm of international politics, the Final Act would carry extraordinary weight while all international covenants proved to be of quite limited effectiveness. A second group involved with Helsinki that sought assistance from the Ford Foundation was headed by Mort Sklar, a professor at Catholic University Law School. He had organized a Washington-based Helsinki Watch group in the spring of 1978. Evidently, again, Felice Gaer was assigned to make initial inquiries. A later memo of hers to the foundation’s vice-president, Francis Sutton, expressed a “negative view” about the possibility of assistance, although she found the group’s proposed program “impressive.”15 Sklar was primarily interested in the issue of domestic compliance, not compliance by other Final Act signatories, particularly those in Eastern Europe. Even as the foundation was exploring how and in which way to channel effective funding into Helsinki-related activity, a very high-level U.S. government official with a particularly strong interest in human rights was experiencing a series of traumatic events, a kind of epiphany that would

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bring him to McGeorge Bundy with a specific request concerning the Helsinki process. Ambassador Arthur J. Goldberg was chosen by President Jimmy Carter to head the U.S. delegation to the first follow-up meeting of the Final Act scheduled for Belgrade in October 1977. With an especially strong civil liberties background that he expressed while serving as secretary of the AFLCIO and, later, as Secretary of Labor in the Kennedy Cabinet and then as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, he became personally involved in vital international human rights issues. After leaving the court, he was asked by President Lyndon Johnson to be the U.S. ambassador to the UN. There, he personally intervened in a debate in 1966 at the fairly low-level diplomatic meeting of the UN Commission on Human Rights—an extraordinarily rare decision by any U.S. ambassador to the UN. Ordinarily, the top official at the UN would deal with Security Council and General Assembly issues, not with matters on the agenda of the lesser body, the UN Commission of Human Rights. On the Commission agenda at the time was the Soviet Union’s ruthless suppression of Soviet intellectuals. Goldberg’s sharp denunciation of Kremlin policy and practice had become widely known to major Washington power brokers. Belgrade, the site of the first follow-up meeting of the Helsinki process, was an appropriate place for this vigorous civil libertarian and human rights advocate to challenge Moscow and its repressive rule in Eastern Europe. At every opportunity, Goldberg, with the unwavering support of a largely congressional body—the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, chaired by Dante Fascell (a Democrat from Florida)—publicly chastised Soviet repression of dissidents, Jews, other religious and ethnic minorities. Repression by the communist rulers elsewhere in the Soviet empire of Eastern Europe was similarly castigated. What stunned the American ambassador was that few in the West were listening or cared. Equally important, if not more so, he was being resisted and opposed by not only the Western European camp but also by some in his own delegation. The U.S. and the Western press gave Belgrade a less-than-priority concern. Correspondents rarely appeared and, when they did, their reportage tended to suggest that harsh criticism of the USSR only undermined the striving for peace while reinforcing cold war bitterness. Correspondents saw the Goldberg rhetoric as oriented toward hardening the rightist anti-Soviet critics. The historic preoccupation at the moment was an obsession with Vietnam. Liberal opinion, even when informed, was not inclined to listen to anti-Soviet perspectives lest they weaken détente, of which the Helsinki Final Act was seen as a clear expression. Public opinion in Western Europe was even more hostile to the Goldberg view of the need for a robust verbal assault upon the Kremlin. Of course, dissenters and liberals in the Soviet Union and its satellites were found to be in support of the Goldberg approach, embracing any criticism that would illuminate their plight. Andrei Sakharov, prominent social scientist and a leading

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critic of Moscow’s repressive policy, perceived Helsinki as offering an opportunity to air Soviet repression. He was close to members of the Moscow Helsinki Watch and his wife was a member. His view about Helsinki was similar to that of Charter 77 and Solidarity. Human rights concerns were central to their perspective. The Western Europe public and governments saw Helsinki as a means for mitigating cold war tensions, even if at the same time they welcomed the emphasis given to human rights concerns. Ambassadors from most democratic states at Belgrade were not sympathetic to the Goldberg style, and they openly rejected his toughness and frequently rebuffed his demands. Goldberg found himself isolated. Only rarely did his Western colleagues join him in exposing the horrors and brutality of communist rule. What made matters worse, deepening his anger and irritation, was the opposition often openly displayed by many on his State Department staff and even by his deputy ambassador. He was keenly aware that key State Department policy-makers considered his approach as undermining their own aim of reducing East-West tensions. In a real sense, their view reflected American public indifference to Soviet human rights practices that would be reflected in the indifference of the major U.S. press organs in their coverage of Belgrade. When the Belgrade follow-up meeting ended in March 1978 with little accomplished, either in the case of human rights or on security matters, except for an agreement to hold a second follow-up meeting—in Madrid in November 1980—Goldberg desperately sought assistance from McGeorge Bundy, the Ford Foundation president. They knew each other from the years during the Kennedy administration when Goldberg served as Secretary of Labor and Bundy was the president’s National Security Adviser. What must have been in the back of Goldberg’s mind was the need to create an American NGO that might impact upon U.S. public opinion and drive home the need to effectively raise the continuing repression of dissidents, minorities, and Jews in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in communist East Europe. Such an American NGO could also strengthen the recently created NGOs, comprising dissidents in Eastern Europe, such as Charter 77 and Solidarity, that were continuously harassed by the authorities. An influential group might also stimulate the rise of similar groups in Western Europe. While there appears to be no record of the initial Goldberg-Bundy meeting, nor even of precisely when it was held, available information from the foundation archives and from various interviews indicates that Bundy was most responsive.16 He suggested inviting Robert Bernstein, the head of the Random House publishing company, to join Goldberg and himself on April 5, 1978. A letter from Bernstein to Bundy dated May 23, 1978, specifically referred to the “initial meeting with [Bundy] and Ambassador Goldberg on April 5.” What Bundy apparently indicated to Goldberg at their initial prior private meeting was that Bernstein, besides his publisher’s role, had a prominent reputation for promoting free expression, nationally and internationally. In

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addition, Bernstein was reported to have excellent contacts with the media. He was chairman of the Fund for Free Expression, which had been a recipient of Ford Foundation grants for some time. Founded in 1965, the fund embraced publishers, editors, authors, and columnists. It was prepared to challenge the Kremlin, and vigorously did so, on the crucial right to write and publish all types of books, including books of dissent. Bernstein’s activities extended beyond the fund. He had also served as chairman of the Association of American Publishers, and, in that capacity, helped spur the formation of a vitally active International Freedom to Publish Committee, which vigorously took up the cudgels for foreign, including Soviet, authors.17 At the meeting on April 5, it was made clear to Bernstein that Goldberg and Bundy desired to have the fund spark the creation, from scratch, of a Helsinki monitoring body—a U.S. Helsinki Watch—although a name had not as yet been decided upon. Bundy’s choice of Bernstein, and Goldberg’s quick assent to it, certainly fit the Ford Foundation perspective. Its elitist perspective could easily be served, given the nature of Bernstein’s contacts with persons in the publishing industry as well as in the broader sphere of writers and artists. In addition, he had access to important levels of wealth and power. The Rustin and Sklar groups would quickly fall by the wayside as possible channels of Ford Foundation funding. A later memorandum by Felice Gaer to Francis Sutton noted, for example, that Sklar was “not a leader of the same stature and quality as Bob [Bernstein].”18 In fact, during meetings with Bundy, Bernstein “dismissed and ridiculed” Sklar and his associates. Equally important, especially from Goldberg’s perspective, was that Bernstein had already made his mark in standing up to the Kremlin and its satellites. He had displayed no fear or reluctance in questioning the Kremlin on the basic right of free expression. Bolstering the Goldberg perspective on what was needed to expose the nature of Soviet rule and how it could be done was a key figure in a U.S. congressional committee extremely involved in the Helsinki process. This was Alfred Friendly, Jr., who served as a staff member and “senior consultant” of the so-called U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a largely congressional group that had worked very closely with Goldberg before and during the Belgrade meeting, especially in resisting and opposing the attempted restraint on his tough posture vis-à-vis Moscow by other Western European delegations and State Department officials in the U.S. delegation. Friendly, a former Washington Post and Newsweek correspondent in the USSR, was more than merely a staffer for the crucial, largely congressional body, chaired by Congressman Dante Fascell. As one versed on human rights issues in Moscow, he had special knowledge of the subject with which Goldberg was vitally concerned, and he was an experienced journalist. For a time, he handled the public relations work of the U.S. Commission. Evidently, as a letter by Friendly to Goldberg on April 25, 1978, a few weeks after the crucial April 5 meeting, indicated, Friendly had had an earlier telephone conversation with the U.S. ambassador.19 In that prior conversation,

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Friendly noted that the matter that was discussed was “[Goldberg’s] idea” for an American NGO to keep the subject of Helsinki and human rights on the agenda of public opinion. Friendly went on to indicate that he was more than pleased with the Ford Foundation’s selection of Bernstein to establish a Helsinki monitoring group. Such a group, he said, could serve as a “private counterpart” to the U.S. Helsinki Commission and, thereby, help put “pressure on the Executive Branch,” or the State Department. But the objective that was of the greatest importance, in his view—and here he was mainly echoing Goldberg—was “to stimulate the press to take the subject more seriously than it has until now.” Undoubtedly, at Goldberg’s request, Friendly, the U.S. Helsinki Commission staffer, met with Bernstein and promised him and his associates that he would prepare for them a special memorandum of how the proposed NGO would function. This was noted in Friendly’s letter to Goldberg, although the promised memorandum of his “thinking” has not been located. Nonetheless, he made it evident that the proposed NGO, when created and funded, “must have a clear focus and program of action,” objectives that had been found lacking with other U.S. groups, in the view of foundation staff investigators. Two other people mentioned by Friendly with whom he had met were Ed Kline and Jeri Laber (he misspelled Laber’s first name as “Geri”). Kline was an American businessman who had made Soviet repression his priority. He had founded Khronika Press, the publishing house that printed publications in both Russian and English, providing details on the extent and character of Soviet repression. For specialists in the Soviet field, it was an invaluable source on the plight of intellectuals in the USSR. Of particular importance to Kline was the work of the great Soviet physicist and human rights advocate, Andrei Sakharov. Kline played a crucial role in alerting American NGOs, intellectuals, and publicists of the threats and dangers faced by Sakharov and his wife, Elena Bonner. Significantly, Khronika Press was partly funded by the foundation. The involvement of Kline at this early stage in the shaping of an NGO monitoring group on the Helsinki process pointed to the direction the NGO would take. Indeed, he would become a privileged adviser and guide to Bernstein. Jeri Laber was already close to Bernstein, serving as the professional staffer of his Fund for Free Expression. She herself was trained at Columbia University’s Russian Institute (later called the Harriman Institute), then served, for a period of time, as an editor of the Current Digest of the Soviet Press, and later worked for Radio Liberty, an institution founded indirectly by the U.S. government to broadcast news into the Soviet Union. While the principal thrust of the proposed NGO was obvious in the minds of Goldberg, Friendly, and consultants like Kline, the initial discussion with Bundy indicated that the function of a U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee was to be both “domestic” and “international.” As recalled by Bernstein and his associates, the “domestic” function of the Watch Committee was to monitor and expose “major human rights abuses within the United States.”20 This

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was rationalized on the grounds that Soviet spokesmen had been continually accusing the United States of “meddling in the internal human rights problems of other countries while disregarding [its] own human rights abuses at home.” The “domestic” function would “counter such arguments” and, at the same time, show the world “that a free society allows private groups to investigate, report and criticize shortcomings” with impunity. In striking contrast, Moscow was charged with engaging in a major effort to silence, intimidate, and destroy its own Moscow Helsinki Watch Group and similar groups in various Soviet republics. The “international” function of the organization would involve the establishment of a “liaison with Helsinki Watch groups in other countries and in exile” and, also, to “encourage the formation of such Committees in any of the [Helsinki] signatory countries.” As foreseen in the preliminary discussions, a “coalition of private monitoring groups” in signatory countries “would offer moral support, a feeling of legitimacy and perhaps some small protection to Helsinki Watch Committees in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.” Made explicit in the Bernstein-Bundy talks was that the “protection” for these Helsinki groups, even if only conducted on a verbally moral plane, could provide some succor to those “blatantly persecuted by the governments even while the Belgrade Helsinki talks were in session.” Conjoining the two “functions” would not prove easy to accomplish and hardly coincided with the priorities as envisioned by Goldberg. Problems related to the staffing and the emphasis of the newly proposed NGO would rather quickly arise. In addition, on the staff working level of the Ford Foundation, uncertainty prevailed as to whether the Bernstein group would be favorably received and supported at higher foundation staff levels. In early May, according to a memorandum from Francis Sutton to Bushey, Bundy had requested Bernstein to prepare “a good proposal” for a monitoring group.21 The amount of the grant for an initial six-month period—a kind of testing interval—was set by Bundy at twenty-five thousand dollars. Sutton must have been very much aware that Bushey was hardly enthusiastic about the priority given to the Bernstein group, as it was not considered to have human rights expertise. Several days earlier, Bushey had written to Sutton asking to talk with him about various proposals for a different type of Helsinki Watch Committee, including Mort Sklar’s request.22 The Bushey memo then suggested that he would also seek to discuss with other foundation officials a variety of various proposals on broad human rights themes, 40 percent of which were submitted by Professor Richard Lillich of the University of Virginia Law School. Bushey, a lawyer deeply immersed in legal issues, thought highly of Lillich and his proposals, particularly a recommendation to establish in Washington an International Human Rights Law Group. Sutton, perhaps because he intellectually agreed with the foundation staffer, or maybe because he was seeking to placate the doubting Bushey, told the latter that he had already had a brief discussion with Bundy about selecting the most appropriate type of Helsinki Watch group. Bundy had registered,

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Sutton noted an undefined uncertainty about the Bernstein proposal. If Bernstein’s proposal turned out to be inadequate after careful study, Sutton, citing Bundy as the source, commented, “We don’t have to buy it.”23 In fact, the formal “request” by the Fund for Free Expression was rather quickly prepared and submitted on May 23. Bernstein recognized the urgency of the matter. The request referred to meetings “on a number of occasions” after April 5, presumably with Bundy, at which were discussed “the purpose of such a [Helsinki Watch] Committee and how the Fund for Free Expression . . . would go about founding it.” Out of these discussions came “our decision” to ask the foundation for a five-month planning grant of twentyfive thousand dollars, covering the period of June 1, 1978, to November 1, 1978, for establishing the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee.24 The amount, as noted, had already been proposed by Bundy. What is more than evident was that the top Ford Foundation executive had already decided on the path to be followed and had set in motion all the crucial steps for creating the kind of Helsinki Watch Committee he wanted. The formal Bernstein “request” even resonated with the kind of argument made by Goldberg to Bundy and that found in the latter a responsive listener. It spoke of the need of the new group to stimulate the establishment of similar monitoring groups in Western European countries, thereby promoting “consciousness-raising” in countries “so that the U.S. delegation to Madrid [the site of the next follow-up meeting, scheduled for November 1980] [would] not feel as isolated in its human rights stand as did the U.S. delegation to Belgrade.” Of particular significance in the “request,” an element that would have immediately attracted the attention of both Goldberg and Bundy, was a section dealing with “publicity.” That subject, interpreted as bringing to the public in the United States and abroad “an awareness of a concern for implementing the human rights provisions of the Helsinki accords,” was underlined to emphasize its prominence in Bernstein’s scheme of things. The following section illuminated his perspective: “Good relations with the press would be crucial to the Committee work.” To achieve that aim, “an influential Board” would be created to help “focus attention” on Helsinki issues in the United States and abroad. Technical human rights issues were not addressed in the document. References to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were absent, as indeed were details of the Helsinki accord. Rather, the group’s fundamental responsibility was seen as the stimulation of conferences and publications that would spark media interest. No longer would a vacuum exist between what was expressed at Helsinki follow-up meetings, notably by the United States, and studies or reports by independent individuals and reporters in the media. A Planning Committee of some ten members of the proposed U.S. Helsinki Watch group was to be created that would concentrate on solving what had to be done in a variety of areas concerning substantive, organizational, and practical issues. The Planning Committee would include “prominent figures in the arts, letters and sciences and from the academic and

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business worlds.” The proposed names, numbering thirty-three, read like a “Who’s Who” in the designated intellectual fields. Virtually none came from the human rights field itself. Bernstein knew what was wanted in terms of media attention and his contacts would facilitate achieving the set goal. Significantly, the request specified that the Ford Foundation itself would be “solicited” for “advice and recommendations.” From the very beginning, U.S. Helsinki Watch linked its destiny with the foundation; even its very origin was a product of the foundation’s planning at the highest level. Matters moved quickly after the request was made. Even before the foundation formally received the “request” of Bernstein, a dinner meeting was scheduled for June 27, 1978, at which the future plans of U.S. Helsinki Watch would be discussed. A letter from Jeri Laber, who would eventually become executive director of U.S. Helsinki Watch, addressed to Bushey on June 19, expressed appreciation that he would attend the meeting. She told him that Alfred Friendly would be joining the discussion, and she enclosed several U.S. Helsinki Commission reports, about which Bushey probably knew little.25 The twenty-five thousand dollar planning grant to the Fund for Free Expression was formally authorized on July 6, 1978.26 It was signed by the assistant secretary of the foundation, Willard Hertz, and identified as Grant Number 785-0517. The opening paragraph made clear that the grant did not mean that the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee was a certainty; rather the grant’s purpose was to have the fund “investigate whether a U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee should be established to monitor and publicize violations of the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Final Act in the United States and abroad.” There was never any indication of doubt among the respective leaderships of the foundation and the Bernstein group that the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee would be created. Evidence of any perceived uncertainty at any time frame after June 1, 1978, did not appear in a formal “Report to the Ford Foundation” covering the “Planning Period June 1, 1978–January 31, 1979” submitted by the Fund for Free Expression.27 If a certain definitiveness was lacking in the foundation grant about the future of the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, it was probably designed to placate lower-level officers dealing with human rights, like Bushey. And, in fact, his uncertainty, even anxiety, was reflected in a memorandum he sent to Felice Gaer that dealt with Helsinki on July 28, 1978.28 In it, he noted that he had been looking at material about various organizations such as the EastWest Institute, and at material on monitoring sent to him by William vanden Heuvel, President of the United Nations Association. He referred to other monitoring groups that he had “heard about”—one in Great Britain, the other in Switzerland. In the memo, he suggested that he and Gaer meet to discuss the various proposed monitoring groups “before [making] a decision on Bernstein’s project.” The word “before” was underlined. To Bushey, a firm decision “on the most effective use of foundation dollars”—as he put it—was still up in the air.

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But the Bernstein group, according to its later, although undated, formal report, had been moving ahead with great speed. A Planning Board was immediately created after the foundation had authorized the initial grant. Nothing was said about the purpose of “investigating” whether a Helsinki Watch Committee should be created. On the contrary, the Planning Board was established “for the proposed Helsinki Watch Committee” and, indeed, “with the assumption that they [the Planning Board members]” would be “members of an enlarged Board of Directors for the Helsinki Watch [Committee] whenever it began to operate.” Among the Planning Board’s seven members who were identified, one name stands out and indicates the thrust of Bernstein’s thinking—Arthur Miller, the distinguished playwright. Others were Bernstein himself, Kline (head of Khronika Press), and several prominent attorneys. Another member—Aryeh Neier—identified as Visiting Professor of Law at New York University and former Director of the American Civil Liberties Union—would soon play a central role in the Helsinki Watch Committee, and in its extraordinary expansion into several more geographically-based Watch Committees and ultimately into Human Rights Watch. Even as Bushey was writing memos displaying a certain confusion and uncertainty, the Planning Board was meeting during the summer of 1978 “sporadically,” and two if its members, Aryeh Neier, and Orville Schell, a prominent New York attorney who would soon serve as vice-chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, were busy precisely during the same summer drafting “preliminary prospectives of the domestic and international functions of the Watch [Committee].”29 In addition to these meetings, the Planning Board began the actual creation of a staff. The report noted that, in October, Jeri Laber, “a Sovietologist”—hardly an accurate description of her status—was hired as a “part-time consultant” who would “coordinate” the development of the Committee’s international program. As the new executive director of the committee, David Fishlow was selected. He had previously served as executive director of the ACLU of Northern California. The choice was certainly an odd one, as Fishlow had not been involved with the shaping of the Helsinki Watch Committee. On the other hand, Jeri Laber had been heavily involved as Bernstein’s close professional associate in the Fund for Free Expression. How the obscure appointment of Fishlow was made is not clear. According to Laber’s autobiography, written much later, Fishlow was the choice of Aryeh Neier, who had been solicited by Bernstein for advice on staff appointments.30 Apparently, Neier refused, at the time, to be appointed to the staff of Helsinki Watch even if, in Laber’s view, he would have made “an ideal candidate for the job.” The Fishlow selection hardly shows much clarity in the thinking of Aryeh Neier. Laber contended that Fishlow took the position “assuming it would be mainly U.S. oriented.” How could Neier not have recognized this assumption? Perhaps Neier himself was not yet certain

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of the Helsinki group’s direction. Laber did not address this question; instead she offered the puzzling thesis that Fishlow “did not initially comprehend how strong our international focus was, nor was he comfortable with it.” Strange, too, was her contention that it was Fishlow himself who suddenly opted to leave: “Four months passed before Fishlow realized that he was not the right person for the job. He left at the end of April [1979].” It took four months? And the decision was his own? No one appears to have raised the question of the Fishlow appointment until his name was mentioned in a Helsinki Watch report in late October, which announced his hiring. The report noted that he and Laber were preparing a “revised prospectus,” initially prepared by Neier and Schell. Certainly, that prospectus had emphasized that the committee would be concerned with both domestic and international affairs. Equally odd, on January 26–27, 1979, shortly before the Ford Foundation gave a huge grant to the Fund for Free Expression of four hundred thousand dollars for two years, thereby recognizing and bringing into active existence the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, Fishlow attended the “Conference of the Preparatory Committee for the European Helsinki Group” in Aarau, Switzerland, on behalf of the U.S. Helsinki group.31 His attendance was in keeping with one of the principal purposes of the committee’s future operations: the creation and sustaining of Helsinki Watch Groups in various Western European countries. Participants came to Aarau from a half-dozen Western European groups. Also present were émigré representatives from Helsinki human rights movements in Eastern Europe. Upon his return from Europe, Fishlow reported that the conference had reinforced his belief in the importance of forming an international network of citizens’ groups in order to prepare for Madrid. This was hardly the kind of perspective that suggested that he was less than enthusiastic about attention to international affairs. Laber, in her autobiography, makes no reference to this meeting in January 1979, nor to Fishlow’s special interest in the human rights aspect of international affairs. Fishlow also reported that the participants in the Swiss conference lacked the necessary “leadership credentials in their home countries to be effective.” Instead, he believed the new U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee would have to lead in organizing and coordinating the activities of Helsinki Watch Groups in Western Europe and in establishing ties with appropriate groups in Eastern Europe. This caveat was hardly an indication of an uninterested or indifferent professional who was anticipating departure. Even before Fishlow’s visit to Switzerland, he showed keen interest in whether the Ford Foundation trustees would support the Helsinki Watch Committee. He called Felice Gaer on December 13, 1978, to pose this question.32 She told him that the foundation trustees had “expressed a general sense of enthusiasm for the venture.” As for details on the support question, she suggested that Bernstein could ascertain answers from Bundy. Clearly, as late as December, Fishlow’s interest in the future of the Watch Committee was keen. And it remained so after his trip to Switzerland. On February 21,

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1979, he formally wrote to the Ford Foundation, seeking an additional fifty thousand dollars to cover the U.S. Helsinki Watch’s expenses until May 1979.33 Yet, two months later, Fishlow mysteriously left his committee job. In fact, Fishlow did not leave voluntarily; nor did he suddenly come to the realization that he was not fit for the job, as indicated in Laber’s autobiography. The contrary is the case. According to a fairly detailed memo sent by Bushey to Sutton on July 24, 1980, fourteen months later, Fishlow had been fired. The pertinent section of Bushey’s memo reads as follows: Bernstein hired a Committee staff director before functions and objectives were defined. This proved harmful because he was a specialist on American minority problems whereas the Committee subsequently developed largely along international lines. As a result, conflict arose and the director was fired several months after he began work—with considerable disruption of activities. Bernstein then appointed Laber to the post.34

To the extent that the Ford Foundation engaged in the extraordinary task of creating an NGO from scratch, it was hardly surprising that its principal staffers would be in constant touch with Bernstein and his professional staffers. Once the planning grant was given in June, Bushey and Gaer sought to apprise Bundy of developments regarding the U.S. Helsinki Watch during and after the summer. In an undated, very rough draft—a final draft has not been located—they prepared a memo for Bundy that provided him with some insights about the Helsinki Watch staff.35 In the judgment of Bushey and Gaer, “very little was accomplished during the summer months.” This was said to be partly due to vacations. More significantly, in their opinion, was that committee staffer Jeri Laber was uncertain “about how to proceed.” Especially striking were their views on Neier and Fishlow. The former was said “to view” the proposed unfolding organization “as a mini-ACLU.” The comments on Fishlow were much sharper: he was said to “view the organization as one which will principally raise domestically generated complaints of violations to the U.S. Government in the context of the Helsinki act.” At the same time, the committee would also “field foreign generated criticisms of [human rights] violations.” Jeri Laber was also subjected to criticism as someone with an “uncertain view of what the group [could] do.” Nonetheless, she was expected “to focus on the international, specifically East European and Soviet aspects.” If they found no fault with Bernstein and, indeed, at times lauded him and his overall perspective, they remained “struck by the strong emphasis” on domestic matters by his colleagues as well as his lack of “expertise” with respect to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In the view of Bushey and Gaer, “this needs further attention.” Their comments suggested that they had erroneously mistaken Neier’s and Fishlow’s views for those of Bernstein. Laber, meanwhile, was certainly seeking to broaden her perspective. On October 25–27, 1978, she visited Washington, DC, meeting separately with seventeen high officials from the White House, the State Department, and

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the U.S. Helsinki Commission, as well as with several NGO officials.36 Most of the specialists with whom she met were either experts on the USSR or dealt with human rights matters in Eastern Europe. What surprised her, and pleasantly so, was that “the idea of monitoring domestic compliance under the Helsinki framework [was] one that [seemed] to have come into its own and [needed] no strong advocacy on our part.” The rationale for this view was that the Carter Administration “[could not] continue to stress human rights abroad without also showing support for what’s going on at home.” But the question was less the engaging in domestic monitoring than the question of how significant a priority it was to be given as compared with international matters, specifically Soviet compliance. Laber’s memo failed to comment on this point, although she quoted a former key official of London’s Amnesty International, then working in Washington for that NGO, Stephanie Grant, as recommending that the Watch Committee should have “as narrow a focus as possible,” if it was to be effective. Still, everyone of Laber’s interlocutors expressed a strong interest in and enthusiasm for the creation of a U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee. A week before her Washington trip, Laber met in New York with an NGO specialist on the Helsinki process, Sidney Liskofsky of the American Jewish Committee.37 In a report on October 10, 1978, that she made to her top leadership and for the record, she related that Liskofsky urged her to make sure that priority in international matters should be placed on political and civil rights, rather than on economic and social rights. That type of priority would ineluctably challenge the Kremlin and its satellites. It was evident that Laber, as Gaer and Bushey recognized, was limited in her knowledge of human rights generally, as well as of Soviet human rights issues specifically. But she was determined to steep herself in the subject and she proved to be a quick study. By November 1978, it was clear to Bushey and Gaer that matters were rapidly moving forward on the track that had been set forth by the BundyGoldberg conversation and the subsequent April 5 meeting. The U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee was emerging as other potential groups fell by the wayside. A Planning Committee Board had been created, a prospective for the organization drafted, and staffers appointed, even if serious and unresolved problems remained. At this stage, Bushey and Gaer wrote a memo to Bundy dated November 3, 1978, that highlighted their own plans for the next couple of months. This memo was a remarkable document, illuminating how the Ford Foundation functioned or planned to function in order to realize the purpose it had set for itself.38 At the beginning of the memo, they revealed to Bundy that they had talked with a sizable number of their “regular contacts” in both the fields of human rights and East-West relations. What was patently evident to the two professionals was that the new U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, on the board level, could encompass “star” figures, elite personalities from a variety of fields, but yet seriously lacked “the range of expertise

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required to deal with complicated domestic and international issues raised by the Final Act.” On the staff level, the same lack of expertise was painfully evident. Thus, Bushey and Gaer decided to compile a list of names of people who would add to the “representative nature” of the committee members that had been chosen by Bernstein. They also reported that they had begun to draw up another list of “appropriate people” to work with the committee as either “staff or as consultants on the international front.” Given Neier’s and Fishlow’s experience with the ACLU, the need for consultants on domestic affairs did not appear pertinent. Relevancy with respect to the international field, however, was urgent. But it was not only the submission of names for the proposed U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee and for its staff that Bushey and Gaer had been preparing and thoroughly researching. They had also been seeking advice about and evaluating the more substantive question of its “function and priorities” and, of equal importance, the preparation of “a more fully developed game plan” for the formal launching of the committee. In their view, “the project could be significantly counter-productive if poorly designated.” Precisely because the unveiling of an entirely new NGO was in the offing, they considered that all the i’s should be dotted and the t’s should be crossed, and that all the nuts and bolts should be in place. In their very strong view that they placed before Bundy, they did not want “final decisions” on committee composition and staff to be reached before tackling details on the functions and priorities of the Watch Committee. More forceful was their recommendation that Bundy not appear before the Board of Trustees to seek approval of a new human rights appropriation before a “fully developed game plan” was decided upon. After elaborating what they believed was needed to make a success of the Helsinki Watch project, they proceeded to closely collaborate with Bernstein and his colleagues through a series of meetings during the next few weeks. They began with quite specific reviews with Bernstein’s group of the Helsinki Final Act so as to determine which of its provisions were relevant and which human rights issues required immediate attention. At the same time, they sought to evaluate the connection between domestic and international matters, and to examine how human rights questions were linked to the Helsinki Final Act as a whole. In short, what the Bushey-Gaer team was offering was an overhaul of decisions and plans reached by the Bernstein group. At the same time, they sought to provide the “plan” with a greater solidity and a brighter sheen; if Galatea was being shaped by Pygmalion, she must have a solid foundation. Certainly, the work of these foundation staffers was unusual. Indeed, it was even rare for the Ford Foundation in general. Creating a Pygmalion-type NGO in the international affairs field marked a fairly revolutionary departure for the foundation. Were Bundy to agree with their broad proposals, they suggested that he advise Bernstein to temporarily delay issuing new invitations to people to sit on the Watch Committee Board, a process already well

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advanced. Precisely how Bundy reacted to the memo is not known. He may have welcomed the suggestion of additional names for the committee. On November 23, 1978, Gaer sent him, with copies for Bushey and Sutton, a list of forty names that she and Bushey had prepared.39 The list included persons “with specialized experience in East-West matters [and] international affairs.” But close scrutiny of the Gaer list and its comparison with the original Bernstein-Laber list shows that the proposed experts were not added to those Bernstein had already chosen. Obviously, the “balance” Gaer and Bushey sought that would provide the Watch committee with a more seasoned international human rights character was not reached. It was apparent that whatever misgivings Bundy may have entertained, he was not prepared to oppose choices made by someone like Bernstein, who was extremely knowledgeable in the media field, and was of what can be called the elitist orientation. Had Goldberg not made his pitch to Bundy exactly in terms of media impact? As Bundy chose not to override Bernstein’s decisions in terms of Planning Board participants and committee staffing, he was even less inclined to accept Bushey’s views on the need to work out in advance an overall strategy and a detailed plan of action for the committee. In Bushey’s “final evaluation” of the project for a U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, which he had submitted to Sutton in July 1980—some four months before the Madrid follow-up meeting—he bitterly complained that Bernstein’s Fund for Free Expression had not “addressed the hard questions” that the proposed Helsinki Committee should address. In addition, the Bushey memo was full of reproaches: that Bernstein’s staff appointments, first Fishlow, then Laber, reflected poor judgment; that the selection of the fund itself as the vehicle for the Watch Committee was questionable; that no “serious” thought had been given to the Watch Committee’s “priorities”; and that even the very creation of the Watch Committee was premature. In his anger, Bushey disclosed how a major human rights decision was reached during the Bundy administration. He said that it was Bundy himself who “pushed ahead against our [staff] objections,” referring to the objections registered by Bushey and Gaer. Bushey went on to add that Bundy approved the formation of the Helsinki Committee and, more importantly, “made four hundred thousand dollars available to support its activities during a two-year period.” That was a huge sum of money for an NGO, and an amount extremely rare for a start-up project. Bushey concluded with an angry denunciation of the original “planning grant” as a “dismal failure” because no serious planning had taken place. In a kind of pathetic afterthought, Bushey contended that the grant was “counterproductive in that it led to a questionable use of a significant portion of our limited human rights budget.” Oddly, almost childishly, he added, “I would not recommend the grant again.” But the Bushey memo came almost a year after Bundy had retired from the foundation. It was most unlikely that his decisions would be reversed.

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What had irritated Bushey more than anything was the failure of the top Helsinki Watch officials to have prepared a serious strategic plan or to have sought his assistance in preparing one. For Bundy, it was sufficient that Bernstein had agreed to the objective. With the latter’s extensive experience in dealing with the media on various levels, he could be trusted to develop his own, perhaps unique, plan to affect public opinion on the Helsinki Final Act. He could, after all, pick up the phone and call newspaper editors with whom he had an established relationship, and lay the groundwork for impacting public opinion. But the episode also demonstrated how traditional processes in the Ford Foundation could be bypassed by a strong and determined leader. Bundy was all that plus extremely well-versed on Soviet communism. He had been, after all, President Kennedy’s National Security Adviser, when the young president was challenged and threatened by the Kremlin boss, Nikita Khrushchev. And if the Helsinki Final Act was now a critical element in Soviet-American relations, he would want to give his old colleague, Arthur Goldberg, the strongest support. If it involved a huge foundation expenditure—a matter about which Bushey was deeply suspicious—so be it. The 1979 Annual Program Review of the Ford Foundation took special pride in calling attention to the grant for Helsinki Watch. It was noted first in the section dealing with “Human Rights and Intellectual Freedom”40 Two full paragraphs were devoted to the subject of the Helsinki Act, which was characterized as “a milestone in East-West relations,” and to its human rights features. All other grants were given no more than one paragraph each, and in most cases, rather short paragraphs. A bit modestly, and somewhat inaccurately, the review’s section read: “In the United States, a group of private citizens has organized Helsinki Watch, Inc. to monitor U.S. compliance and to call public attention to cases of official mistreatment of Watch groups in other countries.” The implication that a private group of citizens took matters into their own hands in organizing Helsinki Watch was rather wide of the mark. It was the Ford Foundation president, having heard the plea of Goldberg, who brought it into existence in January 1979 with a rather remarkable grant of four hundred thousand dollars for a two-year period. Examination of a listing of some twenty grants that year showed that the indicated grant was far greater than any other grant, and twice the size of its closest competitor.41 On the same wavelength of Bundy stood a longtime Ford Foundation staffer and vice-president, Francis Sutton. Several months after the Helsinki Watch Committee had received its historic grant, Sutton sent a memo to Bushey and Gaer reporting on two private meetings with Bernstein that occurred during the week of April, 1980, before and after a U.S. Helsinki Watch board meeting.42 Sutton’s report, rich in detail and nuance though not always in personality evaluation and policy assessment, reflected a general enthusiasm about Bernstein. The Random House publisher had reported to Sutton about a meeting he and his Helsinki Watch Committee associates had

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had with a former Republican Governor of Pennsylvania, William Scranton, who had been appointed by President Carter to replace Goldberg as head of the U.S. delegation. Scranton impressed Bernstein. To Sutton, the Helsinki Watch Committee chief was “excited” by his conversation with Scranton and “looked forward to a valuable collaboration with Scranton in planning for the Madrid review conference.” Disappointment, however, immediately followed, as Scranton was obliged to resign for health reasons. Bernstein went on to tell Sutton about Max Kampelman, who would ultimately replace Scranton. Actually, the replacement was to have been Griffin Bell, Carter’s Attorney General, with Kampelman serving as his deputy. But soon after the Madrid session began, Bell resigned and Kampelman took over. Interestingly, Sutton reported that Bernstein reacted to the Kampelman appointment “without enthusiasm” and that, after Sutton himself heard Kampelman at the Watch Committee’s Board meeting, he said he shared “Bernstein’s disappointment.” The negative comments about Kampelman by both Bernstein and Sutton were surprising, to say the least. Kampelman was an extraordinarily articulate international lawyer, negotiator, and strategist. He turned out to be as committed to human rights as Arthur Goldberg was, but far more diplomatically skillful in winning over Western European and neutral statesmen. There was no indication in the memo by Sutton as to the reasons for his and Bernstein’s negative view of Kampelman. Sutton also appeared to welcome Bernstein’s comments about a critical essay prepared for the Helsinki Watch Committee by University of Illinois professor Maurice Friedberg on Soviet book publishing. Sutton reported that Bernstein was “enthusiastic” about it. The Ford Foundation executive, in contrast, while finding it “a very useful contribution,” observed that it could not be considered a “distinguished piece of writing.” The essay is not known to have exerted an impact either on the deliberations of Madrid or in any releases of the Helsinki Watch Committee. If the reaction to Bernstein was positive, Sutton was less so about other reports at the Watch Committee’s Board meeting. He found Jeri Laber’s report on pre-Helsinki activities by NGOs in Western Europe “discouraging.” Little existed in the “private sector” in Western Europe that made for “obvious collaboration,” although Sutton suspected that Laber had “not contacted” those who might turn out to be “significant groups.” The characterization of Western European NGOs with respect to human rights was similar to comments about governments in Western Europe made at the meeting by Ambassador Roz Ridgway, who was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs. She was reported as saying that Europeans in general “were now much more interested in security than pressing human rights issues.” Preoccupation with security would lead to hesitancy to engage in vigorous actions to respond to Soviet military moves. At the time, plans for U.S. emplacement of cruise missiles in strategic places in Western Europe were being weighed. Precisely because of European concerns, it was difficult to play the delicate game of balancing security matters

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against human rights. If such balance stood at the heart of the Helsinki accords, preoccupation with security meant that balance no “longer seems to prevail,” according to Ridgway, as reported by Sutton. Sutton, himself, had come to the conclusion that, given little movement on either side with respect to security issues, “it [was] difficult to see where there might be leverage on human rights issues.” It was an extremely perceptive observation. Ineluctably, the issue was posed as to whether U.S. Helsinki Watch should become preoccupied with security issues. A committee leader was cited as saying that Helsinki Watch should not become involved because “they had no competence in the area [of security].” Sutton concluded that if the Helsinki Watch was “not equipped to think in these strategic terms, someone else ought to be.” He was right, of course. That “someone” would turn out to be Kampelman and his successor (at Vienna, 1986–89), Warren Zimmermann. Kampelman and Zimmermann would use sophisticated diplomacy to make significant human rights progress, especially later, during 1988–89. Sutton agreed, however, that a “calculated general strategy” covering security matters was not the bailiwick of Helsinki Watch. Diplomatic sophistication at Madrid would not necessarily have produced “significant results” in human rights. A similar view was advanced by David Heaps in a letter to Bernstein. What was required of the Helsinki Watch Committee was to press ahead at Madrid in support of human rights. And, needless to say, this support had to be vigorously extended to similar Helsinki Watch groups throughout Eastern Europe, like Solidarity and Charter 77. This course was endorsed by Sutton. For the foundation executive, the Helsinki Watch Committee had to remain involved even if no progress was imminent or could quickly be achieved. Breakthroughs in international affairs during short stretches are not easily achievable. Sutton could not but think of progress over the long haul. Bernstein, too, was absorbed in the question of the committee’s continued existence. “The most important question” that he had asked Sutton, as recorded by the latter, dealt “with the future of Helsinki Watch.” Bernstein, during the course of their personal conversation, sought to ascertain whether the foundation would be “receptive to a proposal for continuation after the present grant runs out sometime in 1981.” Sutton answered that it would depend on three considerations. The first involved how the Helsinki Final Act would be viewed after Madrid—what “significance” would it have? Second was the question of whether Helsinki Watch would also appear to the foundation to be “significant.” Third, budgetary considerations had to be taken into account. The Sutton memo did not offer a definitive answer, nor could it. After all, an extraordinarily heavy investment had gone into the newly created NGO. Any structure required time to leave its mark. It was at the Madrid follow-up meeting of CSCE that the foundation’s U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee made its entry onto the international scene. The impact, while hardly world-shaking, would nonetheless, be felt in both

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governmental circles and in the nongovernment community. The context was quite appropriate. An entire city had become a centerpiece for the promotion of human rights issues. How Madrid appeared on the opening day of the Helsinki conference, November 11, 1980, was powerfully captured in Le Monde with the marvelously descriptive phrase, “city of dissidence.”43 The Spanish capital had become a magnet for dissidents and democratic activists from every part of Eastern Europe, along with their human rights champions and advocates in the West. Wives and relatives of Soviet “prisoners of conscience” and refuseniks mingled with representatives of Western nongovernmental human rights organizations in rallies, demonstrations, press conferences, and mini–review sessions. Displays and leaflets, films and posters, and books and recordings were everywhere. The corridors of the building where the Helsinki sessions took place and the halls of nearby hotels were sites for hurried press conferences given by, for example, Nina Lagergren (the half sister of Raoul Wallenberg) and Anatoly Shcharansky’s wife, Avital.44 Especially active in arranging for the public exposure of Soviet and Eastern European activists who were present was U.S. Helsinki Watch, which leased office space and staffed it with a highly skilled professional, who assisted Jeri Laber as well as her associates when they appeared at intervals from New York or elsewhere. Though only a year old, U.S. Helsinki Watch already was functioning with considerable effectiveness in lobbying CSCE delegations, providing well-researched documentation on human rights violations to the hundreds of media correspondents who had descended upon Madrid, and hosting NGO representatives from the communist world. To a far greater degree than the meeting in Belgrade, where the first Helsinki conference was held, Madrid had become the stage for grand human rights theater. One reason for this was its accessibility; the city was close to most Western countries and to various NGOs’ headquarters. A second reason was the strong democratic character of Spanish society and the Spanish government in contrast to Yugoslavia, where a certain arbitrariness befitting an authoritarian regime made for caution and restraint in any public display of support for human rights. A third reason was the Western public reaction to Moscow’s repression of the several Helsinki Watch groups.45 Of the seventy-one individuals who comprised the half-dozen Helsinki monitoring groups in the USSR, twenty-four had been tried and found guilty, with nineteen of them serving a total of 156 years in forced labor or internal exile. Responsiveness to NGO pressures and activism on the part of Western governments was extraordinary. At Belgrade, not a single Western European delegation had chosen to enter into a direct confrontation with the USSR or with its Warsaw Pact allies. Madrid marked a historic breakthrough and set a totally new standard. Never in a formal international setting had so many countries raised details of human rights violations. Nine Western delegations raised questions about various aspects of the Soviet treatment of Jews. This was totally unprecedented. One NATO country—Belgium—took the risk of

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openly accusing Moscow of anti-Semitism. As for the United States, it raised some sixty-five Eastern European cases during the first six-week period and nearly 250 more during the course of the Madrid meeting, which ended in September, 1983. Lobbying at CSCE meetings was but one of the U.S. Helsinki Watch activities. Other functions were also seen as especially crucial. The new group was to “establish liaison” with Helsinki Watch groups in other countries or in exile. It also was to “encourage the formation of such Committees in any of the signatory countries where no such group presently exists.” The vision of Arthur Goldberg, the former Supreme Court Justice, and the hope of the Ford Foundation were not misplaced. With its careful research findings, always meticulously checked before publication, U.S. Helsinki Watch became a major source of information and documentation to the media in the United States and abroad.46 It also became a leading protector of the Eastern European monitoring groups by issuing a flurry of press releases when these groups appeared to be in jeopardy. From the perspective of the monitors—whether Charter 77 or the Moscow Helsinki Watch, the NGO in the USSR—the Bernstein group in New York became an invaluable source of moral support that helped sustain them during their most trying periods. In changing strongly held anti-Helsinki perceptions in America and in impacting NGOs in Eastern Europe, leading to the revolutions in 1989–90, U.S. Helsinki Watch, which began operating only in 1979, could claim considerable credit. Its executive director, Jeri Laber, undertook an unusually large number of personal missions to Eastern Europe, visiting with NGO activists in Moscow, Prague, Budapest, and Warsaw, and even in Bucharest and East Berlin, where the secret police regimes were strong. Her diary shows that between September 1979 and June 1990, she made four trips to Moscow, nine to Prague, four to Budapest, six to Warsaw, and one each to Bucharest and East Berlin.47 On the one hand, she gave the activists a sense that important NGO groups in the West were deeply concerned about their condition and welfare. On the other hand, Laber’s talents as a writer enabled her to communicate through articles and Op-Ed essays to the American public the character and extent of repression that these activists faced. A sampling of these essays in major newspapers and in the New York Review of Books illustrates how she sensitized the West about the problems of freedom that confronted the Eastern European NGOs. In a July 1980 article in the New York Times entitled, “Moscow vs. Rights,” Laber described a meeting she had had the previous autumn in Andrei Sakharov’s apartment with the twelve members of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group who, while still “plucky,” were “dispirited” by the “severe harassment” to which they were being subjected. In the article, she chastised a high State Department official who had urged that the U.S. diplomatic stance at the forthcoming Madrid meeting in November 1980 should be one of cooperation rather than confrontation. “To what end?” she asked. Instead, she recommended that the United States “demand that the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia

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release their imprisoned Helsinki monitors as well as countless others being punished for their religious or political beliefs.”48 The following year, writing in the Washington Post, Laber described an earlier private meeting in a restaurant at the Moscow Book Fair where Soviet dissident writers had gathered to advise her of the continuing ruthless suppression of free expression.49 Soon afterward, Laber chronicled, with acute perceptivity and photos, visits with key NGOs in Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest. The human rights climate in Warsaw at the time was as “unbelievably bleak” as the weather, for it was characterized by beatings of Solidarity activists, arrests, and punitive harassments. In Prague, she learned how the regime was “apparently trying to wipe out its disaffected intelligentsia once and for all.” In Budapest, where a “goulash communism” prevailed, arbitrariness was far less apparent and the activists could express dissent provided it did not target the Communist Party or the Soviet Union. What especially struck Laber’s keen political eye in 1981 was that “the Soviet Union’s East European empire [was] crumbling” even if, as she wrote, “the disintegration will not happen overnight.”50 Of particular importance was the decision in 1982 by U.S. Helsinki Watch to create, with the assistance of the Ford Foundation, similar Helsinki NGOs in a number of European countries, in both the West and the East. Jeri Laber spent most of the year traveling in Europe for that purpose, which was a “turning point” in the history of the Helsinki NGO movement, she later said.51 What would emerge by late 1987 was the International Helsinki Federation (IHF), headquartered in Vienna and comprising groups in the Netherlands, the Nordic countries, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, and the United States. By 1988, the IHF was functioning as an effective coordinating instrument for raising consciousness about human rights. Its former director, Lotte Leicht, a Danish lawyer, observed that the international NGO’s purpose was to make sure “that there [would] never be an excuse that we didn’t know.”52 The central lesson of the Holocaust clearly had been driven home. Sharing information on human rights violations, together with lobbying, was the organization’s purpose. For documentation and studies, the IHF would rely on U.S. Helsinki Watch. At the beginning of the Helsinki process, governments were perceived as the sole actors in what was essentially a forum of interstate diplomacy. If the Helsinki Final Act made several references to NGOs, particularly to their role in science and technology, environmental protection, human contacts, culture, and education, they still were viewed as but tangential and incidental to the process. But, by the end of 1991, the Foreign Minister of Norway, Thorwald Stoltenberg, would say that the CSCE was a process involving the interaction of governments with NGOs. The latter, he stressed, “are an important repository of insights, expertise and experience.”53 If building democratic institutions, Stoltenberg went on, was to be “a priority task of the CSCE,” then this purpose could be greatly facilitated by constructive use of NGO resources.

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To a great extent, the lobbying work, whether through personal contacts or indirectly though articles in major media organs, was achieved by Laber, although she was significantly assisted by the research talents of Catherine Fitzpatrick, the Helsinki Watch research director, who was fluent in Russian. In the spring of 1981, once Americas Watch was created and funded by the Ford Foundation, Aryeh Neier became her boss. He had assumed an official position with both Watch Committees as vice-chairman. While regretting the loss of her “independent” status, she nonetheless found her working relationship with Neier a satisfactory one as he “spent most of his time planning for Americas Watch—meeting key people in the field [and] raising money.”54 With the revolutionary developments in Eastern Europe during 1989, especially in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee could derive solid gratification and would be accorded special recognition by the new president of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel. Laber had spent much time in that republic, meeting with its most famous dissenter, and even on one occasion was actually arrested herself. When President Havel came on an official visit to the United States, he made it a priority to visit, on February 22, 1990, the office of U.S. Helsinki Watch in mid-Manhattan. Invited guests of the American NGO who also came were representatives of the Polish Solidarity movement along with Yuri Orlov, the founder of Moscow’s Helsinki Watch. As reported by the New York Times the next day, the moment of Havel’s arrival was “one of high emotion” in which he was “particularly moved.” His words in the charged atmosphere would not easily be forgotten by Laber and the other guests. He said, “I feel I’m here as a friend among friends. I know what you did for us and perhaps, without you our revolution would not be.” The remembrance of things past was stirringly powerful. Several months earlier Laber had received from Havel and his vicepresident, Karl Schwarzenberg, a fax recalling how only a year earlier she had been arrested for meeting with Charter 77 leaders. The fax went on to say, “we would like to thank you for everything you did for us.”55 Realists among statesmen and scholars were rarely given to praise of NGOs Realpolitik was not oriented in that direction. But an arch-exponent of this perspective would have a change of heart. Henry A. Kissinger, in his earlier volumes about his White House years in the late sixties and seventies as well as in his various essays during that time frame, made not a single reference to human rights or to those provisions of the Helsinki Final Act in which human rights was a centerpiece. And although he uttered not a word about NGOs, as if they were a totally alien element in international discourse, Kissinger’s later study, Diplomacy, revealed a remarkable change of heart.56 For the first time, his work offered an unexpected and uncharacteristic afterthought. Kissinger now acknowledged that Basket 3 (which he earlier had never even noticed in his writing) turned out to be “most significant” and “was destined to play a major role in the disintegration of the Soviet satellite orbit.” He went on to add the startlingly unbecoming comment that Basket 3 “became a testimonial to all human rights activists in NATO countries.” It

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was these human rights activists, he suddenly recognized, “who deserve tribute,” for it was “the pressures which they exerted” that hastened the end of totalitarian rule. Especially accorded praise were the “heroic reformers in Eastern Europe”—the NGOs of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary—who used Basket 3 as “a rallying point” in their struggle against “Soviet domination.” He made no specific reference to U.S. Helsinki Watch, but Vaclav Havel, it could be said, did it for him. What was accomplished by U.S. Helsinki Watch in Poland and Czechoslovakia could not, of course, be achieved in the Soviet Union itself. The very nature of its totalitarian structure, hardened by a half-century of Stalinist and post-Stalinist rule, could and did prevent the emergence of broadly based, popular NGOs. Yet, the Moscow Helsinki Watch of Yuri Orlov, aided by Andrei Sakharov, did lay a modest foundation. And U.S. Helsinki Watch served as its vigorous adviser and supporter lobbying with U.S. policy-makers at CSCE meetings, resulting in a serious weakening in the public arena of Soviet power. Significantly, at the crucial review meetings of CSCE, Yuri Orlov, who was appointed to the honorary position of vice-chairman of U.S. Helsinki Watch, was honored at meetings of the U.S. delegation. Once the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, largely a consequence of economic contradictions and corruption, members of the Moscow Helsinki group and similar groups in various formerSoviet republics provided an ongoing encouragement of reform. Sakharov became an active member of the Russian Parliament and vigorously espoused human rights and democratic causes. Orlov’s closest colleague in the Moscow group, Ludmilla Alexeyeva, spent several years with U.S. Helsinki Watch, advising its professionals on strategy. When the Soviet Union itself collapsed, she returned to Russia and became a leading activist for human rights causes. Strikingly, she continued to guide the Moscow Helsinki Watch. It was by no means the end of the U.S. Helsinki Watch story. By the early nineties, it would enlarge itself to become Human Rights Watch, having created and added branches in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East (Americas Watch had already been established in 1981). When the enormously enlarged Human Rights Watch took on a global human rights reach in 1990, sharp contradictions ineluctably emerged. Administrative deficiencies shot to the surface and staff charges severely challenged a weakened central operation. The staff disarray focused upon the executive director, Aryeh Neier. Bitter recriminations raised uncertainties about the future of the organization. Once again, the Ford Foundation provided the valuable hand, recommending the Management Assistance Group of Washington, DC, headed by Susan Gross and Michael Clark. It offered detailed advice on how to restore administrative efficiency through an extensive series of reforms, after the targeted Neier resigned in 1992. The result of the management survey of 1993 and its detailed recommendations left in place the most powerful human rights NGO in the international community. Recognition of the foundation’s role

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came in a letter by the new executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, to a high foundation official, Shepard Forman. Dated June 16, 1995, it expressed “appreciation for the pivotal role played by the Ford Foundation in bringing about the MAG [management] process that had led to these . . . reforms.”57

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Chapter

6

Th e “Fo u n d at i o n f o r E u r o pe a n I n t e l l e c t ua l C o o pe r at i o n”

I

n the same year that U.S. Helsinki Watch was created, another NGO funded by the Ford Foundation was being formally established in Paris, France, and, similar to Helsinki Watch, was to focus upon the non-Soviet communist countries in Eastern Europe. Significant differences characterized the two operations. While the first was designed to maximize public attention upon how the human rights provisions incorporated in the recently adopted Helsinki Final Act were being violated by the communist regimes, the Paris-based operation totally avoided all public attention to what it was doing and, indeed, what was occurring in the area. In fact, the NGO, unlike virtually any NGO in the Western world, was designed to operate in as quiet and unpublic a manner as possible. The organization was the Fondation Pour Une Entr’aide Intellectuelle Europenne. Its title in English would be the Foundation for European Intellectual Cooperation, and its acronym, which will be used throughout this chapter, would be FEIE. Its function was to sustain and inspire democratic and human rights thought among Eastern European intellectuals in the face of a deadening repression by forwarding them books, journals, and poetry, and arranging for grants to enable them to travel and visit Western Europe. The task, although shrouded in silence, was extraordinary and would play a significant role in the revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe outside of the Soviet Union. Once the revolutions had taken place in 1989 and extended to the Soviet Union in 1991, the leading figures in FEIE had concluded, according to Margo Picken of the Ford Foundation, that “a public record of the organization’s work should be assembled and a scholarly account of its activities prepared.”1 In the judgment of the Ford Foundation staff, “a history of FEIE could be a significant contribution to the political and intellectual history of Eastern Europe following World War II.”2 Francis Sutton would later recall that the foundation official in charge of human rights programming, Shepard Forman, was the initial and principal advocate of the project.3

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Picken formally submitted the staff recommendation for a foundation grant to hire a specialist to write the history of FEIE. A request for fifty thousand dollars was submitted to President Susan Berresford through Forman and other top staffers on February 1, 1991. Eighteen months would be allotted for the proposed author to complete the study. The funds were to be channeled through the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Austria, which was to supervise the preparation of the study.4 Hired to prepare the work was a Polish social scientist, Marek Beylin, who, since 1978, had been the co-editor of a leading Polish intellectual journal, Krytyka. According to Sutton, he had been recommended by the top official of FEIE, Annette Laborey,5 and was enthusiastically endorsed by a leading intellectual figure of the Solidarity movement, Adam Michnik, who, in 1991, was editor-inchief of the Warsaw Gazeta.6 Beylin completed the manuscript of 132 pages in 1994, but, unfortunately, it was not deemed adequate for publication, and the project was, in Sutton’s formulation, “aborted.”7 He then added that Laborey had “got the wrong fellow to do the history.” Sutton, who served on a five-member Advisory Board to guide the study (along with several respected French historians), recommended against publication in a letter to Picken on December 20, 1994.8 In his letter, Sutton commented, “[Beylin] is not a historian . . . and is altogether too casual about dates and references.” More appropriately, he found the manuscript’s analysis of the significance of FEIE to be excessively “vague and impressionistic.” Nonetheless, Sutton found much of value in the Beylin manuscript. He thought highly of Beylin’s characterization of “the special quality” of FEIE’s “operation under Annette’s management.” And he strongly welcomed Beylin’s “perceptions of East European attitudes towards détente and the choices of policy” that FEIE “struggled” to make in the 1970s and 1980s. While stressing at the beginning of his letter that Beylin’s work was not “devoid of merit,” Sutton concluded that what was needed was someone “to deal with the broader history in a large-spirited way.”9 The following closing comment by Margo Picken in her formal summary and assessment of the project ran along quite similar lines: In retrospect, the task Marek Beylin was asked to carry out was probably too vast, requiring a deeper and broader knowledge and understanding of post World War II of Europe than he could be expected to have.

Precisely because of the considerable value of the Beylin manuscript as the only history available of the remarkable FEIE operation, the author has chosen to tap its revelations and analyses. Indeed, this course was strongly recommended by Sutton in his letter to the author. Publication of the material that was found in the Ford Foundation Archives provides a rare insight into an especially rare NGO. FEIE, although it was an almost totally unknown organization publicly, had a prehistory, under a different name, going back to 1956.10 The Congress

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for Cultural Freedom, which was provided at the time with a limited amount of Ford Foundation funding for specific anticommunist intellectual publications, established the Committee of Writers and Publishers for European Cooperation. As early as June 1950, at the historic founding of the Congress, a resolution was adopted that pledged moral support “to writers and artists” behind the Iron Curtain “who[asserted] their right to freedom.”11 Some fifteen thousand persons had gathered in a public park in the British section of Berlin for a final day of rallying at a time when the cold war was heating up with great intensity. Approximately one hundred top-level intellectuals and authors had drafted an anticommunist “Freedom Manifesto.” The famed author of Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler, addressing the crowd, cried, “Freedom has seized the initiative.” Two years after the resolution was adopted, the Congress for Cultural Freedom moved to implement the resolution. The question arose as to who would develop the means for implementation of the resolution and formulate the strategy for giving effect to it. That person was Konstantin A. Jelenski, who was of Polish nobility origins and whose close contacts as well as knowledge about the intelligentsia of Poland were believed to be unequalled. Jelenski correctly assumed that what the intellectuals of Poland and other countries in Eastern Europe were seeking was access to important books and articles published in the West. Censorship in the East was a difficult obstacle to overcome, and it was Jelenski’s task to frustrate as much as possible the censors. He developed what would eventually become an elaborate program for sending in publications containing the most creative thinking on varying subjects in the West. The object of the planned mailing procedures was to overcome or bypass censorship and prevent the possible persecution of the addressee. In developing his approach, Jelenski could take advantage of the objective situation, which had been significantly eased by the death of Josef Stalin on March 5, 1953, and the resulting era of “the Thaw” that followed. Jelenski could now improvise the operation of a Committee of Writers and Publishers. The authority on the cultural congress, Peter Coleman, elaborated upon the methods used by Jelenski.12 One proposed method was to send the books as donations to libraries, bookshops, publishers, and newspapers. Articles and poetry were to be sent in the form of private letters and posted from different places to a very large number of addressees regardless of their differing professed views. Should it be known that a recipient was in need of medication, the plan called for the sending of parcels including medicine. Care was especially taken by Jelenski to avoid the sending of individual books to those who did not request them. Even if “the Thaw” characterized the atmosphere as a whole, the beneficiary was not to be subject to a possible compromising situation. The program for Central and Eastern Europe also had a certain philanthropic cast. In the event that an individual member of the intelligentsia was plagued by financial problems, assistance would be provided by the Congress, but it would be done so deliberately without informing the beneficiary of the source of the assistance.

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The Jelenski program would also help writers who had been banned by state publications to find publishers in the West, particularly through Kultura, a Polish-language publication in Paris. As an alternative for poets, Jelenski arranged for their work to be published in an anthology of Polish poetry that he edited. Artists could be assisted by having their paintings, which were often abstract in content, shown at the Galerie Lambert in the French capital. Special attention, not surprisingly, was focused by Jelenski upon the Polish intelligentsia, whether they were dissenters or apolitical. Stipends were given to writers, scholars, and artists. Should an intellectual seek to attend an institution or festival in the West, the Congress would arrange for appropriate invitations to be sent and provide for anonymous donors to cover the costs. The editor of the Congress publication, Survey, Leopold Labedz, pointed out how this aspect of the program was a potent factor “in extending the knowledge (of the Polish intellectual elite) and widening their horizons.”13 If Poland was the primary target of the Jelenski initiative, Hungarian intellectuals did not lag far behind. Jelenski also provided assistance to East German refugees who had fled to Berlin. They were cared for in an East German Refugee Centre located in Berlin. No inroads were yet made elsewhere in Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe—Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. In each of these countries, the influence of the police was everywhere. Repression remained a palpable reality. As for the intelligentsia of the Soviet Union, efforts to establish a continuing direct contact failed, although the work of dissident Soviet writers would be published. Given the rigidity and omnipresence of Soviet state power, it was hardly surprising that direct contacts were almost totally excluded. That the Ford Foundation would be especially interested in supporting the Jelenski operation was self-evident. It was, after all, geared to the intelligentsia, a stratum of society upon which the foundation had, from the beginning, placed primary emphasis. And Jelenski’s project was oriented to the spread of ideas and information, cardinal aims of the foundation. While the foundation did not become an active source of funds for the Congress for Cultural Freedom until 1953—several years after the Congress was created, and then largely in order to support certain intellectual publications of the Congress, like Der Monat and Encounter—the unpublicized program for assisting Eastern European intellectuals appeared especially attractive, although the program had begun before the foundation became initially involved. Once, however, the Congress had been publicly exposed as a large-scale recipient of CIA financing, and decisions were taken for it to go out of business and be replaced in 1966 by the International Association for Cultural Freedom (IACF), the Ford Foundation came to be directly involved in its financing. The issue arose of how to deal with the Jelenski operation, which had functioned under the Congress’s direction as Writers and Publishers for European Cooperation. Jelenski, at this point, arranged to have his own operation formally incorporated in 1966 in Switzerland as a successor to the writers and publishers’ group. Nonetheless, for the time

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being, the Jelenski operation acquired the formal status of an autonomous affiliate of IACF. The future of IACF, however, was quite uncertain, given the damage that had been wrought by revelations about CIA financing of its predecessor, as well as the economic difficulties that arose for the foundation during the seventies. How was the operation to be administered? What was its relationship to be under the overall IACF? The gifted David Heaps, who at the time was administering the foundation’s office in Paris, had undertaken a review of IACF’s policies and programs in several areas and found them inadequate, especially in its Eastern European program.14 Of critical concern to both Jelenski and the foundation leadership was the attitude of younger intellectuals in Eastern Europe who, like the younger generation of American intellectuals (as well as Western European intellectuals), were shocked by the press disclosures about the CIA intervention in IACF’s predecessor, the Congress for Cultural Freedom. This hostility was profoundly intensified by America’s continued involvement in Vietnam, which found little sympathy among European intellectuals as well as among American intellectuals. How this impacted upon younger Eastern European intellectuals was especially noted by the principal advocate and organizer of the Eastern European program from the very beginning, Konstantin Jelenski. He observed, with a stern realism, “nearly all our most active associates and friends are over 50 years old.”15 A new mood, he indicated, had taken hold among the younger intellectuals that looked upon the cold war with a certain disdain and contempt. No longer did anti-totalitarianism serve as a driving moral force, although repression of the movement of ideas and people, as articulated by the Helsinki Final Act, certainly did. At a local meeting of IACF leadership in October 1973, difficulties were expressed about the effort “to bring younger people into the organization.”16 One of the leaders said that IACF was “in danger of becoming a shrinking band.” In this context, a recommendation made to Francis Sutton by David Astor, the prominent British publisher, was intriguing. While analyzing the former role of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the foundation executive recalled that Astor proposed that the foundation, itself, undertake directly the handling of Eastern Europe activities. Such a direct go-it-alone policy was negatively regarded by Sutton. He wrote, “I find the argument persuasive that in places like Eastern Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, or other places in the world, there are functions that we ought to support but cannot comfortably do so directly.” He then recalled a July 1966 memorandum from Champion Ward, a high foundation official, that articulated, “a certain tension between activities supported indirectly through an organization like the Congress and our own direct operations may exist in some parts of the world.” In his opinion, while such tensions “ought to be tolerated,” they ought not necessarily be acted upon. In general, the foundation would opt for use of one or another nongovernmental organization, rather than for its open and direct involvement. An additional point was made by Sutton. He

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said that officials of the Congress for Cultural Freedom had told him that most of the intellectuals from Eastern Europe were already in contact with Congress officials and would “unlikely be reached” by other organizations through which they were not perceived as strongly “committed” to the intellectual interest of Eastern Europe as the Congress had been. Increasingly, during the early seventies, it became evident to Ford Foundation officials, especially to the head of its Paris office, David Heaps (who would later play an extraordinarily prominent role in Latin American affairs), that the IACF, the Congress’s successor, was losing its earlier impact in Europe. In his report to foundation headquarters in New York on August 9, 1974, he wrote, “[the IACF] is no longer . . . one of the institutions active in the field.”17 Apparently, someone at foundation headquarters had already taken note of the IACF weakness, and Heaps sought to reinforce the same view. He went on to add, “it has unfortunately done little of an overt nature to expose or even raise governmental abuses of human rights.” Of notable interest was Heaps’ reference to “human rights,” a phrase earlier not used in foundation reports. After the Chilean experience of 1973, the phrase suddenly shot to the fore everywhere, including in Europe. FEIE, of course, had something to contribute to advancing human rights, although, quite appropriately, given the political circumstances of the times, it did so as silently and nonpublicly as possible. Not surprisingly, the tougher anticommunists in the IACF, like Alan Bullock and Shepard Stone, viewed FEIE as a “bastion” of “liberals.”18 That the conflict, in its perception of differences, would lead to a rupture was inevitable. With the deepening distrust in rightist IACF circles of Charles de Gaulle and his hostile policy toward the United States and Britain, it was not surprising that Gaullist France was increasingly seen “as a weak point on the anti-communist map.”19 This negative view of France could not fail to spill over onto Jelenski as well as the head of IACF, Pierre Emmanuel, who were viewed as part of the “leftist Paris elites,” to which, in fact, they belonged. The Ford Foundation’s representative in Paris, Heaps, could hardly escape the internal IACF controversy and its relationship to FEIE. Heaps, in a report to his headquarters on September 16, 1975, took note of a bitter hostility on the part of the old IACF toward FEIE. It had become evident to him that the older generation of liberals in the organization “no longer [were] seriously interested in the IACF . . . and even [were] actively hostile to it for reasons of ideology and past history.”20 And this same suspicion extended to younger Western European scholars and intellectuals. Heaps had heard reports that he quoted in his memo to headquarters about the “gradual evaporation of the soul of the [IACF] organization.” Moreover, in his view, the organization “no longer [seemed] terribly relevant to the preoccupations and concerns of a new generation of scholars and intellectuals.” At the same time, the older generation, he found, “[was] now tired and aging.” Heaps concluded that he “did not see how it could be reconstituted in its old image.” The focus of attention, inevitably, was upon FEIE and its separation from IACF. Jelenski was in the forefront of those who sought to facilitate the

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separation and, if possible, upgrade the independence of FEIE. As early as 1970, he had projected the kind of work that the foundation would ultimately assume as follows: It entails all those intellectuals in the West who turn to us whenever they want to send a book to the East or help a colleague in one of these countries to get a stipend in the West. It entails—first and foremost—all those writers, artists, intellectuals in the East who think of us as personal friends who are ready—and to some extent equipped—to help them to read, to travel, to publish abroad.21

Disputes within the Ford Foundation were intense as to the question of IACF’s survival and the separate survival of FEIE. Intimately related to the question of survival was the placement of the European office of IACF. Should it be kept in Paris, or, as some wished for a variety of reasons, should it move to either Germany or Britain? Personal animosities aggravated the tension between IACF and FEIE. At stake was FEIE’s credibility among intellectual circles in both the West and East and, equally important, the acceptability of its quiet, nonpolitical strategy by communist authorities. Sharp debates took place over the issue between Emmanuel, who had become president of IACF, and Jelenski. Emmanuel had come to the conclusion that FEIE should be dumped and IACF preserved. Even as he developed this idea in a letter dated December 3, 1974, he still pushed to preserve FEIE’s special cultural program in Eastern Europe. Jelenski responded on the same day with his own memorandum. As he had been the one who developed the idea for creating FEIE in the first place, and had become its patron in Eastern Europe, it was quite appropriate that he undertake its defense.22 He recalled how he had proposed, in 1956, the creation of the Writers and Publishers Committee of the Congress and had served as its secretary until 1965. Already, in 1955, he had created a list of the most important social science and literary works published in the West between 1939 and 1955, and had reached decisions on how that list was to be forwarded to individuals and institutions like libraries and universities. Extremely sensitive to avoiding any problem with the authorities, he deliberately sent only those books and periodicals that could be ordered openly and without any restrictions. The carefully constructed program functioned effectively without stirring up a hornet’s nest of opposition. Jelenski concluded that it would be “a pity to dissolve” FEIE. What distinguished it was a priceless relationship with intellectuals in the East, what he called “a capital of trust.” Several days later, on December 9, 1974, Jelenski wrote, “by preserving the Foundation, we preserve the future, beyond the Association [IACF].” He had come to the very heart of keeping alive the spirit of free intellectual inquiry in Eastern Europe, which had at one time been at the center of IACF but which it could no longer maintain. And it also stood at the core of the Ford Foundation’s purpose. Jelenski’s conclusion was selfevident; it was “to preserve FEIE, even if the Association [IACF] were to disappear.”23

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Ford Foundation executives were impaled on the horns of a dilemma. The IACF was, after all, its creation, once the Congress had been compromised. Beylin reported in his historical survey that Sutton told him that “he [Sutton] should have brought about an earlier liquidation of the IACF.”24 What brought matters to a head was an allegation that “the waste of money” characterized IACF operations.25 A report by Heaps from Paris on August 22, 1974, registered his shock that 75 percent of the IACF budget was designated for administrative purposes.26 So heavy were its expenses that, according to Beylin, the “new leadership” in the Ford Foundation—McGeorge Bundy—“wanted to withdraw at that time from its activities in Europe.”27 But this aim provoked intense opposition. A factor that inhibited plans to eliminate IACF related to the question of what would replace it. While FEIE was given the “highest ratings” by foundation executives since the seventies, the same supporters accepted the criticism that its leadership was absorbed by “Francocentricity.”28 This term was meant to convey a pro-Paris bias that included inviting intellectuals from Eastern Europe to visit primarily or even exclusively Paris and also in awarding grants to only those Eastern European intellectuals who spoke French. What removed the stain of presumed French cultural dominance in FEIE and thereby guaranteed its independent status was the hiring of a German, Annette Aschoff—whose name was later changed to Annette Laborey—to head the Paris office of FEIE. What, however, brought about a final end to the earlier uncertainty and an arrangement for IACF to cease functioning altogether and be replaced by FEIE was a report by a new expert from foundation headquarters in New York, David Smock. His report on September 15, 1975, sealed the fate of IACF. Smock strongly chastised an operation in which only 29 percent of the budget dealing with Eastern Europe was spent on travel grants, books, and conferences, while 71 percent went to administrative costs. Especially devastating was Smock’s finding that “the amount of staff time required to process each grant far [exceeded] the actual cost of the award.”29 In 1977, the IACF, like its predecessor, would cease to exist. Not only had it stopped functioning as a magnetic force attracting the younger generation anywhere, but the Ford Foundation had also decided that it could no longer act as an indispensable source of IACF funding. The immediate challenging concern could not but focus upon the isolation and loneliness of the cultural intelligentsia in Eastern Europe. How could their hopes be sustained, their spirit nourished, their aspirations encouraged? FEIE, with the financial and political assistance of the Ford Foundation, assumed in 1978 an independent existence. For a three-year period beginning in January 1978, it received, from the Ford Foundation, $225,000. During the subsequent two-year period, a second grant of $325,000 was provided. A final grant of $1,022,000 covered the seven years between January 1984 and 1991. FEIE went out of business in September 1991, after receiving from the foundation a closing gift to enable it to meet its remaining commitments.30

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Clearly, the Ford Foundation made FEIE possible through palpable financial assistance. But the foundation’s assistance went far beyond the financial aspect; throughout the seventies, FEIE’s parent body, IACF—or rather, many of IACF’s leaders—sought to put an end to its recently autonomous status. According to its historian, Marek Beylin, FEIE “would never have existed” had it not been for the “laborious” support of people from the Ford Foundation, especially Francis Sutton, vice-president of the foundation. His “support,” along with the support of unnamed others in the foundation, wrote Beylin, “was decisive for the existence” of FEIE both in the seventies, when “a strong lobby within the International Association for Cultural Freedom (IACF)” was aiming to liquidate it, and later, when certain crucial financial decisions were required of the Ford Foundation to replace it with financial assistance.31 What is essential to grasp is that FEIE, very much unlike the Congress or the IACF, deliberately avoided public attention. While it concentrated its efforts on dealing with the Soviet-dominated Eastern European countries, the nature of its work would have been considered provocative and possibly treacherous were its work publicly known. Contacts with Eastern European intellectuals, out of necessity, had to be shrouded from public attention, howsoever innocent and apolitical were the books they received or the private meetings they had with Western European intellectuals. Discretion had to characterize these contacts. Avoidance of what Beylin called “activities of a purely prestigious nature” was critical. Judgment of what books, periodicals, and materials were to be forwarded to and through contacts had to be determined totally by informal circles. It was these circles that were cognizant of what would work. Relatively little was written down, for reasons of secrecy. And, for the same reasons, the central leadership of the operation was kept to a minimal number. The history of FEIE, wrote Beylin, “is primarily a history of the actions of a small group of people immersed in two contrasting worlds situated on both sides of the iron curtain” (USSR intellectuals were not involved in this closed and secretive process.) If FEIE and its activities were unknown generally in the West, that was hardly an accident. Indeed, in Paris, where its headquarters was located, a total of two or three people at the most guided the organization, but they relied, inevitably through personal contacts, upon the efforts of unnamed persons in several Eastern European countries. Two persons stand out in this closed Paris circle—Annette Laborey, who became the very personification of FEIE, and Konstantin Jelenski, who had been an architect of the Eastern European project of the Congress for Cultural Freedom. A third prominent figure was Pierre Emmanuel, who would be replaced as general secretary of the FEIE by Laborey in 1985. She would hold the title until the group’s dissolution in 1991. FEIE was remarkably effective in its primary role of helping nearly three thousand Eastern European intellectuals receive grants for study trips to mainly Paris in Western Europe. Quite a few went on similar study visits to Great

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Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany. Most recipients of these opportunities were Polish and Hungarian intellectuals who, in breathing this air of democratic society, could invigorate a certain modest spirit of intellectual independence and autonomy upon returning home. They helped lay the seeds for a free society once the totalitarian barriers to democracy were overthrown in Eastern Europe in 1989. A basic criterion was invoked in the grants to Eastern European intellectuals. Only those who planned to return to their native land were given grants for study trips. Eschewed were any grants to those who sought to emigrate or to obtain political asylum. Given the political conditions prevailing in Eastern Europe during the seventies and eighties, were FEIE to have encouraged emigration, it would have profoundly jeopardized its entire program for cultural sustenance of the intellectuals in Eastern Europe. Besides grants for study trips, FEIE continued and greatly enlarged the shipment of intellectually stimulating books and periodicals to Eastern Europe. With respect to books alone, some fifteen thousand were sent over the years. The culturally humanistic ideas found in these books were designed not only for Eastern Europe, but for Spain and Portugal at Europe’s southwestern tip. The latter countries, through much of the seventies, remained under the rule of Fascist dictators—Francisco Franco in Spain and Antonio Salazar in Portugal. For the intellectual community, communism was not the only enemy; totalitarianism or authoritarianism, in any garb, was the enemy of cultural freedom and the autonomy of the person.32 That these Fascist states were a matter of serious concern to FEIE was more than helpful to its image. Its target was repression in general and, thus, its activism against repression in the cultural-political spheres proved to be extremely valuable to its reputation among closed circles of intellectuals, even if the organization was relatively unknown to the public in Paris and elsewhere in Europe. In 1981, it was awarded an unusual distinction: the Bruno Kreisky Prize, named after the prominent Austrian socialist premier. The award was extended to FEIE “to honor its great efforts in defense of human rights.” It may have been the first time that a grantee of the Ford Foundation was awarded such a high honor for its work on behalf of human rights. The prize, accompanied by a valuable monetary contribution, was welcomed for a related reason. The Ford Foundation, as was quite well-known to its institutional grantees, expected and, indeed, encouraged its grantees to seek out additional funds from other philanthropic sources. But Europe was not the United States, and the former’s philanthropies in the private arena were, in no way, similar to American philanthropies. Grants from private European philanthropies proved to be unusually limited for FEIE, even when the Ford Foundation offered to pay one dollar for each dollar collected by it in Europe.33 “The result,” noted the historian of FEIE, “was poor except [for] individual donations from France and several German and Swiss grants.” Thus, the Bruno Kreisky Prize helped FEIE “obtain a substantial contribution from the Ford Foundation.” Another invaluable funding source that helped it survive was the prominent Erasmus Prize, awarded for great

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literary achievement. The significant monetary award for this prize given to Leszek Kolakowski, Raymond Aron, and Gabriel Marcel enabled each of them to contribute one-half of the monetary total that they had received to FEIE. Thus, the “friends” of FEIE helped it to survive.34 FEIE’s ability to survive in the face of the real and prosaic daily burdens it was plagued with was a testimonial to its leadership skills, its integrity, and the support of the Ford Foundation. In those areas in which FEIE was active—Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Romania—the intellectual and dissident elite was “strongly influenced by the leftist tradition and its symbolism,” and therefore, at the time, was hostile to any association with American ideology. The disclosure of the CIA’s connections to the Congress for Cultural Freedom exerted an enormously profound negative impact. Sutton was aware of the problem and had sought to cope with it. As early as September 21, 1967, shortly after the scandal broke, he noted in an internal report the direction toward which the Eastern European project would move with the Ford Foundation’s support: “I find the argument persuasive that in places like Eastern Europe . . . there are functions we ought to support but cannot comfortably do so already.”35 He also included the Iberian Peninsula—Spain and Portugal—in this category. What was being projected as early as the fall of 1967 was the areas in which FEIE would move. Not only was the local Eastern European intelligentsia deeply repelled by the scandal, but so also were institutions in Paris that were a product of an earlier (and continuing) emigration—such as the Paris based, Polish Kultura. To meet these concerns, the principal heads of the newly established FEIE at its formal beginning in 1978, Konstantin Jelenski and Pierre Emmanuel, undertook several initiatives. They eliminated from all official FEIE documents all references to the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Then, they sought to leave the impression, indirectly, that FEIE had been created separately from the Congress by a group of intellectuals, and had acted independently of it. In this context, Jelenski wrote a pamphlet in 1978 presenting a history, or rather, his version of the history, of FEIE that suggested that it was truly independent, even during its autonomous relationship with IACF. Even its formal relationship with the Congress for Cultural Freedom was diminished. While Jelenski and Emmanuel were attempting to sharply distinguish the relationship of FEIE from the Congress, another development in Eastern Europe at the time, especially in Poland, reinforced their strategy of separation. In the late sixties and early seventies, some of the communist intelligentsia, mainly in Poland, as a result of the easing of internal political controls, were cautiously developing a critical approach about political rights. FEIE saw itself as establishing some kind of friendly relationship with such circles of communist intellectuals. Once it began functioning independently from 1978 onward, FEIE, especially under Jelenski’s leadership, began orienting itself to the younger intellectuals and scholars of Eastern Europe. At the time, through the Helsinki Final Act, formal contacts were being arranged between intellectual and

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cultural institutions. But the foundation eschewed such arrangements lest it diminish and compromise the purposes of FEIE of striving for independence and personal integrity. Some of the younger intellectuals in the West saw the détente process inherent in the Helsinki Final Act as contrary to the longterm aspirations of intellectuals for freedom, a view that coincided with the opinion of the younger intellectuals in the East. In essence, both perceived the Act as one potentially freezing communist domination of Eastern Europe. At the same time, they were aware of Helsinki’s human rights principle offering opportunities for undermining totalitarian rule. The problem was that the younger generations of intellectuals in the East were “not only unknown in the West but unnoticed outside their own circles.”36 To reach them and establish some kind of reciprocal relationship constituted a new and special challenge to FEIE. It was Annette Laborey who pursued this challenge that involved the tactic of “delegating authority” and “decentralization.” In other words, local circles of the younger intelligentsia would have to be cultivated at various levels. What was created in Eastern European countries were local circles grouped around FEIE whose task it was to search for and refer the names of candidates to the Paris office for grants. At the same time, Laborey had to follow through at reducing, at least to some extent, the Paris emphasis of the travel program, and to establish links to the Federal Republic of Germany and to Britain. That task was facilitated by the overthrow of the Fascist dictatorships in Spain and Portugal. With FEIE no longer operating since 1975 in that part of Europe, it became easier to legitimize travel connections to Britain and West Germany. In 1978, FEIE, even as it broke new ground, made it evident that the firm operating rules of the past were still guiding it. First and foremost, it remained an institution totally independent of governments, political parties, and formal international institutions, like the Helsinki process. Secondly, because the political situation in Eastern Europe had changed little since the Helsinki Final Act document came into existence, FEIE had to continue to operate with considerable discretion. It had to avoid getting involved in political actions or protests. Discretion, of course, complicated any effort to make contacts. Contacts became a hit-or-miss project and depended heavily on personal trust. That was the direction in which FEIE moved, even when it meant a diminution in the image that Western institutions held of its significance, even when they heard of it. Finally, FEIE adhered firmly to its very public nonsupport of political emigration. Every declaration to which it gave expression emphasized that it had nothing to do with emigration at all. Such a posture permitted it to operate in the communist-dominated Eastern Europe that viewed with horror the thought that one would want to leave paradise. Yet, Jelenski and Laborey, according to the historian Beylin, would, at times, cautiously permit a slight modification of the policy—but, obviously, only in the most discrete manner possible.37 While the Ford Foundation “favored, supported and helped” FEIE, it continued to face the problem that went to the heart of its characteristic of

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grant-giving. It expected and encouraged grantees to raise separate and additional sources of funds. But European philanthropic culture was in no way similar to that of America, and, besides, the very character of discretion that distinguished FEIE could not easily impress potential European donors. The Ford Foundation’s insistence on self-financing, frequently with the option of matching the dollars granted by New York headquarters for locally-raised funds, would inevitably create serious problems. Discipline was sometimes invoked by New York, leading to a reduction in allocation that only served to reduce FEIE’s programmatic effectiveness. Not until the eighties did the Ford Foundation come to the conclusion that the work of FEIE was too valuable to be held accountable for inadequate or inept local financing. At that point and with such recognition, the relationship between funding the operation and expecting it to obtain matching sources was severed. That FEIE greatly impressed those Ford Foundation professionals who were specialists on communism and Eastern Europe can be found in a report written by Felice Gaer to Francis Sutton on September 4, 1977. Gaer held an advanced degree from Columbia University’s Russian Institute (later the Harriman Institute), and she was closely following human rights developments in Eastern Europe. Of FEIE’s programming, she wrote, “[it is] valuable and makes a positive contribution.” She then continued in most adulatory terms as follows: “It is unique in its reach to a whole range of intellectuals in all of the East European countries and we are unaware of any alternative European organization like it.”38 Several years later, in January 1981, Gaer, at a conference on dissent in Eastern Europe, praised FEIE for enabling, over the years, “independent artists and scholars from the East European countries to visit the West for a month or two and meet their professional counterparts.”39 It was a rare public disclosure of the work of FEIE. Still, Gaer, in her note to Sutton, found that the range of FEIE activities was too limited. She noted that many intellectuals in Eastern Europe were seeking “to pressure” for general reforms and to “develop certain aspects of national culture and/or history.” In her view, such aspirations ought to be encouraged and the Ford Foundation could play “a more useful role on such matters.” This would permit an expansion of the “professional parameters” within which Eastern Europe intellectuals could function. Whether the Gaer proposal was acted upon within the foundation is not known. It is not likely, however, that it would have won FEIE support. Cultural differences over human rights made for other problems. FEIE, similar to most Eastern European intellectuals, did not perceive women’s issues to be a special problem. Under totalitarianism, both men and women suffered, and hardly anyone paid attention to the severity of the women’s problems, a topic that, in the West, was a primary concern. For the Ford Foundation, which had made women’s rights a priority, it was essential, for example, to have “the right proportion of invitations [for grants] for women” as for men.40 Beylin commented that the Ford Foundation’s memorandum on this subject “sounded absurd to Eastern European intellectuals,”

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including those who had emigrated. And it was these intellectuals who had exercised a “great influence on the list of grantees.” The Ford Foundation memorandum from New York could not but generate a certain panic in FEIE circles. On the one hand, an effort was attempted to search for potential women grantees. At the same time, Laborey sought to explain to New York headquarters the lower proportion of women receiving grants. To that explanation, Beylin added that “she could not, of course, say that anybody in the East, including women, gave a damn about the problem.” Inevitably, the Ford Foundation had come to understand FEIE problems related to women’s rights and it continued to finance FEIE’s operations until its very end, allocating over one million dollars for that purpose. And key officials in New York did not appear to have had second thoughts about the usefulness and effectiveness of the Paris operation.41 The final test came in 1989 with the revolutions in Eastern Europe. Persons heretofore unknown to the public quickly came into prominence and new circles were formed. FEIE was soon recognized as “the best informed” about potential leaders, and it became known as the only institution that could convey information about the “new people” because, according to Beylin, in the majority of cases, “these people had been its grantees.”42 Insiders, such as those in the Polish Solidarity institutions, were fully aware of the work of FEIE. In that narrow world of critical institutions, FEIE enjoyed great prestige, even if it “remained unknown to the outside world.”43 In contrast, within Eastern European intellectual societies, it would have been a failing to any of its members not to have known of FEIE’s existence. Certainly, the seventies marked the beginning of a major change in the attitudes of Western European intellectuals toward communism. To a significant degree, this resulted from the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s extraordinary book, The Gulag Archipelago. Intellectual opposition to communism now had quickly emerged from obscurity to challenge the preeminence of communist and procommunist elements among the Western European intelligentsia. In a totally dissimilar way, during the same decade and extending into the eighties, intellectuals in Eastern European countries were affected by books and periodicals produced in the West that challenged the very essence of Marxist ideology as it was practiced in the USSR and its satellite states in Eastern Europe. This education of the intelligentsia in Eastern Europe was made possible by FEIE. The groups could hardly exert the dramatic and huge achievement of Solzhenitsyn, but its more discrete and modest strategy helped link the two streams in Eastern Europe that culminated in the revolutions of 1989. Nothing characterized more poignantly and pointedly the work of Annette Laborey, who ran, virtually single-handedly, the Paris office of FEIE, than a chapter in Beylin’s work entitled “Office and Home.” At the same time, it captured not only the desperate personal plight of the Eastern European intellectual adrift in the great French capital of Paris, but also, more importantly, the extremely valuable personal and social function of

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FEIE. For, while this totally unheralded and unpublicized organization performed the invaluable intellectual function of supplying Eastern European intelligentsia with books, publications, travel grants, and personal links to Western European intellectuals, it also sustained personal contacts once these intellectuals were in Paris, in connection with some kind of travel grant. What stands out in these personal relationships is the enormous energy, as well as the personal attentiveness, of Annette Laborey. As meticulously described by Beylin, on any particular morning, Laborey would have, as guests in her apartment, a German, a Hungarian, and a Romanian, all FEIE grantees. In a nearby apartment of Czech friends who had formerly been FEIE grantees, there were others staying as guests—two Czechs and one Pole. Laborey had introduced all of them to each other. At nine o’clock in the morning, she left for the FEIE office, and several hours later, at noon, a group of Polish acquaintances arrived at the office. She immediately became involved in conversations with them lasting through lunch at a restaurant until four o’clock in the afternoon, when she returned to the office while the rest of her company went to her apartment. In the evening, she returned home to find, in addition to a somewhat frenzied husband, ten Eastern European grantees, as well as her own three children and an additional four from the neighborhood. Later, the adults left for a bistro, where the conversation would be continued until they all returned to her home at two o’clock in the morning.44 Beylin relied upon the oral comments of numerous witnesses to capture this extraordinary and intimate picture of Laborey’s day, and he found these episodes to be by no means rare. Instead, he observed, “that’s how it was during the entire period” of FEIE’s existence.45 Laborey’s behavior “perfectly alleviated the frustrations of Eastern European intellectuals” whose view of the rich West and its intellectuals clashed, in fact, with reality. But her handling of their social problems also accomplished “one more purpose . . . people from Eastern Europe countries could meet each other.” Eastern European intellectuals, in the main, did not have friends in the West, and Western intellectuals did not seek to cultivate new relationships. If the Western intellectual lacked time to create “superficial” personal relationships with the Eastern European, this meant, to the latter, a “lack of interest.” Thus, the Eastern European, in the event of a grant and trip to Western Europe, was “gripped by loneliness,” made all the more “painful” as they had been “steeped in dreams” about the West.46 Laborey made their dreams come true. “She was nurse, mother, and a guy in the dive who would listen to their life story.” She took them shopping, arranged appointments with doctors, and at the same time, on quite a different level, “patched up their cracked identities,” enabling them to get a sense of what the West was really like, “something they needed to do so much.”47 Beylin was also especially revealing in observing how the intellectuals of different Eastern European countries had a “complete lack of interest in their Eastern European neighbors despite the fact that they actually shared . . .

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[the same] lot.” Only FEIE, of all the Western institutions, sought to cope with this problem of the isolation of Eastern European intellectuals from one another. Laborey accomplished the extraordinary, trailblazing task of creating “a network of international East-East contacts” (emphasis added). The newly made friendships, Beylin observed, were eventually to “turn into joint political actions.” Regrettably, he failed to offer examples of their later joint ventures. In its work in Eastern Europe, FEIE, out of necessity, had to make important distinctions between the different states based upon their respective internal political situations. Far easier was its ability to function in Poland and Hungary rather than in Czechoslovakia, Romania, or East Germany, and, therefore, its selective process in awarding grants to people in these countries proved to be more accurate and productive. As Annette Laborey had family links to Hungary, her task in that country was simpler. She had merely to discipline herself in limiting grants to old friends and to maintain a “professional honesty” by inviting “new people” into the grant-receiving circle. Beylin found her to be largely guided by integrity. The selection process in Poland was more complex. There, the selection process was based upon two separate systems. First, there existed an older and prevailing central list that was supervised by FEIE’s authority on Poland, Jelenski. This list consisted of the names of several dozen people who had been frequent recipients of FEIE’s previous grants. On a separate level, Laborey’s contacts brought in other lists composed of the names of intellectuals less well known who had traveled to Western Europe less frequently and who came from a variety of backgrounds in both urban and provincial areas. Complicating the general grant and travel problem was the sudden imposition of martial law in Poland in December 1981. That action was taken by Marshal Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish ruler, in reaction to the continuing militant activism of Solidarity within the country. Travel grants became more problematical. At the same time, the new military rules created difficulties for people returning home from trips abroad. Numerous grantees on short term stays in Paris found themselves stranded and without adequate funds. This crisis generated a very long line of grantees at FEIE’s office in Paris. Unperturbed, the Ford Foundation responded quickly with a special fund of fifty thousand dollars.48 The Ford Foundation’s experience with the earlier refugee crisis in Chile enabled it to effectively cope with the problem. The Polish martial law crisis produced a parallel concern. If, heretofore, the Ford Foundation had pressured FEIE to engage in its expected fund-raising, as it had pressured other institutions with which it had a clear working relationship, how could it do so now? Romania offered a dramatically different picture. The brutality of the communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, made unpredictable the personal future condition of any grantee or dissident. A breakthrough was possible only in circumstances of a payoff to members of the state party apparatus. FEIE could award grants to selective persons only when grants were also awarded to certain Communist Party bureaucrats. Still, the “ground rules” in Romania

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could always change, which made for uncertainty, and the risks remained great. Yet, there were those who were prepared to run the risks. An example was Andreas and Catrinel Plesu, whose apartment in Bucharest served as FEIE’s center. Significantly, after the revolution overthrowing Ceausescu in December 1989, Andreas Plesu became the new Minister of Culture. Annette Laborey evidently extended a personal touch in trips to Romania, though with great risk and meticulous caution. Beylin appropriately offered the comment that the difficult and desperate procedure cultivated in Romania by FEIE “contributed to preserving in that system persons who after the overthrow of the [Ceausescu] regime came to constitute the cultural and political elite.”49 Special circumstances prevailed in Czechoslovakia that virtually excluded FEIE activities. The “Prague Spring” of 1968 ushered in direct Soviet military power and the disintegration of the majority of autonomous artistic and intellectual circles. Later, in 1977, after the Helsinki Final Act had taken on a life of its own and generated a new activist movement—the Charter 77 movement was launched—there was no special need for FEIE. Charter 77 could provide a direct and effective substitute. Besides, Czechs were not permitted to travel abroad, and thus grants would not prove helpful. Only after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 could FEIE assume a distinct significance for Charter 77 and the new, transformed situation.50 East Germany was particularly difficult for FEIE activities, even for Laborey, who was herself German and visited there from time to time. The East German regime was persistently suspicious of dissidents whose politics might go awry through contacts with Western groups. Consequently, FEIE avoided inviting grant recipients directly; instead, invitations came from such labels as the French Pen Club or Laborey’s art gallery, Galerie Lambert. According to Beylin, approximately one dozen or so dissidents in East Germany were indirectly assisted by FEIE funding.51 A different kind of problem was applicable in assisting Yugoslavs with grants from FEIE. One question was, should the foundation provide grants to those intellectuals with official government connections even if those connections were not at all on the same wavelength of Soviet bureaucracy? Or should it cultivate the totally independent individuals? And what kind of criteria was appropriate for determining who was genuinely independent? In 1984, Yugoslavia, a communist state, although not a Warsaw Pact member, invited FEIE to organize a conference. For the moment, it seemed that FEIE would be officially recognized in at least part of Eastern Europe. However, nothing came of the conference proposal. And the persons involved in the project were subsequently repressed. Needless to say, this experience undermined any impression at the FEIE office about a possible independent Yugoslav integrity.52 FEIE’s involvement with Bulgaria was nonexistent after the sixties, although initially it had played a modest role. In 1989, however, with a political alteration in the country’s leadership taking place similar to the broad political changes in the region, FEIE was able “to get fully involved in helping the opposition which was organizing itself.”53 This

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provided contacts with the elite of other Eastern European countries, producing an undefined “real effect.” In summing up FEIE’s unique and significant achievements in the Eastern European area, Beylin offered the general conclusion that the “people who passed through its doors” were in fact, the representatives of the Eastern European intellectual elite that now—after the 1989 Revolution in Eastern Europe—“to a large extent,” comprised the “political and cultural establishments” of these countries. This assertion would have proved all the more impressive and remarkable if Beylin had provided and documented this statement with the appropriate names and related information; rather, substantive documentation was missing here. The impact of FEIE varied from country to country depending upon the repressive severity of the differing regimes. But, to the extent that FEIE functioned on a decentralized basis, its policy guided by local and personal decisions, the outcome was tactically a success. Successful, too, was the policy of cultivating East-East contacts that, during the revolutionary and postrevolutionary period initiated in 1989, as noted by Beylin, “became very important.”54 Especially valuable had been the shipping of books and periodicals to the intellectuals and dissidents in Eastern Europe. This provided them with indispensable information that was generally not available for their use. For those hungry for political and cultural sustenance, FEIE proved to be a source of immeasurable spiritual value and, therewith, encouragement for a hopeful future. As important, if not more so, were the opportunities for travel to the West, especially Paris, provided by FEIE. The live cultural and spiritual nourishment for sensitive, lonely, and deprived intelligentsia was irreplaceable. Solid evidence could be offered not only about the current scene but also about a possible future that would ultimately be seized upon and given viability. Less useful, thought Beylin, were the various conferences held in the West to which grantees from the East were invited. Only one that was devoted to the Polish Solidarity movement and held in Paris during 1982 proved “constructive.”55 It had involved the participation of outstanding Western intellectuals presenting valuable academic papers. The other conferences, Beylin noted, “were not very constructive,” but he failed to offer any explanation of why they were unproductive, or of what features presented by the Paris conference in 1982 were not or could not be replicated. The only thing he did note, and this certainly posed a serious problem, was that the authorities throughout Eastern Europe were especially sensitive to such conferences, probably because they would attract broad public attention, and, therefore, “watched more closely for those kinds of invitations” to grantees and intellectuals from Eastern Europe. FEIE, aware of the problem, “gave up organizing conferences,”56 with an exception made for the Paris conference about Solidarity in 1982. With the success of the 1989 revolutions that brought an end to communism in Eastern Europe—except in the Soviet Union, where it would last

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another two years—FEIE, as well as the Foundation’s leadership, recognized that FEIE’s usefulness had come to an end. It had helped sensitize the intellectual communities in much of Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland and Hungary. Its purpose in a noncommunist world, where freedom gave the artist, writer, and thinker the opportunity to shape his or her own world as well as the society from which he or she had sprung, was no longer in doubt. The task that it had set for itself had been fulfilled partly as a result of its own efforts. Discussions as to whether FEIE should continue into the new era of the nineties lasted for some time. But to have done so would have marred and dissipated the extraordinary legend it had created. The time had come, its leaders recognized, to lower the curtain. In September 1991, a special climactic conference was scheduled and held in, appropriately enough, Cracow, Poland. It lasted three days, culminating in a festive ball. And, of course, its principal organizer was Annette Laborey herself. She arranged its final joyous moments just as she had arranged the difficult months and years of uncertainty in the face of a ruthless totalitarian force. Participating in the Cracow Conference were one hundred intellectual activists who had been grantees of FEIE, and, therefore, indirect grantees of the Ford Foundation, and had been associated with it in its remarkable, if difficult, efforts in Eastern Europe. A final word was offered by the distinguished Polish philosopher and writer, Leszek Kolakowski, whose dissidence had reverberated throughout the area. Kolakowski proposed a special tribute to the person who symbolized the aspiration and work of FEIE. He recommended that the numerous monuments of communism should not be destroyed. Rather they should be left as they were, with, however, their heads removed and replaced with Annette Laborey’s likeness. The proposal was accepted.57

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Chapter

7

Ta k i n g R i s k s o n S o u t h A f r i c a

W

hen Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa in 1994 and the shackles of the previous apartheid regime were removed, an end was brought to the third major repressive structure of the post–World War II era. The hideous system that had deprived by law and practice a vast majority of the population of blacks, Indians, and people categorized as the mixed race of “colored” had seemed for a long time virtually impregnable. Few had expected this institutionally frozen system of apartheid, which had totally eliminated basic human rights for the bulk of society, to crumble and disintegrate. Indeed, if thought was given to the removal of the apartheid regime, which was increasingly rigid and repressive, the prevailing assumption was that only the extensive violence of civil war could succeed in destroying the system. But when the chains of discrimination and subordination were lifted at the beginning of the nineties, without civil war or violent revolution, it seemed as if a transcendent miracle had been wrought. Miracles, however, hardly explain radically transforming moments in history. A combination of factors reinforcing powerful internal forces played major roles. The continuing and courageous nationalist movement of South African blacks was the decisive factor, but significant legal and educational efforts, conducted out of necessity by indigenous nongovernmental organizations and supported by some external NGO actions, assumed remarkably critical roles. Especially impressive were the initiatives undertaken by the Ford Foundation in a variety of areas, none more important than its support of the NGO, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, and particularly, its so-called Southern Project. The foundation’s extraordinary and unusual work, although it is hardly known and rarely provided public exposure, warrants special attention. External factors, especially the roles played by major Western powers, in challenging and weakening the economic strength of South Africa, were also of critical importance. In this connection, the policy and decisions of the U.S. government were of decisive pertinence in compelling the rigid apartheid power to acquiesce to fundamental modification of its character. That the United States would reluctantly and only over time perform this function was by no means accidental. Of the various agents shaping or seeking to shape

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U.S. policy, none was more important than the Ford Foundation and the NGOs it supported. This, too, will be examined in some detail. Strikingly, the foundation’s concern about the brutal apartheid structure of South Africa began well before the international community and its institutions became seized by it. Not until the early sixties did the United Nations view apartheid as a vital and critical human rights problem. It was during that decade that a large number of new African states, freed from colonial and imperial rule, entered the UN and would later change the character and priorities of the international organization. The government of South Africa until then was treated as just another regime, without being subject to any specific sanctions. South Africa’s inherent subordination of its majority colored population was nowhere singled out for disparagement, and, indeed, apartheid was not referred to in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It would not go unnoticed that the Pretoria regime chose not to criticize any aspect of the Universal Declaration nor even to vote against it during and prior to the debate on its adoption on December 10, 1948. South Africa simply abstained in the final vote. Its reaction to the declaration on the final vote expressed indifference to the entire issue of apartheid as an intrinsic, international, moral concern. As early as 1952, the foundation initiated the funding of what began as a modest research institution promoting the improvement of relationships between the races. Called the South Africa Institute of Race Relations, it was awarded fifty thousand dollars by the foundation for its “educational and research activities.”1 The next year, the institute received a three-year $120,000 grant for the study of the “problems of the Union of South Africa’s multiracial society.” Foundation support enabled it to publish a number of useful research papers related to the economic and social conditions of blacks and other colored groups.2 Beyond expanding its valuable research, the institute was enabled by the grant to acquire its own building and to develop three strong and active community-supported branches in Cape Town, Durban, and Port Elizabeth. Its reputation for the competent accumulation and use of facts became firmly rooted and would remain so until the end of the century.3 What prompted the policy decision of 1952, only two years after the foundation transformed itself into a major humanitarian organization aimed at promoting democracy and opposing totalitarianism, is not clear. Human rights was yet to be placed on its agenda. A graduate research study prepared at New York University in 1987 by Paul J. Kaiser determined that the foundation’s orientation to South Africa sprung from the Gaither committee’s conclusion in November 1949 that “society must accord all men equal rights and equal opportunity” to develop their capacities, and must, in addition, “encourage individuality and inventive and creative talent.”4 Somewhat exuberantly, Kaiser had decided that the Gaither report nearly three decades earlier meant that the foundation would fund “organizations in South Africa that are dedicated to social and political equality for people of all races in South Africa.”

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Certainly, the 1952 decision regarding the South Africa Institute of Race Relations constituted a significant turning point in the foundation’s early policy and was clearly reflected in its program budget. Kaiser found that grants to various South African organizations constituted “a substantial amount” of the total foundation budget.5 The sizable initiative was not without consequence and impact. A foundation staffer, Melvin Fox, who was sent in December 1959 to investigate the early accomplishments of this organization, had concluded that the transformed and greatly enlarged Institute of Race Relations was already “playing a most important and indeed a unique role in South African affairs.”6 Fox had been with the foundation since late 1951. A specialist on international economics, he was primarily concerned with African issues. He would later be based in Lagos, Nigeria, where he served as head of the regional foundation bureau. After emphasizing the significance of the institute, Fox went on to elaborate on his findings. In his report to the foundation, he wrote that the institute had become a significant source of data for both liberals and conservatives about social legislation and about economic and social conditions. Significantly, he also found that the institute had begun to raise funds at a far higher level than it had done alone in the past, thereby demonstrating that it had become “accepted by leading businesses and other members [of the South African] community as an organization worth not only supporting, but becoming identified with.”7 The staffer concluded that the foundation had put the institute “on entirely new footing” not only in terms of what it accomplished, but also in how it was perceived by others, “including the government.” Readers of his report at foundation headquarters in New York could not but derive considerable gratification that the foundation’s support over a sevenyear period “[had] done much to bring the Institute to this position of strength and acceptance.” In addition to the research institute, churches were also a primary recipient of foundation grants in its early years. The initial focus was upon a key institution of the Dutch Reformed Churches, the principal religious structure of the Afrikaners, the descendants of the Boers who had attained demographic dominance in the white community in South Africa during the period that ended the Boer War. Linked together by the Federal Missionary Council, these church groups, as early as 1954, formed the so-called Continuation Committee of South Africa that sought to establish communication and cooperation ties with Anglican and other Protestant churches, including black churches. It was hardly unexpected that the foundation would seek to assist the Continuation Committee and, as early as 1954, it provided the committee with a grant of ten thousand dollars. By the time Fox arrived, the committee had held an unprecedented interdenominational and interracial ecumenical conference in Johannesburg at the beginning of December. Significantly, the Dutch Reformed Churches were a driving force in promoting the conference, while the foundation helped to finance it. The black issue was touched upon only tangentially, borrowing from a study theme adopted by the World Council of Churches: “our

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common Christian responsibility toward areas of rapid social change.” Still, the essential features of apartheid would be subjected to quite clear, even if indirect, criticism. A unanimously approved final resolution made reference to “this multi-racial conference” and urged “reconsideration of the policy of migratory labor,” a policy that was at the heart of the apartheid system, by compelling black laborers to migrate to their jobs in urban areas without their families. It would have not gone unnoticed that the resolution called for “the reestablishment of normal family life, adequately housed and provided for by wage-earners enjoying sound human relationships at their work.”8 It also called for recognizing the importance and sanctity of the human personality “regardless of racial and cultural difference.” The positive feature of the resolution, even if not sharply and distinctively put, prompted Fox to comment that the foundation’s investment in the Continuation Committee “could be extremely significant and far-reaching.” A third area for early foundation support was an important university, one with a research institute engaged in the examination of social science issues. In 1954, $27,500 was awarded to the Natal University Institute of Social Research. Of particular interest was support for a financial conference projected in 1956: “Problems Arising from the Structure and Functioning of a Multi-Racial Society.”9 The foundation grant permitted the Natal University Institute to invite and involve in its programming highly talented and experienced American university professors from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and the University of California at Los Angeles. One of them was distinguished Professor Gordon Allport of Harvard. Clashes of the Natal Institute with the university’s economic department hampered the institute’s plans and work, but Fox anticipated that it had “a potentially important role to play” once the academic hostility within the university diminished. Fox’s hope would prove correct: the institute’s significant involvement in social issues would grow and deepen for the balance of the century. The valuable academic exchange initiative in the social sciences was a modest indication of the foundation’s imaginative U.S.-South Africa Leadership Exchange program. While the initiative for the program came from a variety of public and business sources, the foundation provided “the largest single contribution.” Fifty thousand dollars was granted to the effort during 1958–61. Of some significance was the exchange program’s decision to arrange for the United States to send John Wheeler on a special tour of South African communities. Wheeler was a prominent black businessman and banker from Durham, North Carolina. The arrangement could be expected to produce a positive impact. Wheeler’s trip, under the exchange program, required a positive decision by the government’s cabinet and the personal approval of the stern apartheid advocate, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd. Fox was told that the visit was of greater concern to Verwoerd than the U.S. verbal attack on South Africa in the United Nations.10 Approval was delayed until the very last moment. Threats of resignation by two top South African officials, both conservative, should the invitation be

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rejected may very well have prompted the final approval. The world did not, as a result, come to a crashing collapse, and indeed, the visit was found to be “soundly executed from a critically important tactical standpoint.”11 Even if Fox’s report was generally upbeat, he could not fail to be aware of the severe limitations in South Africa in realizing the foundation purpose of promoting “equal rights and equal opportunity.” An obvious realist, Fox observed, “the Foundation cannot expect to operate in South Africa either as freely or with as broad a range of activities as it can in other independent countries in Africa.”12 He especially cautioned against activities “related directly to the development of non-Europeans” (for example, blacks, Asians, and colored people). Programs geared to this aim, he held, could not be supported “without stirring government suspicions and antagonism.” Yet, given these overwhelming restraints, the regime still claimed to operate under the rule of law and through a parliamentary system. This offered “room for modification [of rigid apartheid practices] and maneuvers [within the system].” Fox was sufficiently realistic to recognize, “the amount of room and time is unquestionably diminishing.” The reference to a “diminishing” time frame suggested an almost prophetic sense. Within another decade, the parameters for maneuvers would be greatly constricted. However, there remained space for maneuvers, Fox recognized, was in certain educational projects specifically related to universities, or involving churches or known and established research institutions. Grants and projects geared to a cautious and modest objective, he believed, “could significantly strengthen the institutional and leadership force working for modifications.” In his view, productive links between U.S. and South African scholars should be maintained and reinforced.13 He also pressed for the aim of facilitating contact and communication between the non-European groups and the white population. This would be tough enough to realize, but even tougher was the aim of improving the training and research opportunities for “nonEuropeans.” Fox spelled out his proposals in some detail.14 His top priority would be the continuation for five years of the Leadership Exchange program, which he expected would total fifty thousand dollars. Of particular concern to him was the shortage of American experts on the subject of South Africa. But of equal importance was the strengthening of academic scholarships in South Africa on aspects of social science matters related to race. The foundation staffer also urged grants for academic conferences that would involve “nonEuropeans.” Thus, a grant of ten thousand dollars was proposed for a Natal University education conference scheduled for July 1960. Recommended, too, were grants for the study of African societies other than the Union of South Africa. He asked for one hundred thousand dollars covering five years for African studies programs at the Universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch, both major and influential schools. Again, with the object of approaching, but only indirectly, the various urgent health and educational problems of blacks, Fox proposed a $112,000

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grant (over four years) to the Child Development Program at South Africa’s National Institute for Personnel Research. Another sizable grant was proposed for the National Nutrition Research Institute and the Pediatrics Department of the Pretoria University Medical School. The total Fox sought was five hundred thousand dollars. Even if only tangentially related to the improvement of the condition of “non-Europeans,” these efforts still were a significant step forward in view of the constraints confronting those in South Africa seeking to advance human rights. With all the difficulties facing the foundation in dealing with South Africa, Fox believed that progress could be made, and he urged a quite modest course of action that could produce positive results, howsoever limited. In contrast to the upbeat approach of Fox in 1960, a second investigator from the foundation, a decade later, was far less optimistic and recommended that the foundation shift its focus to a more direct and political approach. The investigator was David Smock, who had joined the foundation in 1964 as a specialist on Nigeria. Earlier, he had studied at the University of London, majoring in African tribes. In his view, the situation a decade earlier, when Fox had gone to South Africa, was radically different. At that time, Smock said, blacks had believed that “genuine multi-racial cooperation” “was a realistic goal for South Africa.15 This was no longer the case. The new foundation staffer, after a penetrating review of the changed social and political situation, came up with a strong pessimistic outlook. In Smock’s analysis, blacks were “on the bottom of the economic ladder,” but more importantly, “their economic opportunities [were so] severely limited” by the monopoly on jobs maintained by whites, “along with discriminating wage scales” resulting from “inferior education” and from a host of regulatory and political burdens, that all progress toward equality had come to a veritable halt; indeed, he contended, a reversal had set in.16 Among the regulatory obstacles, one was highlighted: black “movements [were] carefully controlled by pass laws,” limiting their stay in any particular urban place and disrupting their relationships with family. Besides, “they [were] not allowed any political activity and [had] no political representation.” Smock’s description came to a searingly bitter conclusion: “they [blacks] [lived] in a state of semi-terror as a result of suppressive legislation and police-state tactics.” As the most recent foundation visitor to South Africa, Smock found virtually nothing to relieve his foreboding of both gloom and doom. He wrote, “far from seeing hopeful signs, I came away enveloped by despair.” Though he considered it “important” for foreign governments and private organizations to “do what they [could] to encourage change,” the possibility of change, he believed was “slim indeed.”17 A host of the following developments were pointed to in explaining his “despair”: a law was passed outlawing parties that had members of more than one race; white politicians who were supposed to represent the interests of the “colored” were eliminated from Parliament; and control of African labor was tightened by new legislation aimed at uprooting Africans from urban areas. This was accomplished by imposing severe restrictions upon the length of time that black laborers

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could stay in predominantly white townships, and by preventing blacks from bringing their families to stay with them. Instead, a batch of new regulations was enacted that were especially burdensome. In addition, black Africans were no longer permitted to live in their former homes in areas now restricted to whites, nor were they permitted long-term leaves to visit their former residences, even in the formerly black sections of now European white-inhabited towns or cities in South Africa. To complete the severe racial separation under apartheid, rules were enacted declaring that interracial marriages consummated outside of South Africa would no longer be recognized. Finally, in 1968, the apartheid government, in various rural areas, forcibly removed Africans from land on which they had lived for generations and moved them to new areas. The very nature of the unfolding condition for blacks generated not only a totally negative outlook about the future by Smock, but also, more harshly, a “conviction that any Foundation projects relating to South Africa [would] probably only strike at the fringes of the problem rather than attacking it fundamentally.” Smock’s conclusion was almost enough to drive his superiors in New York to withdraw from an extremely difficult and delicate situation. But Smock refused to throw in the towel and chose not to recommend abdication of responsibility. Despite the overwhelming obstacles, he wrote, “there are some things the Foundation can and should do.” Worth continuing and encouraging were support of the Institute of Race Relations and the U.S.-South Africa Leadership Exchange program. The former was seen as valuable to maintain in order to have some channel of communication between the races; the latter was thought to be useful in providing exposure to an alternative to an oppressive apartheid system to South African leaders. But of far greater significance were Smock’s suggestions, made in a very preliminary and hesitant way, for the foundation to consider the use of law and legal aid as forms of leverage in this society that presumably prided itself on the rule of law but restricted its application exclusively to the dominant white community. The focus upon law and the use of established legal methods would later become the fundamental theme for South Africa and other restrictive societies. It would serve as a basic weapon of the foundation. At one point, Smock came up with the suggestion that the foundation should consider the advisability of assisting in the holding of a conference on the rule of law in South Africa and on legal aid. What gave emphasis to the notion was the growing number of arrests, by the police and military authorities, of blacks who violated pass laws on residence in white urban areas or who demonstrated on behalf of grievances. Entering into the legal area, even if indirectly, was a far cry from working on purely educational programs and conferences related to them. Even more venturesome was a quite radical suggestion that the foundation should consider “discussing” whether it “should get into the business of assisting with the legal defense of South Africans detained on political charges.” While frankly expressing uncertainty and doubts about the idea, Smock chose not to dismiss it, and welcomed further

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consideration. Indeed, this became a lever that would ultimately help unhinge the whole system. What prompted Smock’s speculation about legal defense assistance were developments occurring in South Africa during late 1967 and early 1968, when the first major case, in which thirty-seven blacks from South West Africa were charged with terrorism, was heard under the newly adopted, brutally repressive, and harsh Terrorism Act. (South West Africa, now called Namibia, had been seized and colonized by Germany in the late nineteenth century. It came under the administration of the Union of South Africa after World War II.) The Terrorism Act, while enacted in 1967, was made retroactive to 1962. Smock was frank enough to admit that he did not know how many people were being held under its provisions without having had a trial scheduled for them yet. The law provided that the police were allowed to hold suspects for an indefinite period of time without charges.18 Of the thirtyseven South West Africans, nineteen were sentenced to life imprisonment, and most of the others to lesser terms. What was emerging in the late sixties as a key player with respect to legaldefense matters in such unusual and unprecedented circumstances was the newly established Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law. The committee, based in Washington, DC, was initially created in 1963 at the urging of President John F. Kennedy. Its purpose was domestic rather than international, and South Africa was not seen as a focal point for the committee’s immediate or later attention. It was President Kennedy’s hope, in view of emerging and deepening activism by police and prosecutors in the American South, that the legal system in the United States would ensure that civil rights workers received adequate legal representation. The president’s suggestion met with some success. Legal assistance was initially rendered to civil rights workers in Mississippi, and later in fourteen major urban cities in the United States. The Lawyers Committee was able to obtain the legal services of important law firms as well as of individuals who provided thousands of hours of pro bono legal work.19 That the foundation could prove helpful in the mid-sixties in assisting the blacks in South Africa, even with the obvious risks that would be entailed, was suggested by the character and perspective of the foundation’s new president at the time, McGeorge Bundy, who was appointed in the fall of 1966. A determined Republican liberal who had switched to the Democratic Party when John F. Kennedy had run for U.S. president in 1960, he became Kennedy’s National Security Adviser. As a committed liberal, Bundy could be expected to be hostile to a society built upon the disenfranchisement of blacks, the colored, and other racial groups. But that he would support foundation staff initiatives designed to aid the disadvantaged in a positive, if risky, manner was hardly a certainty. After all, a major consideration in the foundation’s work in any country had been to avoid alienation of its government. But, for Bundy, race prejudice was an evil of huge dimensions that had to be vigorously opposed. “Affirmative action” was essential, he thought, in fighting

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it. Later, he would not hesitate to extend “affirmative action” to South Africa as well.20 On the level of higher education, Bundy, who had been a provost at Harvard College, was a powerful advocate for affirmative action in the United States, and was a supporter of various proposals to help blacks attend universities and acquire higher degrees. He was equally committed to a similar objective in South Africa. It was hardly accidental that the foundation, under his leadership, would offer scholarships to blacks, would facilitate their admission to universities in the United States, and would extend financial assistance to black colleges in South Africa. Significantly, the foundation’s stepped-up program for South Africa in the seventies coincided with the stock market slide in the United States. But Bundy did not retreat from his commitment to helping blacks in South Africa.21 That Bundy’s priorities would have stirred some opposition among business leaders on the Ford Foundation’s Board of Trustees would not be surprising, although no documentation on the subject is available. Still, there is some indication of dissatisfaction with his administration. In 1976, Henry Ford II resigned as a board member, an unprecedented development for him. While no specific reasons for the resignation were offered, an implied criticism of the Bundy administration was made in a letter released by Ford. He caustically observed that the foundation was “a creature of capitalism,” but this reality was difficult to find “in anything the Foundation [did].”22 It is apparent that Bundy interpreted the remark as referring to the foundation’s role in international affairs, not domestic affairs. He sarcastically commented that the foundation was “making the world safe for capitalism.” The contemptuousness of Bundy’s response, while not signaling what precisely agitated Ford, was nonetheless revealing as to where Bundy stood: “I don’t think one letter from anyone is going to change the Foundation’s course.” And he was insistent that the foundation must confront racism whether at home or abroad. In fact, there is no specific indication that the Bundy policy on South Africa was opposed within the Ford Foundation’s Board of Trustees. Not surprisingly, black leadership in the United States turned out in full force at an affair in Bundy’s honor hosted by the Urban League president, Vernon Jordan. In 1967, the Washington-based Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law added a modest international dimension involving the legal defense of individuals who were charged under the multiplying number of security laws in South Africa enacted to sustain apartheid. While the foundation had provided the committee with over three million dollars from its National Affairs Division for legal assistance on domestic matters, a radically new program would now be projected. South Africa would become the focal point. But, at the same time, the foundation was advised that the Lawyers Committee’s program in South Africa would have to be curtailed because of funding shortages related to its planned work in that country unless “emergency assistance [was] obtained.”23

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The Middle East and Africa Division of the foundation asked for a modest contribution to enable the committee to keep going. The Lawyers Committee’s credentials were quite good, with some five years of experience in working with South African lawyers in legal defense work. On its own, the committee, in 1967, assisted the leftist lawyer, Joel Carlson, in his defense of thirty-seven Namibians prosecuted under the Terrorism Act, which had attracted worldwide attention. The following year—1968—it aided Carlson’s defense in a significant police torture case. In 1969, the adventurous committee sent a noted U.S. pathologist to South Africa to testify at the inquest of a black who had died under police detention while being given electrical shock treatment. During the first two years of the seventies, the committee was helpful in connection with widely-publicized alleged terrorism cases such as “The Trial of the Twenty-Two” (1970) and the “Trial of the Thirteen” (1971). A major issue in the second case was the interrogation techniques and practices of South African security officials. The committee provided extensive memoranda on relevant U.S. case law, and, more importantly, arranged for a leading American psychiatrist to visit and advise the defense on questions of the admissibility of evidence.24 Other responsibilities were also undertaken by the committee. Given the serious racial difficulties in South Africa, the committee extended moral support to members of the South African Bar who undertook to represent clients in unpopular cases. In addition, the top professional officer of the committee made it his business to meet with prominent lawyers and judges in South Africa to express U.S. concerns about the application of the rule of law in South Africa. Even while pursuing these legal tasks, committee officials and activists inevitably impacted U.S. legal professionals, who were made aware of the South African racial trauma and how the rule of law was often undermined and distorted. Committee assistance, over time, became especially helpful when U.S. public interest in South African issues led to boycott or disinvestment activities frequently taking place on college campuses. Committee leaders could and did provide advice on how to deal with the apartheid system from a legal perspective. As the rule of law became a central focus of the American community, the Lawyers Committee could not avoid becoming a key factor in public discussions. The powerful American Bar Association was among those nongovernmental institutions that now displayed “an increasing concern” with the South African problem, and, ineluctably, it too “depended largely” upon “relevant information” extended by the Lawyers Committee. Once the committee requested formal support for its work that, by the early seventies, embraced a number of areas—most notably in assisting in the legal defense of the growing number of political prisoners arrested by the authorities in Pretoria—it could hardly be refused by the foundation. The Ford Foundation staff member who was asked to investigate the question had suggested, even if tentatively, a particular and direct form of financial assistance. In 1972, the foundation formally granted the committee $50,275 for one year. Authorization was provided in a brief memo sent by David Bell to McGeorge Bundy.25

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It was the beginning of a new era in the foundation’s involvement in the South African problem. It marked a radical shift in its strategy, although the full scope and impact of that shift did not become apparent until the mid-eighties. Until the late sixties or early seventies, the foundation worked mainly on the margins and in tangential areas. This was not to suggest that these areas were not important, for they were, especially insofar as education was concerned. But with direct aid to an NGO whose activities went to the very heart of the apartheid legal structure, a totally different perspective had been introduced. And that new perspective would constitute a fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of the apartheid regime. Three years after Smock’s detailed and pessimistic report to Wayne Fredericks, his boss, Fredericks sought to present the apartheid issue within a broader framework that generated a more upbeat, though hardly optimistic, mood.26 Operating from a key foundation post in the New York headquarters as program adviser to David Bell, the vice-president in charge of the International Division, Fredericks was deeply aware of the impact the apartheid regime was beginning to exert upon the world scene and, especially, upon the domestic scene in the United States. Before his foundation appointment in July 1967, he had served in the State Department as deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa. That apartheid had become, in his view, “one of the major problems facing the world community” was now self-evident. For leaders of virtually all African governments, it had developed into “a primary political concern” and, therefore, could be seen as “a threat to world peace.” Equally significant, apartheid in its new, more rigid, and inhumane form was recognized by Fredericks as “an issue in the U.S. domestic arena,” particularly among students, churchgoers, and black Americans. Yet, even if resented and held in utter disdain by the world community, as expressly indicated in UN debates and resolutions, apartheid was hardly considered to pose any immediate threat to world security or peace. Realism dictated, as Fredericks recognized, that the economic, military, and police power of the regime was “so overwhelming that no serious challenge to it in the near future [could] be foreseen”; rather, the threat of war was seen as a longterm result of apartheid. Surprisingly, Fredericks made no reference to the extensive UN preoccupation with apartheid. South Africa’s “overwhelming” power, at the same time, made it difficult to perceive or anticipate a civil war or a collapse of the apartheid regime from within. Nonetheless, a serious examination of a variety of pertinent issues facing the apartheid regime strongly suggested that it was far from invulnerable. Ultimately, and in less than two decades, the foundation would come to play a strikingly significant role in bringing down the apartheid regime. Wayne Fredericks was remarkably perceptive in highlighting some of these challenging features. First to be noted was “a growing anxiety over the state of the economy.”27 If political power depended upon internal economic strength, then close analysis of South Africa’s economy could not but signal trouble looming large. Reality dictated that industrial progress could not be possible without an

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extension of the internal market. But the very nature of the apartheid regime, with its restriction upon black African labor, severely hampered the hopedfor expansion. Only the most radical structural changes in the economy could enable the viciously exploited black African labor force to make the domestic market economically viable. While the domestic market was ineluctably limited, the foreign market offered major problems and difficulties, as well. The nearest markets in Africa, to a large extent guided by the principle of racial solidarity with the oppressed blacks in South Africa, had imposed partial embargoes on the apartheid regime’s exports. As for the markets of the West, the future did not appear promising. As hostile opinions mounted in the West to the growing repression in South Africa, the potentiality of embargoes was certain to grow. Matching the emerging economic problem threatening South Africa’s stability and strength was a deepening fury in the black population. The growing anger in South Africa found expression on two levels. The first level involved the provincial Bantustan structures, where an unexpected resistance suddenly appeared. The so-called Bantustans, which were supposedly independent ethnic units, were created by the apartheid regime in an effort to convince the West of the appropriateness and legitimacy of separate development for the several racial groups within South Africa. Pretoria’s rulers also expected that the allocated autonomy would produce, if not a certain satisfaction among the subjugated racial groups, at least a willingness to accommodate to the ideology of separateness. What happened in Namibia in December 1971 revealed that separateness was unacceptable and would simply not be tolerated. The major ethnic group in Namibia—the Ovambos— spearheaded the first successful black strike in South Africa’s history. (The Ovambos constituted two-thirds of the region’s total population.) The basic issue of the strike revolved around the contract system for labor in the mines of the region. Under the contract system, the political overseers determined the conditions and payment for work in the mines, and, more significantly, controlled the workers’ movement as well as their bargaining power. Intrinsic to the contract system was the binding requirement that the worker be separated from his family for lengthy periods. In essence, he became a migratory person divorced from his immediate family. When the Ovambos struck, the whole contract system was put at stake. The thirteen thousand miners who were on strike were sent back to their homes by the South African police and military. The economic impact was huge. Almost the entire industrial operation in South West Africa came to a halt, as did the communication and public network services. If the UN Security Council had formally held South Africa’s presence in the area to be illegal—a view endorsed by an official judicial opinion rendered by the International Court of Justice in The Hague—this legal abstraction was now provided a degree of substantive reality. The Sharpeville episode of March 21, 1960, marked a seminal point in the struggle of blacks in South Africa. At that time, thirty miles from Johannesburg

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several thousand blacks demonstrated in a march against the pass laws of the regime. The police opened fire, killing 27 demonstrators and wounding 180. It evoked international shock even as it stirs African anger now. Not since Sharpeville had the apartheid regime been so traumatized by world reaction. The Namibia upheaval sent a similar shock wave throughout South Africa’s entire ideological and political system. The assumption upon which the Bantustan system rested, namely the complacency of the nonwhite population, was shown to be utterly illusory. Indeed, Bantustan leaders appeared to be orchestrating demands for more land, more authority, and more privileges before they would agree to the proposed separate structure. How long the illusion of separate development would continue had become questionable. On a second level, the apartheid system was challenged by the rapidly advancing “Black Consciousness” movement. This would exceed significantly the resistance in the Bantustans. The impact of the challenge would be strongly felt among high school students. But it had also taken hold within the churches, and within education and welfare groups. The movement served a variety of purposes, such as to raise the morale of the blacks and to urge them to organize themselves in a meaningful way so as to confront the powerful apartheid system. Symptomatic of the “Black Consciousness” movement and the extent of its embrace of a variety of disparate social groups was the so-called Conference of African Organizations held on December 16, 1971, at the very time that the Ovambo crisis had called public attention to the concerns of black workers. The conference, held in Soweto, brought together black religious, education, and welfare groups—a total of over fifty groups. The conference marked a day of fasting and prayer aimed at asserting black rights. What was especially striking, noted Fredericks, was “a reemergence of political articulateness” that could not be shouted down or driven off the political stage. Most illustrative of the “Black Consciousness” movement was the appearance of new, dynamic leaders whose ability and skill would be tested in the crucible of public action under severely trying circumstances. Parallel to the emergence of new leaders was the sudden appearance of new centers of activism where the young leaders would seek to break the previous calm surface of public activity and begin to confront the apartheid system. When linked to the serious economic problems facing the dominant white society, a vital test of control was raised. The future appeared unpredictable. Where others were engulfed in pessimism, Fredericks saw “opportunities for change.”28 An article in the journal Foreign Affairs in January 1972 that was written by the president of the National Union of South African Students, Neville Curtis, was cited by Fredericks as underscoring both the trauma of the present and what strategy had to be pursued for at least a limited breakthrough. The Curtis conclusion read, Change in South Africa is going to be a painful process, actively resisted by the White elite. It is going to require the emergence of Black leadership and a

152 Taking on the World's Repressive Regimes/William Korey power base from which to operate; the development of organizations and organizing ability, and at least limited freedom in which to exercise them.29

In response, Fredericks outlined his programs that the foundation was undertaking to confront the growing challenges. He made it clear that while the foundation had engaged in activities relating to southern Africa “for many years,” it had more recently “expanded its interest.”30 Among the expanded programs, a crucial one dealt with refugees who had fled to escape the likelihood or actual threat of arrest because of their political activism. Refugee assistance by the foundation, as it related to Chile and Argentina, had provided its staff with valuable experience. Now, these earlier initiatives would be updated and reapplied to South Africa. Precisely what that assistance involved was not formally disclosed, but he did emphasize that the foundation would focus upon three independent states that bordered on South Africa or constituted conclaves within it—Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland. It was known that refugees had settled in these countries, especially in Botswana. The objective was even broader in scope: to develop the economy in these separate areas and, thereby, demonstrate how blacks could develop a flourishing economy. Thus, the foundation, operating out of its regional office in Nairobi, Kenya, would assemble and make available advisers on development economics as well as specialized consultants for these areas. A number of travel and study awards by the foundation would be made. Fredericks noted, too, that the new emphasis on legal assistance, especially through grants to the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, would run parallel to the refugee assistance program. He also noted that a grant would be made to the University of Natal Law School to prepare for a conference on legal aid. What was deemed especially essential by the foundation was the urgent need to enlighten the international community about developments in South Africa so that positive foreign policy initiatives could be undertaken. Detailed, objective, and specialized knowledge about South Africa was thought to be lacking, and the foundation saw itself, along with other foundations, as a trailblazer concerned with the apartheid problem. Their aim was to stimulate discussions as well as general information among “opinion makers,” always a key group that the Ford Foundation sought to influence. Major research projects were anticipated at leading universities in the West, especially in the United States. One project that was particularly important was a series of books on Southern Africa to be published by the University of California Press. A grant of $67,500 by the foundation was projected for this purpose, which would be initiated in 1972.31 The study, to be discussed later, would exert an extraordinary and unique influence on public thinking in the United States about apartheid, particularly in the American business community. Other universities were also given grants to produce or publish works on South Africa, ranging from Howard University in Washington, DC, and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, to the University of Sussex in England. Academic conferences on apartheid at various universities, including

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the University of Natal in South Africa, were also to be funded by the foundation. In addition, grants were to be provided for research papers and books on apartheid produced by individual scholars. But even with elaborate educational grants aimed at affecting public thinking in the West about apartheid, the foundation recognized that changes would have to overcome the giant barriers of the powerful apartheid system. Fredericks summed up the thinking at New York headquarters by observing, “the ideas and changes necessary for solutions in Southern Africa must come from within as well as without.”32 Essential to South Africa’s future was “the building of competence,” both with respect to individuals and organizations. Here, the foundation could play a vital role, as the nonwhite population had been “severely restricted” in achieving these objectives. Still, he noted, the foundation “had had extensive experience in the United States and other parts of the world, including Africa,” in producing “leadership competence.” While the “building of competence” remained a goal of the Foundation, its fulfillment could come, in a major way in the future, over the question of how the apartheid system could be erased. Without providing details, Fredericks wrote that “the Foundation is in unique position to help” realize the objective of “change and . . . the elimination of gross inequities.” In this comment, he promised “an intellectual and supportive lifeline to the outside world.” While no specific proposals were offered, it was apparent that, just as the foundation in the mid- and late-seventies had focused upon NGOs, so now, too, the similarity involved the likelihood of human rights NGOs serving as the “lifeline.” One of them was the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law. This group was to play a major role both within South Africa and in the United States in shaping America’s thinking and policy on South Africa. That the leadership of the foundation, including the Board of Trustees, was involved in serious internal discussions about the “risks” of continued and more vigorous programs challenging apartheid is suggested in a section of the Fredericks report that carries the heading, “The Ford Foundation and Southern Africa.”33 The risks of “an active program” were defined as “considerable.” One of them merits special attention: that foundation grantees in Southern Africa “may come under attack, possibly because of our support as a foreign institution or that individuals may be arrested or detained under one of the numerous laws which could be invoked.” Projected, too, was the “risk” that some African countries would view any “development” program in South Africa as supportive of apartheid. Fear was also expressed that “public attacks may be leveled at the Foundation” by various segments of U.S. society. Apparently, the issue of “disengagement” from Southern Africa was advanced and rejected. To disengage would have meant, read the report, losing “an opportunity to assist in the process of change.” Moreover, it would have increased the “isolation” of those in Southern Africa “under severe handicaps to effect change.” Finally, there was the historic matter of the foundation’s

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“social conscience.” It could not easily sustain “a total retreat from this [apartheid] issue.” Clearly, the resolution to move ahead in various ways already delineated was not quickly reached. The report speaks of an “intensive staff debate on the variety of program options” that had taken place, and notes that “certain dissenting opinions” were expressed. In the end, the objections to the planned program were deemed “unacceptable,” provided that the “program efforts continue to be handled with care and prudence.” The cautionary warning was of critical importance. Yet, when the positive program was accepted, even with the expected risks, doubts were turned aside. The caveat was oriented only to the procedure of how the program was to be handled, not to the correctness of the policy. Determination, rather than doubt, characterized the foundation’s programmatic decisions on Southern Africa, as represented in the attachment to the Fredericks report. This upbeat determination was also reflected in an additional appendix to the report providing excerpts from the budgets of the foundation’s Middle East and Africa Division during 1969–71.34 The driving purpose of the foundation can be seen in the following: “The Foundation’s activities in recent years have been intended a) to assist the development of multi-racial societies . . . in Southern Africa; [and] b) to help a few of the organizations in Southern Africa which work for better race relations.”35 Significantly, the excerpts from the budget of the foundation’s International Division during 1969–71 that were appended to the Fredericks report often referred to “the potential impact of Southern African race issues on black Americans.” One particular excerpt was especially intriguing: it noted that the tensions created by the official apartheid policy within Africa were generating similar tensions within the United States and were “likely to exert an important and possibly decisive influence on future relations between the United States and Africa.”36 This assertion signified a global type of strategic thinking to which Bundy was accustomed and that he no doubt stimulated among foundation staffers. The implication here is clear: progress in South Africa on race relations would be welcomed by blacks in the United States. As the foundation anticipated, the twin contradictory and cyclical features of apartheid would continue to unfold in a mortally dangerous manner. With the resistance of the oppressed population deepening, repression would intensify, leading to ever-greater resistance, including acts of violence. Increasingly, anxious foundation staff visitors would investigate developments in South Africa and document, as well as illuminate, the features of the contradictory process. A particularly impressive analysis of the process was made in late December 1976, four years after the somewhat upbeat Wayne Fredericks report, by Sheila Avrin McLean. McLean had joined the foundation in 1970 after serving in a major law firm in New York. At the foundation, she held the important position of associate general counsel. McLean’s report was far more downbeat and depressing than the observations of Fredericks. That reaction was hardly accidental, for it came several months after angry and escalating riots broke out in the black Johannesburg ghetto of Soweto on June 16, 1976. The government

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reaction, as expected, was a harsh and brutal crackdown. What made the Soweto affair especially distinctive was the involvement of youngsters who were only between the ages of twelve and fourteen years old.37 Never before had the youth, in such large numbers, entered into the fray against apartheid. The initial target of the youth revolt was the required use of the Afrikaans language as the teaching medium in black schools. But the protest soon turned into a demand for ending the separate educational system for blacks. McLean was startled by the evidence: She wrote at the very beginning of her report, “The most striking and depressing impression I took away from our recent visit to Southern Africa is that much of the guerrilla warfare against whites in South Africa is being conducted by children—Black African children.”38 Before arriving in South Africa, she had stopped in Lesotho, where she met with “young teenagers” who had fled from South Africa. In Botswana, too, she was provided with verbal documentation from South African refugees. And upon her arrival in Cape Town, she met with defense attorneys “who confirmed this impression of children in revolt.” They also confirmed that the twelve- to fourteen-year-old youngsters were “charged, prosecuted and found guilty at once without prior consultations with parents or attorneys.” McLean learned that over nine hundred black school children had already received punishments ranging from fines to jail sentences and caning. Equally startling was the fact that a quarter-million black children in Soweto were refusing to attend school at all. Precisely who was leading the protest was not at all clear to her. She was not even certain “whether they [were] being led or if their parents [supported] or [disapproved] of their action.” If leadership was unknown, motivation, nevertheless, was clear to McLean. The rationale came not from some ideology, but rather, she was convinced, was “an instinctual expression of hatred and anger against the state’s repressive system.” A quotation from a Soweto mother captured the logic of the children’s resistance and the fierceness of their determination: “Our children are telling us that they have nothing to lose . . . we are slaves of the white man. If we have nothing more then we can give our lives.” While knowledgeable sources indicated that it would take ten years before a trained, armed group could wage a successful revolution, at the same time, it had now become evident to whites, “for the first time,” that an “armed struggle” had become a possibility. The authorities, it was clear, embarked upon the course of an uncompromising deterrent response of “more preventive detentions,” with the possibility of torture. June 16 was now seen as a watershed. Disturbingly, it had also revealed to McLean’s sources that the “liberal” English-speaking community of South Africa, when confronted by the black resistance, was basically aligned with the Afrikaner regime. The future was found to be discouraging. South Africa’s so-called “Homeland” policy restricted black citizenship rights to their supposed “Homeland” area. Economically, this meant that South Africa itself was restricted largely to whites insofar as landholding was concerned. Eighty-seven percent of the land that generated 99 percent of the gross national product was held exclusively by whites. Blacks living and working

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in white urban areas were strictly limited in numbers and were treated as foreign labor. Legislation adopted in the summer of 1976 strongly reinforced this separation and intensified resistance to it. The new Internal Security Law provided for the indefinite detention of political opponents. As of November 1, 1976, there were already over 390 being held under the law, forty-two of whom were school children and sixty-one of whom were university students. Strikingly, almost a quarter of the detainees were quite young. McLean’s overall perspective of South Africa made it unlikely that any change in the political power structure was conceivable. Enjoying “massive power,” the apartheid regime was not expected to succumb. Rebelliousness on the part of black youngsters would lead to sizable detentions, other forms of repression, or significant increases of refugees fleeing to nearby independent black states like Lesotho and Botswana. In short, she envisioned a “complete black-white polarization.”39 What bothered her most was that “the generation of children who [were] prepared to fight and strike . . . could easily build up the most bitter resentment toward every white.” Interspersed within this vision was another equally harsh repression of young blacks. To McLean, these contradictions signified a “fundamentally sick” society. McLean’s despair did not mean that efforts ought not to be made to assist the South Africans. The contrary was the case, especially as the black youth was involved. Her primary focus was upon the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, particularly its Southern Africa Project. Her meetings with defense lawyers, both white and black, about their handling of cases involving African youth, impressed her greatly. Particularly striking to her was the working together of black and white lawyers in these cases. In her view, such collaboration was “a particularly important and visible symbol of white support to the young Black Africans.” She feared that young blacks would become totally alienated from whites, and thereby spark a race war. In her report to foundation headquarters, she wrote that “renewal” of the Lawyers Committee’s request for a grant was expected, and she recommended that it “be strongly supported.” A second organization was also lauded: the South African Council of Churches. McLean observed that it was “the only organization . . . assisting the families of political detainees.” The nature and extent of the assistance were not provided. Instead, she noted that the council had undertaken the task of finding lawyers who could defend youths arrested during and following the June riots in Soweto. The lawyers upon whom the churches drew were from prominent white “establishment” law firms. For McLean, this marked an obvious plus. The value of such high-level defense work could not be underestimated. The lawyers found that those not represented by counsel were “swiftly convicted and sentenced.” In McLean’s opinion, as indicated in her memorandum, “the Foundation should try to stay in touch with the Council as it offered a “white-black bridging by defense counsel.” The council’s local and indigenous presence made it particularly valuable, as the Lawyers Committee was based in Washington, DC, quite a distance away.

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With law playing such a crucial role in the foundation’s overall involvement in South African matters, it was quite logical that McLean might want to speculate about a special legal structure that would facilitate the foundation’s purpose. One of her major contacts (who was also a foundation adviser, unofficially), was John Dugard, Dean of the Law faculty at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg. He proposed the creation of a structure that would experiment with and evaluate various forms of legal aid. Such a structure might provide lawyers to advise or represent poor persons in coping with the complexities of local legal matters, such as challenging legal pass restrictions. Another purpose of this structure would be to upgrade the skills of black lawyers. Such a structure—McLean called it a “law foundation”— would assume the task of organizing a legal conference on the uses of jurisprudence to cope with the plight of blacks. McLean welcomed the concept and suggested that the Ford Foundation “help identify” U.S. judges and lawyers as possible participants in the conference. In concentrating upon legal defense issues, McLean could not escape the need to focus on public relations as a mechanism to arouse the world’s conscience. She spent some time in London to meet with officials of Amnesty International for advice and assistance in drawing attention to political detainees. From her perspective and based upon political realities, “the most important assistance a political prisoner in South Africa [could] get [was] international attention.”40 She proposed that a “special grant” to Amnesty International be considered with the aim of obtaining significant information on how to exploit the adoption of South African political prisoners.41 Her rationale was clear: “My feeling is that there will be significantly more arrests and detentions in the future and that we should be alert to the possibility of assistance in this area.” A unique aspect of the McLean report was its unprecedented concentration on black labor. That subject would come to be seen as a strategic core element in the struggle against the apartheid system. McLean, a legal staffer at the foundation, appeared to be among the first to recognize its potential significance. The fundamental reality of black labor’s condition was at the heart of this plight—unequal pay as compared with white labor, and its technical inability to form unions that might challenge that condition, even if enormously burdensome. From a legal viewpoint, blacks, nonetheless, went ahead and somehow organized trade unions. Compounding the problem was a discriminatory legal system of citizenship and migratory labor laws that separated black laborers from their families for long stretches of time. After consulting with key economic professors at the University of Cape Town, McLean advanced the idea for the foundation “to support” a “potentially very useful grant” that would study and analyze “the web of labor laws and pass-laws” dealing “with the migratory nature of the labor force.”42 Even while black labor unions were not permitted to engage in collective bargaining, they were allowed to undertake traditional union activities like collecting dues from their membership. Indeed, factory-based work committees

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were functioning in the western areas of the country around Cape Town. There was even an umbrella organization for the factory-based workers committees. However, new repressive initiatives by the government, such as the “banning” of the leaders of the informal unions, were believed to have “permanently endangered” the early efforts of black trade union groups. McLean did not think that the foundation could assume a direct responsibility for helping African worker groups, but she proposed an alternative method. She wondered in her memorandum about the usefulness of foundation officials talking to a high American labor union official, Glenn Watts of the Communication Workers, to urge that his union undertake “to educate themselves about the problem of South African workers” so that they might extend support to South African worker groups. Had not, she recalled, American trade unions posted recently a three-quarter million dollar bond on behalf of the NAACP? Would it be so far-fetched for American unions to be “pursuing this line” in South Africa? The differences between American and South African trade unions, were, of course, so huge as to make the question unseemly. Yet the very posing of the issue was not unproductive. Later, American unions would become vigorous allies in the battle against apartheid. Labor was not McLean’s only focus of concern. She also believed that corporate America might play a useful role. South Africa’s business community, even with the urging of Harry Oppenheimer, the mining magnate, was not likely to offer meaningful concessions. From her perspective, the offers, characteristically, were “very vague, and too little, too late.”43 In contrast, potential help could come from “transnational corporations . . . especially those based primarily in the U.S.” Of course, such transnational groups must have distinct business interests in South Africa. She pointed to several individuals who might be consulted by foundation leaders in New York, including former Congressman Andrew Young. He had talked of a possible role that the Carter Administration might play. Could not Young, as the new administration’s ambassador to the UN, she apparently believed, be in a position to exert some meaningful influence on Washington and the American business community through the White House? McLean’s perception of future activity by transnational corporations was not restricted to only the area of commerce and business. Rather, she was very much focused on the field of South African labor and legal restrictions, which inhibited a potentially powerful factor in tackling apartheid dominance. She posed the issue rather neatly: “An important point for us [in the Ford Foundation] to keep in mind is that there is room in the law for African unions to maneuver, especially if they are nurtured by the transnational corporation.” McLean did not restrict her suggestions to the immediately threatening area of defending the youthful rebels challenging the system or the black union members seeking to break through the bind of discriminatory restraints. She was also keenly interested in the problem of the education of young blacks and, therefore, looked to the foundation’s scholarship programs. That

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program had found a negative response among the young insofar as the various “Homeland” universities were perceived “as a product of the State’s forced separate development,” and besides, these institutions offered “inferior education to Blacks.” For McLean, the key to black educational upgrading was the black faculty. In her judgment, the route to be pursued by the foundation was in offering the faculty of the “Homeland” universities Master’s Degree training “outside of South Africa.” She was emphatic on the urgent need to provide solid educational training for black youngsters “in preparation for majority rule.” It was impressive that McLean was looking down a very long road and anticipating an eventual breakthrough. Not only did she press the foundation on granting numerous faculty scholarships, but she also sought to open the program to “a wider group of people,” including to those holding Bachelor of Arts degree, on the basis of correspondence courses from the University of South Africa. Her essay concluded with a return to her deep preoccupation with the trauma of black children. She expected that many more “[would] be arrested, charged, convicted and sentenced” under the older Terrorism and Suppression of Communism Acts as well as under the new Internal Security Law. Although she viewed the role of the Lawyers Committee in the legal defense field as necessary and valuable, she cautioned about other foundation programs, even after she advocated them. The “tolerance” of the South African regime toward the foundation grant programs for South African institutes, churches, and universities remained always an uncertain factor. Expanding “our [foundation] activities beyond the line of acceptability,” howsoever vague that “line” was, might result in the government rejecting the foundation grant program in South Africa altogether. It was, in the end, “risky business” to continue with the grant program. At the same time, “defense work and assistance to African political detainees and their families” could not, under any circumstances, be halted. They constituted, she wrote, “the most helpful [programs] that we [in the foundation could] offer.”44

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Chapter

8

Th e R e j e c t i o n o f “Fata l i s m”

I f developments in South Africa were profoundly traumatic, they hardly reflected an unfolding reality on the world scene. At the very time when the foundation’s acutely perceptive investigator, Sheila McLean, was registering an utterly pessimistic outlook about the future in South Africa, the United States was moving to inaugurate a president, Jimmy Carter, who was committed to an activist human rights approach in foreign policy. Concern about trends in South Africa had become deeply rooted in major areas of American life. The South African embassy in Washington, DC, had become, since 1974, the target of even larger daily demonstrations. And human rights had also become a centerpiece of the international community, symbolized the following year, in December 1977, with the unprecedented awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Amnesty International, the world’s leading human rights NGO. Still, McLean’s concerns would have to be dealt with. The foundation would ineluctably be compelled to wrestle with the question of navigating its increasingly risky policy through a worsening situation. That it would do so, and do so effectively, was testimony to its commitment to human rights and an acute intelligence of how to fulfill that commitment. McLean had been quite brief about one aspect of the South African trauma: the plight of the refugees, often youngsters or young persons who had fled to nearby black states, like Botswana. Certainly, she was acutely aware of their problem; after all, she was consumed by the terrible tragedy that compelled them to flee. But, there was little she could propose to relieve their plight. Much more serious and experienced was a foundation staffer who had just arrived on the South African scene—David Heaps. He had played a central role concerning the Chilean situation in 1974–75 that very much involved the exodus of intellectuals from the brutal Augusto Pinochet regime. He had diligently examined all the facets of that issue, and his findings obliged a major and transforming shift in foundation thinking concerning military dictatorships and how to deal with the inevitable intellectual-refugee problem that would result. Earlier, he had been preoccupied in Paris with the intellectual refugees leaving communist society in Eastern Europe.

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Now, but a few months after Sheila McLean’s investigation and report, Heaps would undertake for the foundation a major inquiry on the problem of young black refugees from another form of dictatorship: the racial dictatorship of apartheid. His focus was on how to “assist the refugee situation” in southern Africa.1 A more knowledgeable specialist could hardly be found. He sought, early in 1977, to research and investigate what the standard international refugee organizations were already doing about the plight of the young refugees and how the foundation might prove helpful. The inquiry involved not only a canvassing of the entire southern African area, including Rhodesia, but also major international centers dealing with the refugees, most notably Geneva, Switzerland, where the UN and other agencies were headquartered. In his trip to Geneva, Heaps was accompanied by Robert Edwards, who headed the foundation division dealing with southern Africa. Heaps summed up his impression with the comment, “a real life tragedy of possibly epic proportions is unfolding inexorably.”2 His sources advised him that the situation was “deeply unpromising [and] probably fated to get worse.” Hardly a pessimist, Heaps had earlier studied particularly dire circumstances. Still, he considered the circumstances of southern Africa to be “an emergency situation” going well beyond “immediate rehabilitation measures.” It was Heaps’s task to ascertain what was being done in the area and “whose efforts potentially could be supported and strengthened” by the foundation. Heaps’s focus was largely upon Botswana, which constituted “a real crisis area” where the refugee problem was “threatening” and might spread to contiguous areas. He saw the “immediate need” as being “to help shore up the Botswana capacity to handle the refugee . . . problems.” In his visit to the offices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, he was overwhelmingly stunned by the agency’s inadequacy. He wrote that he “cannot recall ever having met in the aggregate a less incisive knowledgeable and prepared group” as the staff of the UN agency. If, in consequence, he expected little from the UN refugee office, he was far more impressed by discussions with staffers of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The committee was already expecting that the southern African area would involve “human and political difficulties” for which it was “preparing . . . to be helpful.” For South Africa itself, the ICRC would want to make sure that “appropriate standards for political and military prisoners,” as elaborated in international law, were “maintained” by the authorities. This would involve “assurances for prison visitations” by ICRC officials. Their primary focus was clear enough: they concentrated not on refugee issues, but rather on prisoners. The International University Exchange Fund, an organization about which Heaps acknowledged to have known little, turned out to have had already a “significant” program for specifically black South Africans and refugees from other southern African countries. The program embraced, in 1975–76, 1,637 scholarships that had gone to South African students. Of this total, 721 went to student refugees from the southern African area.

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More broadly active with respect to refugees was the World Council of Churches. Its International Commission director and his colleagues were described as being “terrified” by the refugee situation. Sufficient help was the problem, as assistance was provided through the regional church bodies of the World Council. The anticipated “increased efforts” of churches would thus be “limited” by their “capacity . . . in relation to needs.” Also housed in Geneva was the International Commission of Jurists, which, for a long time, had received grants from the foundation. Its director, Niall McDermott, indicated to Heaps that the primary concern of his organization was to help provide adequate legal defense assistance to prisoners in South Africa. Several other meetings with Geneva institutions were also held by Heaps, but these proved unproductive. Only the Heaps meeting with the International Committee of the Red Cross, he believed, offered some significant assistance and warranted special attention. He called for the “strengthening of the ICRC presence” in South Africa. A proposal along this line had already been received by the foundation in New York, which he appeared to welcome.3 McDermott proposed the establishment of a “public defender.”4 But Heaps failed to develop it further. He did endorse a suggestion for an “on-theground investigation” to determine “what [could] be done” to relieve “the acute refugee problem.” In his view, this inquiry might be undertaken by “a scholar-journalist type” with familiarity of the area. It would be designed as an “action-oriented” intensive analysis. The results could be, he thought, “distributed publicly” and “published in a reputable journal or as a book or brochure.” No one person was mentioned to perform the task. But, in a conversation that Heaps had with Martin Ennals, head of Amnesty International, a curious proposal was made. Ennals insisted that there was an “urgent need . . . for someone to go there [the southern African area] at an early date to take a fresh look at the total situation to assess what might best be done.” After rejecting various types of individuals who might be selected, the Amnesty International director suddenly expressed the hope that Heaps himself “might be able to undertake such an assignment.” He ventured this suggestion because, at the time (according to the Heaps memorandum), Heaps’ relationship with the Ford Foundation was characterized as “a very loose association.” What was Heaps’s reaction? Candor mixed with false modesty resulted in his “concurrence with this view.”5 During the subsequent pages of the memorandum, no further reference was made to the odd conversation. At the very end, Heaps simply recommended that the foundation make a conscious effort “to keep regularly in touch with the principal agencies active in the field.”6 The Soweto riots clearly marked a turning point in the struggle against apartheid. And, not surprisingly, they also marked a turning point in the policy and program of the Ford Foundation. Few would have been able to grasp the twin turning points and their interrelationship as much as Robert Edwards, who headed the Middle East and Africa Division of the foundation, and had traveled with Heaps on the latter’s mission to southern Africa. A

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most perceptive generalist and analyst, Edwards was in a position to determine developing trends and anticipate future directions. As he was leaving the foundation in June 1977, one year after the events in Soweto, he chose to set out in an interoffice memorandum, addressed to David Bell, a fairly detailed projection of his expectations.7 Edwards’s immediate reaction to the unfolding current situation was one he described as “fearful and fatalistic about the black-white conflict in Southern Africa.” A cautionary personal note was then appended to an obvious pessimistic tone that bordered on cataclysmic doom: “Fatalism is uncharacteristic of an organization which believes in progress through efforts of reason.” Yet, the need to be upbeat had to be qualified by the reality that the “conflict [was] rooted in factors which lie beyond the reach of human will and reason” and that is rooted in the “ineradical whiteness and blackness” of their respective histories. In his analytical summary, Edwards had come to the conclusion “that we are only at the beginning of a struggle.” The very nature of the system of apartheid designed to provide for a total separation of the races, and at the same time created an eventual sense of doom hovering above everyone and everything. The total white community, not merely the Nationalist Party of the Boers, held to the firm and earnest belief that “the nation’s blacks [were] a problem to be dealt with . . . not parties to a dispute [or] adversaries to be negotiated with.” At the heart of this belief was the fundamental “perception [of the blacks’] inferiority.” If the “centrality” of Western culture provided for the notion of the assimilability of the blacks, the attitude of the white regime in South Africa involved its total and utter rejection. “Fears of Armageddon” dominated the southern African scene. Catastrophic chaos could be expected, especially in the economy. Separate development policy ran totally contrary to the very nature of the economy that was recognized as “large, sophisticated [and] unitary.” To have it “Balkanized or partitioned geographically” could never be realized “without major upheaval.” This constituted the major “flaw” in South Africa’s logic and its reality, as blacks were already “solidly integrated” into the economy, and fully one-half the black population lived in or near the white urban areas. But the psychology of fear among whites trumped the logic of reality. As Edwards viewed reality, the whites had reached the conclusion that there was “nowhere to go” and, therefore, a fight to the finish was in the air. Edwards saw the collision of two separate worldviews as being just around the corner since the focus of “hatred and bitterness” was already welling up for the final Armageddon. What might have played a tempering element before a violent end seized the opposing forces, Edwards believed, was the role of the United States. His analysis was most unusual and quite original in his characterization of how the South African situation impacted America. Indeed, he looked upon the distant geographical scene from a strikingly domestic perspective and, therefore, saw it in very special terms. In his view, the race issue within the United States “still [posed] the greatest threat” to America’s social and political

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system.”8 If that threat could be ameliorated by “ensuring that blacks [were] assimilated more generously . . . through the economic and power hierarchies” of U.S. society on the one hand, it could be severely sundered by “hatred and savagery between blacks and whites” in Southern Africa on the other. That which posed “the principal strategic threat” to the United States was not “Soviet opportunism exploiting the ‘hatred and savagery’” for its own purposes, but rather the “poisoning of the America racial atmosphere.” Precisely because of clashing black-white interests in southern Africa that could not but spill over onto the attitudes of whites and blacks within the United States, Edwards concluded that the United States was obliged to hold one major policy objective: “Preventing Southern Africa from disrupting our own multi-racial polity.” Already in the U.S. business community, he found an “admiration for the probity and efficiency of white South Africans.” In sharp and distinctive contrast, American blacks were profoundly aware of “U.S. business acquiescence in apartheid.” The contradictory view could not lead to compromise or outside mediation. While American “mediation” of the kind that had been followed in Rhodesia eventually forced the expulsion of Ian Smith’s government, Edwards believed that this policy was not applicable to South Africa, as it could very likely prove counterproductive to American business interests, and therefore to U.S. interests. Certainly, the new Carter administration, in its rhetoric on human rights and on apartheid, was useful, but Edwards was certain that it would not bow to black African demands for an economic boycott. Too many vital economic interests were at stake. Lip service would be paid to human rights, followed by some modest tightening of existing arms embargoes and the termination of official military, scientific, and economic cooperation, along with a diminution of certain diplomatic representation and the reduction of government financing. But a fundamental alteration of the U.S.-South African relationship, particularly with respect to the United States’ heavy direct investment in the South African economy, could not be expected or even proposed. Bringing about real “change” was not to be portrayed as being on the agenda. In contrast, the U.S. administration could be expected to expand its programs of economic assistance to black states surrounding South Africa and to provide genuine help to Botswana and Lesotho, nations already heavily burdened by the flow of refugees. It was in the context of this stunningly realistic and perceptive analysis of the race relationship in South Africa and how it impinged upon America that Edwards assumed the task of outlining what the Ford Foundation should do. The initial task revolved around the extreme complexity and delicacy of the issue. With complications and uncertainty mounting, and in view of the virtual or near absence of research information and documentation, Edwards concentrated heavily upon the urgent need to obtain the services of a broad variety of established scholars, research, and policy organizations. But the research and documentation was not to be restricted only to foundation guidance: it was also geared toward orienting a generally uninformed American

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public as to what was at stake, the alternatives involved, and what could be expected from differing approaches. Versed in the literature of the field, Edwards thought it appropriate to describe the expected flow of scholarly publications. First to be mentioned was a series of books on southern Africa to be published by the University of California Press. It was intended to be “the most solid single corpus of information about the region.” Edwards noted that the foundation’s Middle East and Africa Division would be providing its support for the work.9 It was in mid-1977 that he mentioned this, but it was not until 1981 that the initial volume, titled South Africa: Time Running Out, was to be published. The sizable 517-page study was supervised by a “Study Commission on U.S. Policy toward Southern Africa,” which included almost a dozen academics, university administrators, and top business officials. The project was launched in 1978 by the Rockefeller Foundation, but the commission chairman was identified in the 1981 volume as Franklin A. Thomas, who had become president of the Ford Foundation in 1979. The staff of the commission study totaled some seventy-five individuals and included top academic research specialists and corporate executives.10 Edwards did not say much about the planned study, but its significance, as shall be noted later, was great. The then prominent Boston scholarly journal, Daedalus, was planning a volume of essays on various aspects of southern Africa to be completed in eighteen months.11 Edwards thought the plan “timely,” and its expected “high quality” led him to recommend a grant of $120,000. The Washington, D.C.,-based Brookings Institution had proposed a major academic conference on southern Africa. It requested $125,000–$150,000. With that academic institution offering major “African exposure,” and with the expectation that what might emerge were several books, he thought the project “highly desirable.” He was also looking forward to the New York–based Council on Foreign Relations completing plans for a project that would ultimately produce a book “that would focus on the relationship of Africa to other American interests.” Discussions at the time were proceeding with the Ford Foundation on how a variety of issues might be fully covered in the planned study. Additional grants were contemplated for a conference that was to be sponsored by the African-American Institute in 1979 at a cost of about ninety thousand dollars. Its last conference revealed “the passion of black Americans” about South Africa. In his view, a conference by the group would provide “a slice of life to which the . . . [existing Carter] Administration and the Congress needed exposure.” A three-year grant of seventy-five thousand dollars was also to be made to the principal black U.S. grant organization, the Phelps-Stokes Fund. Finally, Edwards advised that the foundation staff needed to be “alert to opportunities for research and analyses.”12 The gap in the country’s knowledge about the subject and the urgency of dealing with it prompted him to give special emphasis to the academic gap that urgently required filling. Related to the problem of obtaining data and documentation was his recognition that supporting research “inside” South Africa was

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problematic and could be undertaken with “great care.” An exception was the Institute of Race Relations, which had been a foundation grantee since 1952. A modest grant of forty thousand dollars to this organization for it to complete a revision of its digest of apartheid legislation was endorsed. Information and documentation may have been of importance in enlightening America on all levels with reference to southern Africa. But the foundation’s primary concern had always been the advancement of human rights, or, as Edwards now put it, “to see that the question of human misery of innocent people is diminished” and, where possible, “non-racialism, humanity and justice are promoted.” With South Africa taking on “increasingly the character of a police state,” and “survival” a predominant consideration, what priorities were to be followed? The first item mentioned was the Southern Africa Project of the foundation-sponsored Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law. That project had only recently been created, and Edwards was less than precise in his discussion of it. He cautioned, “[the project] will bear watching to see to it that it maintains a strategic focus on its activities.”13 “Strategic focus” was not defined. Did he mean it was to take account of America’s “strategic interest?” He was also uncertain as to whether the South African legal system offered at least a modest window for the protection of basic human rights. He implied that if the window no longer existed, funding of the Southern Africa Project would no longer be continued. Only for the time being should subsidization of the Project at the prevailing rate of fifty thousand dollars per annum be followed. On a related subject, Edwards appeared to welcome the establishment of a “Law Foundation” as a separate “legal aid structure that might promote pro bono legal activities” where the legal profession was “circumscribed by apathy, conservatism and harassment.” He strongly favored the picture of “whites working visibly with blacks to assist the ideal of non-racial justice.” Were this to be realized through the Law Foundation, he said, “the [Ford] Foundation could provide consulting and organizing support.” Nonetheless, Edwards remained incorrigibly “pessimistic.” Human rights violations, he believed, would become so bad that the temporary solution would not rest with lawyers or legal institutions but rather with appropriate “instruments of the mitigation of savagery and the succoring of mass misery.” For this reason, he looked to the possible useful role to be played by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Edwards was obviously impressed with Heaps’s report on the ICRC (Edwards had accompanied Heaps to Geneva). The organization’s “operational experience and professionalism” prompted him to be an advocate of a grant to it in 1977 of $250,000. This would enable the ICRC to establish a “permanent presence” in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, in order to prepare “against expected times of greater violence.” Refugee problems were not neglected. Referring to how the Middle East and Africa Division had arranged for David Heaps to travel to Botswana and discuss with its administration a range of organizational, informational, and programmatic responses to help relieve the crisis, Edwards indicated that the Ford Foundation was committed to playing “an advisory role to strengthen

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Botswana’s capacity to analyze and react to [the refugee] circumstances.” Not neglected, either, was the scholarship program earlier projected for the foundation to strengthen, educationally, future junior faculty at black colleges in the “Homeland” areas through advanced-degree study abroad. In this way, Edwards believed, the foundation would also produce trained manpower for a future nonracial society. Anticipating future strategies that the foundation might want to undertake, Edwards disclosed that the foundation’s Finance Division would be taking account of the South African internal situation when it planned investment policies. This subject was earlier avoided. Indeed, the Middle East and Africa Division, for the first time, he recalled, had shortly met with the staff of the foundation Finance Division to study U.S. corporate practices in South Africa. Anticipated, too, was the creation of “a monitoring point in the U.S. for these [corporate] practices.” Clearly, Edwards took great pride in the geographic division he had headed. He observed, in a closing note, that while differences of opinion regarding South Africa inevitably cropped up among staff members, emphasis was placed on reaching decisions through the consensus process. As described by him, decisions were not reached until the issue was “hammered out among colleagues.” Appended to his final report was a listing of grant expenditures for southern Africa. By mid-1977, the amount totaled $908,058, almost one million dollars, which was about double that of the amount in 1974, when it stood at $517,634.14 Very soon after Edwards completed his summary report on the South African situation and left his post at the foundation, a second major turning point of repression took place. On October 19, 1977, leading moderate black personages and organizations were subject to “banning” by the South African authorities. The “banning” of an individual meant that he or she was confined to the territory he lived in or to his or her home—a sort of house arrest. He or she could also be limited in discussions that he or she might wish to have with persons outside of the immediate family. The “banning” of organizations, in essence, meant that their operations were closed down. In addition, the “banning process” meant that a number of individuals associated with the organization might be arrested. The total was quite high: twenty organizations, including the leading black newspaper, The World, were “banned” and sixty persons were either “banned” or arrested.15 The striking feature of this fairly massive crackdown was that the individuals and organizations involved were by no means considered militant; on the contrary, they were known to be, in the main, moderate voices in the black community. Typical of the targets was Percy Quoboza, the editor of The World. Others banned were the Committee of Ten and the Black Parents Association, both moderate advocates of the pupils of the Soweto schools who were on strike. Most of the members of the two groups were arrested and detained by the authorities. “Banned,” too, was the multiracial group, the Christian Institute, whose head, Beyers Naude, a liberal white minister, was widely known in the West. A second prominent moderate who was banned was Donald Woods of the Daily Dispatch, a liberal publication that

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was rather widely read. “Banned,” too, was the Black People Movement, founded by Steve Biko and designed to reflect Biko’s “black consciousness” philosophy. Overtly, his ideology was dedicated to the nonviolent resolution of racial tensions in South Africa. What may have prompted the apartheid government’s newly intensified repressive campaign was the continuation of the school boycott by school children in Soweto. The student determination was backed by the teachers in secondary schools and by four of their five principals. Another consideration in the Soweto community was the government’s insistence, in its “Homeland” policy, on rejecting the right of blacks to hold permanent residence and permanent employment in urban areas. The government’s campaign was met by a determined effort to legitimize the actual black family presence in those areas. Some in the West may have been shocked by this harsh decision of the authorities so soon after the brutal suppression of the Soweto pupil strike against the regime’s requirements that they learn the Afrikaans language. The foundation’s expert on the subject of apartheid, Sheila McLean, was not surprised, however. She saw the October 19 “bannings” and detentions as a reflection of the “conscious racism of the white society [of South Africa].” She wrote, “the apartheid government’s decision has been a consistent reaction for more than three-quarters of a century.” Specifically, the regime has been determined to suppress black organizations, whether established to importune or to confront the government. Those “banned,” she said, sought only to “importune,” not to “confront,” the regime in any way, certainly not by violence.16 McLean arrived in South Africa only a few weeks after the government crackdown. She was joined the week after her arrival by foundation vice-president, David Bell, and by William Carmichael, to inspect the foundation’s “limited program of activities in South Africa.” Her report, entitled “Visit to South Africa,” which ran forty-six pages, was remarkably perceptive and keenly analytical. Strikingly, unlike her earlier memorandum, in her new report, McLean refused to wallow in pessimism. Even if she found “almost complete polarization of the black and white communities,” meetings for her and her foundation colleagues could still be arranged with black individuals and groups, despite the fact that the formerly helpful Christian Institute was now banned, and the Institute of Race Relations was no longer functioning effectively. And, despite polarization, she learned of a number of positive developments from Professor Lawrence Schlemmer of the University of Natal, who was a grantee of the Ford Foundation. Especially important was his research finding that the dominant political party, the National Party, was far from having a unitary position on race. His data showed that 40 percent of the voters for this party would want to give the “colored” or mixed race grouping full franchise rights. A similar attitude prevailed in the government cabinet prior to the recent election.17 Another Afrikaaner professor, André Du Toit, a political theorist, had concluded on the basis of his studies that the so-called “laager” mentality of the Afrikaaners was not a totally accurate

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perception. McLean and her colleagues found evidence that an “enlightened” segment of the Afrikaaner community was “gaining strength or the courage to speak out publicly.” Certain indications were especially welcome. The leading Afrikaaner academic institution, the University of Stellenbosch, was going to admit, in the next term, nonwhite students for the first time. In addition, young professors at another prominent Afrikaaner university had recently issued a human rights declaration. A reflection of the variety of political views was the appearance of a new political party, the Progressive Party, which won a modest number of seats in the Parliament. The new party called for the establishment of a multiracial government. Of particular significance was the public inquest into the death of Steve Biko, on September 12, 1977, which had begun shortly before McLean’s arrival. She arranged to attend the inquest soon after its opening and was impressed by how Biko’s attorneys “produced chilling revelations about the much-feared security policy, [about] treatment of political prisoners and [about] discrepancies in police accounts of Mr. Biko’s death.” Initially, the minister of justice of the apartheid regime had declared that Biko had died from his own hunger strike. During the inquest, the family’s attorneys were able to reveal that he had died from brain injuries. And, even later, they would disclose that the brain injuries were a result of brutal torture conducted by the security police. McLean found it striking and revealing that during the inquest, once the daily legal session ended, black laborers and students gathered outside the building and raised their voices in song. The text of the song contended that the minister of justice would not be permitted to enter heaven, while the Biko family attorneys, who were both black and white, would be permitted in. The foundation staffer commented that blacks were still able to distinguish between the white oppressor and those few whites in South Africa who displayed “the courage to assist them in their struggle.” It was especially significant that the inquest was public. That circumstance made possible press coverage. South Africans and the international community, noted McLean, “learned of the treatment of political prisoners.”18 The white press had not been stifled, therefore, a certain accuracy of the South African racial situation could be ascertained. Even earlier, when in 1977 the trial was held of the leaders of the Black Peoples’ Convention and the South African Student Organization, the proceedings were widely reported in the South African press, both the white and black press, including testimony by Steve Biko on the “Black Consciousness” movement. The McLean report was also revealing in noting that, along with Bell and Carmichael, she was accompanied by a special foundation consultant, Desaix Myers, III. His consultation dealt with transnational corporations in the South African economy, particularly as a possible force for improved working conditions for blacks. She specifically observed that Myers was there “reviewing the labor practices” of American corporations in South Africa. She noted, too, that during her visit, Polaroid, the giant film corporation, was halting its operations in South Africa because its film was being used to implement the

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harsh pass laws. Also reported at the time was that the well-known international corporation Gulf & Western would cease all further investments of capital in Natal’s sugar plantations. How decisions involving Polaroid and Gulf & Western were reached was not touched upon. Still, they signaled a responsiveness in the American corporate community to blatant forms of discrimination and human rights violations. Listed as a primary aim of McLean and her associates in visiting South Africa in November–December 1977 was to “assess the work” of the foundation’s crucial grantee, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law and its Southern Africa Project. In her initial broaching of this subject, McLean observed that the foundation’s “two major themes” in its program in South Africa were human rights and the law, and they required providing training opportunities for blacks. Unlike Edwards, whose report was prepared the previous year, McLean saw the Lawyers Committee as a top priority. Nor was there any suggestion that its funding might be cut off. Edwards had expressed a certain doubt about the committee’s “strategic” plans. No such doubt was expressed now. On the contrary, the observations about the committee and its Project were more than laudatory. The committee’s Southern Africa Project was described as “the major U.S.—and possibly international—center of legal advice, action and information about human rights issues in South Africa.” Discussions with South African sources had convinced the foundation investigatory team “that defense attorneys in South Africa find the intellectual and monetary support of the Lawyers Committee important in their work.”19 In the Biko inquest, the committee, together with the American Bar Association, had sent one of America’s most prominent legal specialists, Louis Pollack, dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, as an observer. The committee also provided extensive assistance, both legal and financial, to Sydney Kentridge, a white lawyer who was the lead advocate for the Biko family. The praise of the Lawyers Committee was of the highest order. Its work with the South African bar was declared to be “extremely valuable.” Besides its legal work, the committee and its Southern Africa Project were acclaimed for their work in alerting “the American legal community and through it, the public, business, and government agencies to the human rights situation in Southern Africa.” Still, throughout the report, the fear was expressed that the South African government might prevent outside and foreign funding of the Project. No immediate threat, however, was forthcoming. A second legal form of assistance was also projected by McLean. During the course of the past years, consideration was given in Johannesburg to creating a public-interest law effort. This would have a tripartite character: a public interest advocacy arm, a research component, and a link to the University of Witwatersrand Law School and its “legal clinics.” One of the country’s top black lawyers, Arthur Chaskelson, had expressed a desire to forgo his private practice and run the advocacy arm. (Once South Africa was freed from the apartheid system, Chaskelson would become chief justice of its Constitutional Court.) Another prominent law expert, John Dugard, the

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dean of the University of Witwatersrand Law School, had offered to head up the research arm. Finally, Felicia Kentridge, who ran the law clinics at the university, agreed to serve in an advisory role to the school’s clinics, which would become a major source of the work of the research and advocacy groups. The significance of this development cannot be exaggerated, as the law clinics had already been preoccupied with black issues and their clients were exclusively black. For example, one of the clinics dealt with consumer and housing problems arising out of racial classification. A second clinic was concerned with labor law and focused on worker organizations as well as on victimization. Since the foundation had expressed a keen interest in the tripartite project, it was certain to render financial assistance. Included in the major law and human rights themes, if only tangentially, was the International Committee of the Red Cross. David Heaps, in his consultative mission for the foundation during the previous year, had focused upon the ICRC. McLean now revealed that the International Committee was given two hundred fifty thousand dollars by the foundation to enable it to act as “a potential peacemaker and influential point of contact” with all parties in South Africa. The ICRC, at the probable suggestion of Heaps, committed itself to opening a small office in Pretoria. Its personnel would be enabled to visit black prisoners and detainees and to seek to improve conditions during their incarceration. Clearly, various functions of the ICRC were related to the foundation’s expectation that the apartheid system would inevitably breed more and more prisoners and detainees. A second NGO related to legal defense work was the South African Council of Churches, the only multiracial operation in the country. Concerned as it was with the problems of the urban black community, the council also acted as a kind of defender of the “banned” organizations. Trust funds had been accumulated by the Council to enable it to hire defense counsel for detainees in Johannesburg. The mere fact that some lawyers from major law firms had agreed to serve as lawyers for the defense had already resulted, reported McLean, in “dozens of [prosecution] cases . . . being withdrawn.”20 The prosecutors feared an embarrassing loss in the courtroom or with public opinion. The fact, too, that black prisoners may have white defense lawyers could diminish somewhat the suspicion of the blacks about whites and their legal system. Carmichael was reported to be considering a modest grant to the council to arrange for the training of a black attorney. The second overriding theme of the foundation—the rights of black workers and unions—was, naturally, given attention, but not to the same extent as the legal defense work, which was a result of South Africa’s growing and palpable security concerns. McLean’s report, nonetheless, did take note that black unions not only existed in South Africa, especially in the Durban area, but also that, indeed, they were one of two major “legitimate organizing [mechanisms] for black communities”—the other being churches. Nonetheless, she and her colleagues did not have enough time “to get deeply into the area of labor relations and black workers rights.”21 That was regrettable, as the

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black unions would later play an extraordinary role in the struggle against apartheid. Already, the issue of black workers’ rights had moved higher on the government’s agenda with the appointment of a new government labor commission. One of the country’s top academics, the economist Professor Francis Wilson of the University of Cape Town, was conducting special research into the problems of migratory labor. He had already been a source of valuable information to the foundation on the subject. In addition, the foundation had made a grant to an American professor of labor law at Stanford University Law School to prepare a law review article on South African labor law. Especially challenging was information that “a small group of young lawyers and labor activists” in South Africa were already “working with black unions and black workers.” She speculated, not surprisingly, that “there may be program opportunities in this area.” Even if the refugee issue involving youngsters fleeing to Botswana and other small states near South Africa, as well as to larger black states, was not among the defined top priorities of the foundation, the subject was hardly neglected. McLean expected “increased black South African refugees in Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho and even Mozambique.” The refugees were described as mainly “young, poorly-educated and highly politicized.” Heaps had already provided some consulting work on the refugee subject even though, unfortunately, McLean and her highly placed foundation colleagues on this particular trip had “not been in touch with this aspect of South Africa’s human rights problem.” McLean nonetheless felt it essential to “keep informed of developments” and, more importantly, to “consider ways in which the foundation might make an appropriate contribution.” It was already abundantly tragic and apparent that the big influx of teenagers to the schools in nearby countries was enormously burdensome on these institutions. The prevailing resources of these countries could hardly be tapped. In addition, it was known that some of the young people would prefer opportunities for advanced training. If in Chile or Argentina during the seventies the refugees issue was intertwined with the liberal intellectuals, who had always been a primary focus of the Ford Foundation, the subject was quite different in the South African situation. In the latter case, the refugees were all black. Their legal defenders were largely white and therefore might face harsh threats from others in the white community. Still, some white liberal intellectuals were confronted with difficulties in getting published or in obtaining permission to travel abroad. In this way, their intellectual futures could be jeopardized. About half a dozen such cases were listed by McLean as she went out of her way to note that some of them were “unable to get funding . . . for research.” She stressed that the Ford Foundation “should be open to requests from them.” The reason was self evident: their research was of a character “to challenge the underpinnings of [apartheid’s] social and economic system.”22 Among the names were Francis Wilson and Lawrence Schlemmer.

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After the delineation of the liberal intellectual problem, McLean took some pains to examine and evaluate a long-time grantee of the foundation, the Institute of Race Relations. Some of the criticism was rather sharp. This group was said to be “not in touch with the black community,” and it was noted that it “[lacked] vitality.” While it worked on putting together its annual and “indispensable” volumes on Legislation and Race Relations, there was hope that the institute could “recover some of its energy in the future.” Recent information about new appointments to the institute’s board suggested that significant improvement might result. Among the changes was the naming of Sheena Duncan to the board. She was identified as the leading figure of the Black Sash, which McLean described as doing an effective job in assisting blacks dealing with the complex web of migratory family influx controls. Highlighted in her survey was the critical need to provide fellowships for blacks seeking higher academic degrees outside of South Africa. This was seen as crucial because young black Africans had nothing but contempt for the “Homeland” universities, whose educational legitimacy was vigorously questioned. Targeted as alternatives were correspondence courses with the so-called University of South Africa and universities in the United States. A welcome development was the willingness of the Federal Theological Seminary, which prepared ministers for several Protestant denominations to accept blacks into the profession. Carmichael and McLean engaged in conversation with the seminary in which they discussed that the foundation would offer grants to prospective seminary trainees. Special attention was paid to offering training opportunities for teachers of black primary and secondary school students. As the issue of better and more effective training of teachers was seen as being of “critical importance,” some urged, as a priority matter, the establishment of “a center for this purpose.”23 In McLean’s view, the priority agenda item ought to be scholarships or fellowships. She was looking toward a future when black South Africans would assume “leadership roles in their own country.” It was through programs of educational training that the foundation “could help prepare” for this outcome. But, for the present, it was clear that the preeminent concern of the foundation was the virulent crackdown on the militancy that had spread to the youth since the school strike of June 1976. For the foundation, the primary need was the funding of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law and its Southern Africa Project. An initial grant of fifty thousand dollars in 1972 had proved to be most useful, and it pointed toward the general direction the foundation would go with respect to this key NGO. It was a relationship in some ways similar to the relationship the foundation would develop with the U.S. Helsinki Watch in 1978 and then later with the Human Rights Watch. In 1973, the foundation had continued its initial grant to the Lawyers Committee, but this time for $74,278 beginning April 1, 1973, an amount

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that was to run for eighteen months.24 Three reasons for the allocation decision were offered by the Middle East and Africa Division in urging the grant. The first was of critical importance as long as the white-controlled regimes of South Africa publicly endorsed the “rule of law” as a fundamental principle. Courts and lawyers could play a modest role in questioning and mitigating the arbitrary and often brutal exercise of state power. The opportunity was thus provided for using and exploiting legal institutions. Very much interrelated to the use of the law and legal institutions was the second reason: “focusing world attention” on the repression by the apartheid regime. It was precisely the “judicial process” that provided the “mechanism” for affecting international opinion.25 The third reason was especially intriguing. Were the American legal community more informed on the functioning of apartheid and its repressive political and social character, it would be able to exert a “significant impact” on the U.S. public, and more importantly, on corporations and on the U.S. government. The United States was seen as critical, and therefore public opinion and the policy of American business as well as that of the administration were seen as having great potential leverage in affecting apartheid. From the perspective of the foundation, the role for the Lawyers Committee with specific reference to the apartheid issue was unparalleled. It called the committee “the principal U.S. organization focusing on legal issues” and mentioned that the committee occupied “a unique position.”26 Since the committee began functioning with foundation funding in 1972, it had already taken on nine cases under the rubric of its South Africa Litigation Program. But the Litigation Program went far beyond purely legal defense work. The background and issues involved in these cases, said the foundation, had been “widely publicized” through cables, letters, and reports dealing with particular trials. The result was to bring these trials “to the notice” of the world. Thus the very nature of the litigation process, through the committee’s “public information role,” was deemed “important.” Of particular relevance was how the committee dealt with the business practices of U.S. corporate firms in relation to South Africa. A central moral issue for transnational U.S. corporations revolved around discriminatory employment practices. The hiring of only white workers for specific jobs and the payment of black labor at lower wage levels than white labor may not have been countenanced in the United States. But in South Africa, it was thought or assumed by the transnational enterprises that nondiscriminatory labor practices would be considered illegal under local law. What the committee’s research showed, however, was that nondiscrimination, in many instances, was “legally permissible.” Thus, the committee could and did take on a consultative capacity to a range of businesses and investor groups in the United States. To the foundation, this distinctive committee function was seen as most valuable. Equally valuable to the foundation was the legal action taken by the committee in U.S. courts about South Africa. Thus, it challenged an action of the

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Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) granting landing rights to South African Airways. Also challenged in court were the practices of the New York Times to accept discriminatory advertising for various jobs in South Africa. Finally, the committee took legal action to prohibit the import of certain goods produced in South Africa and Namibia on grounds that they were produced by forced labor and were, therefore, in violation of international law. Precisely because law, in various guises, served as the core of the committee, it was hardly accidental that a special subcommittee made up of top lawyers would be created in 1973 to supervise the Southern African Project. While the board and executive committee of the group comprised prominent members of the legal profession, the subcommittee’s membership was especially outstanding. The chairman, George Lindsay, was from the toplevel law firm of Debevoise, Plimpton, Lyon and Gates. A second key figure, Theodore Sorenson, came from the equally impressive firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison. (Sorenson had been President Kennedy’s principal White House staffer and speech writer.) The dean of the Catholic University Law School, Clinton Bamberger, also served on the subcommittee, as did the very talented senior staff lawyer of the NAACP, James Nabrit, III. With this impressive composition, hardly anyone could doubt that the Lawyers Committee could reach key and powerful members of the American legal community. Contacts would inevitably follow with respect to major corporate enterprises and the U.S. government. Inevitable, too, was the raising in the legal community of an awareness of the deep-rooted social and moral problems of apartheid. At the same time, statements and reports of the committee were certain to win attention in the media, and its expertise could not easily be questioned or challenged. Flowing from the prestigious character of its policy makers was the ability to reach out and seek pro bono legal services on a variety of levels. In addition, the stature of the committee could command contributions from various well-to-do law firms. Thus, the Lawyers Committee could supplement its limited Ford Foundation contribution with supplementary sources totaling thirty thousand dollars the previous year. It goes without saying that the foundation would be most pleased by the work of this NGO, even if “the impact of the Southern African Litigation Program [was] likely to be minimal in terms of effecting fundamental changes in that part of the world.” Nonetheless, the foundation summary indicated that the impact of the Lawyers Committee on the United States could be considerable.27 With time, the impact of the legal defense system upon South Africa directly would grow and deepen. Certainly, the stress upon the law met with strong approval by the foundation. Elsewhere, too, whether in Latin America or in the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe, great emphasis was placed by the foundation upon legal issues and the role of the law. But, with reference to South Africa, for a variety of reasons, the significance could not possibly be greater.

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In making its 1973 grant, the Ford Foundation concluded that if the Lawyers Committee’s Southern Africa Project “continue[d] to be successful, MEA [Middle East and African Division] would consider the advisability of renewing support at a reduced level.”28 The final comment at the very end of the grant statement was instructive. Uncertainty reigned as to whether the Lawyers Committee would be successful, and even if it were, the level of the eighteen-month grant, at the very best, might still be reduced. Stunningly, the grant awarded to the Lawyers Committee by the foundation on February 10, 1975, totaled one hundred thousand dollars covering two years, beginning on October 1, 1974.29 At times, a foundation grant would be extended to cover earlier expenses of the grantee. This positive response to the Lawyers Committee, despite “declining Foundation budgets,” resulted from the foundation’s assessment that “in South Africa, the courts and lawyers [continued] to play a role in challenging arbitrary exercise of power and in abating injustice in individual cases.” In addition, this role provided “a focal point” for world attention. Finally, given the special lobbying activity in the United States by the Lawyers Committee, the “informal American legal community” was expected to “have an impact on public business and government perceptions” of the South African problem. One reason suggested in the grant for extending the assistance at the same level of approximately fifty thousand dollars per year was the increased number of “political trials under the vast array of security legislation” in South Africa. During the past year, the foundation had found that the Southern Africa Project had “provided assistance in the form of funds, briefings, research and legal observers” for twelve cases in southern Africa, including Namibia. A second reason offered was that “the scope [of the committee] [had] now been broadened to include the field of labor relations and collective bargaining rights for black workers.” What was found by the foundation to be “most encouraging” was an “increasing cooperation” in defending South Africans between the Lawyers Committee and other human rights organizations—the International League for the Rights of Man, Amnesty International, and the World Council of Churches. David Heaps of the Ford Foundation had already laid the groundwork for the cooperation, an indication of how intimately the foundation was involved. In reaching out and bringing in other NGOs, the Lawyers Committee was identified in the grant as “principally responsible” for the new “degree of cooperation.” Indeed, the committee was now perceived as being “the principal coordinator for legal assistance in Southern Africa.”30 Other new functions assumed by the committee also proved to be particularly impressive to the foundation. In the first place, it became the leading advisor to all organizations and virtually every institution dealing with southern Africa. The foundation grant report specified the following “clients” of the committee’s program: U.S. companies with business interests in southern Africa, human rights and welfare agencies, church groups, the American Committee on Africa, the African-American Institute, congressional committees,

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and the State Department. The foundation observed that the Lawyers Committee “had become a major clearing house and resource base” on apartheid. And in those instances “where legal research [was] needed, they have been successful in arranging for pro bono services of major law firms.” This remarkable achievement had been made possible by a vast dissemination of information on South Africa, its legal issues, and its events through newsletters, reports, press releases, and staff testimony. In addition, the committee organized seminars and speakers for interested law schools. In response, some law firms sent the committee interns who could prove most useful in furthering its research programs. At a level much higher, the committee could arrange for groups of prominent lawyers to attend legal conferences in South Africa, as, for example, one conference in 1973 at the University of Natal (funded by the foundation). Unusually impressive were the legal actions in American courts on South African issues. As the Lawyers Committee took over these functions and thereby became “the chief attorney” on these issues, it won such prominent allies as the United Mine Workers of America and the state of Alabama, as separate plaintiffs in specific cases. Four cases stood out in which the committee performed the “chief attorney” role: the New York Times was enjoined from publishing want ads for employment in South Africa; South African Airways was required to hire blacks for its U.S. operations and was required to terminate discriminatory practices on domestic flights; the U.S. Commerce Department was stopped from sending special trade missions to Namibia; and by virtue of a U.S. court decision prohibiting the importation of coal from South Africa, the South African Parliament was compelled to repeal certain labor laws imposing criminal sanction for breaches of contract. Significantly, the committee rejected suggestions that it broaden its mandate to include “general human rights issues.” Its exclusive preoccupation with legal issues in South Africa appeared to have foundation support, as it refrained from articulating any criticism of this specified limitation. On the other hand, the foundation expressly raised concerns about the ability of the committee to raise funds from other sources. If the committee was successful in raising funds for specific activity, its failure to raise sizable funding for core expenditures could not fail to be a matter of some concern to the foundation, which traditionally raised this matter with NGO grantees. At the same time, however, the foundation recognized that its “support” for the present activities of the committee’s Southern Africa Project was indispensable; otherwise, a cutback in funding would “undermine the momentum of previous efforts.” The Lawyers Committee had sought $191,000, a sum almost twice the size of the actual grant. If the foundation compromised with its earlier aim of reducing previous grant levels, it still insisted that the committee find “alternative sources of support.”31 The foundation once again warned that “future” assistance would be considered, but only at a very substantially reduced level. Still, foundation executives went on to laud the committee’s activities. In doing so, the foundation recognized that it could not easily

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sacrifice a major instrument even when, and if, other sources of funding were not immediately forthcoming. Indeed, a promised reduction of the annual rate of the foundation’s grant to the Lawyers Committee could not possibly be accepted. A significant worsening of the internal state pressures in South Africa, flowing from the Soweto race riots of June 1976, would make it extremely difficult and morally intolerable to cut necessary funding of defense security cases. Besides, positive philanthropic factors also impacted foundation decision makers. Financial aid from a variety of other sources had grown because of dire urgency. The increased funding sources diminished the pressure for any kind of cuts. In a newly approved grant on January 28, 1977, that took the form of a memorandum from David Bell to McGeorge Bundy, dated three days earlier, one hundred thousand dollars was once more allocated for a two-year period, beginning October 1, 1976.32 The responsible program officer was designated as Robert Edwards. The growing burdens to be shouldered by the Lawyers Committee were patently evident. Between June 16, 1976, and November 30, 1976, it was estimated by the Institute of Race Relations that 434 people were detained under security legislation. That legislation included the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950, the Public Safety Act of 1953, the Terrorism Act of 1967, and the Internal Security Act of June 1976.33 These laws designed to inhibit freedom of speech and association and suppress dissent specified three levels of punishment: prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment; detention in prison without charge as determined by an administrative official who was not subject to a court review; and “banning,” which confined a person to a limited area and barred his association with others. The foundation grant noted that between 1974 and 1976, approximately 217 people had been detained, with only eighty-one charged in court. Many of the latter group had been acquitted, or the regime had decided to withdraw the charges. Some seventy-four remained until June 1976, after which the crackdown struck many others. The riots took place during the course of a year-long trial against leaders of the South African Student Organization and the Black Peoples Convention. Judgment was finally rendered on December 16, 1976, with the conviction of nine black student leaders and the dismissal of indictments against five others. Were it not for the vigorous defense made possible by the Southern Africa Project, according to the foundation’s grant, the defendants could have been sentenced to death or jail terms of twenty to thirty years. Instead, the sentences ran to five and six years. Besides the Lawyers Committee’s active legal defense work, it helped prepare, during the same year of the trial, civil damage suits based on charges of wrongful deaths. Such initiatives were undertaken at the behest of the families of two black political activists after their arrest by the regime’s security police. But state reaction to the dissent and opposition was only at its beginning. About 2,900 persons awaited trials on criminal charges, according to the foundation grant (in addition to the several hundred accused of breaching

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the security laws). The defense work of the Lawyers Committee would be occupying center stage. But, it was not only in South Africa that the glare of public attention would come to focus upon the Lawyers Committee. In the United States, the committee, during 1976, succeeded in enjoining the government from providing an import license to those seeking to acquire sealskins from Namibia. The legal basis of the committee’s action was that the trade would implicitly fail to recognize that Namibia was not legally part of South Africa by virtue of a UN Security Council decision in 1966 that had made Namibia independent. The committee’s objective, it is clear, was to prevent the enhancement of the wealth or status of South Africa. In addition, the committee assisted various organizations and individuals who sought to bar the sale to South Africa of highly-enriched uranium for a research reactor in Johannesburg. Of special significance, noted the foundation grant, was the distinctive role of the Lawyers Committee on Capitol Hill, with the State Department, and with various religious and human rights groups in the United States. Specifically, its staff was “called upon to organize and participate in conferences and consultations” with these policy-making or activist groups dealing with South Africa. It could also serve to provide South African defense lawyers as speakers at prominent legal functions in the United States. The foundation grant, in detailing the new allocation, offered some fascinating details on the impact the Lawyers Committee and its Southern Africa Project had had upon major law firms in the United States. During 1975, a minimum of 690 pro bono hours were contributed by private lawyers and law firms to the Project. This was held to be “strikingly successful” in raising adequate funding for litigation purposes. The successes prompted an enthusiastic response from the foundation.34 Equally helpful were funds provided by the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church Center, the Field Foundation, and the Aetna and Casualty Company. Even with the growth of outside financing, the committee had made it clear to the foundation that the annual rate of fifty thousand dollars was an “irreplaceable buttress for the Project’s operation.”35 Evidence available to the foundation staff found the argument compelling. Nevertheless, the staff concluded that the Project’s work would be independently evaluated in the near future. At the very end of the report on the grant, the foundation cautioned that the general “human rights situation” in South Africa should not be neglected. How to go beyond the enormously burdensome legal defense process to maintain a certain “decency and humanity” within South Africa, the report observed “will tax the Foundation’s ingenuity.” Still, abdication of responsibility in this area would not be tolerated. Discussions with the South African Institute of Race Relations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees were anticipated with the thought of systematizing and expanding the program of legal aid in South Africa.

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The worsening situation within South Africa ineluctably compelled the Ford Foundation to renew on April 9, 1979, its previous grants of one hundred thousand dollars for a two-year period beginning October 1, 1978, to the Lawyers Committee’s Southern Africa Project. Data made available by the Project and spelled out in the grant gave emphasis to the unfolding trauma: as of the day of the grant, there were sixty-six “terrorist” cases in various South African areas, as well as a minimum of 280 people in detention without benefit of trial or charges. The Project staff anticipated the holding of an additional sixty-seven political trials during the balance of the year. The foundation grant further reported that statistics accumulated by the Institute of Race Relations indicated that 1,358 persons had already been subjected to “banning” since the process was instituted. An additional 146 fell victim to “banning” orders.36 Strikingly, the Southern Africa Project came into its own with this grant. Unlike prior grants that had highlighted the Lawyers Committee, of which the Project was only a part, now reference to the committee was almost nonexistent, while the Project appeared front and center. Even if it only meant a shuffling of the furniture, the emphasis provided a certain starkness to the Project’s distinctiveness. This uniqueness in litigation applied both to involving South African defense lawyers, and to its consultation and lobbying role with respect to the American legal community, the Congress, and the U.S. administration. More expansively than in the past, the foundation described the Project’s priority objectives. Emphasized was the determination of the Project “to strengthen the ability of the courts and lawyers in South Africa to challenge the arbitrary exercise of governmental power.” In realizing this purpose, the Project “[had] made particular efforts to assure that black leaders who [were] prosecuted under South Africa (and Namibia) security legislation [had] access to able counsel.”37 In its legal defense work, the Project was described as being tormented by a critical moral and political problem. It is a problem that goes to the very heart of human rights issues when government is seen as blatantly evil. And, as noted in the grant, the foundation, itself, became concerned with and absorbed in the issue. The grant spells out the tormenting dilemma as follows: “The Project’s organizers and Foundation staff are aware, of course, that the preservation of legal due process in a political system which is becoming increasingly repressive runs the risk of dignifying [it] rather than preventing injustice.” It further noted that South Africa had “no constitution and no bill of rights establishing standards of fundamental principles against which laws are measured.”38 At that very moment, new laws were being enacted that defined “even more narrowly the areas within which due process [could] operate.” As similar circumstances had disturbed democratic activists in other societies; would not the bringing of legal cases in repressive societies contribute to legitimizing those societies? What made the question even more poignant was that the rising level of black resentment flowing from repression could produce an aggravated

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downward spiral that would resist all efforts to abate. While the disturbing problem was present from the beginning of the foundation’s efforts, it inevitably was aggravated by the fierce hostility of the apartheid regime. No quarter was being given on either side. The foundation acknowledged that it was sufficiently troubled by the issue that it had held “discussions” with South African lawyers and “others concerned with human rights in that country, including many individuals who [had] been abused in detention or ‘banned’.” The “discussions” prompted the foundation to move ahead and support litigation efforts. The Lawyers Committee had already endorsed the idea of “the Project’s continuation.” The foundation, in its investigation, found that “the timeliness, utility and professionalism of the Project’s activists [abounded] in South Africa.” The term “abounds” was rather strong and should have removed any doubts about the purpose of the Project. Evidence had, however, accumulated that showed that the very undertaking of the defense of accused individuals by competent attorneys resulted in the accused “receiving more thorough trials, [in which they were] more frequently acquitted and, if found guilty, [were] generally convicted on reduced charges and fewer counts.”39 A certain social and human consideration was also advanced by foundation sources. Everyone was aware that those white lawyers in South Africa who courageously took on the defense of blacks had undertaken this task at “considerable personal risk.” From the perspective of these sources, it was “important for the future of South Africa that courageous whites demonstrate their willingness to be associated with blacks and with the law as a device to achieve fairness and humaneness.” The foundation grant also took note of a rather obscure source of funding for the Southern Africa Project: the United Nations Trust Fund. While briefly referred to in previous grant reports, this time it was given more elaborate treatment.40 The UN Trust Fund was established in 1965 to channel voluntary contributions of member nations into actions challenging racial discrimination in South Africa. The Project arranged for more than $380,000, since 1974, to be disbursed for the legal defense of individuals charged with political crimes. It was this UN source of funding that enabled the Project to financially handle the expensive and difficult work of political trials that sometimes ran for a year or more. The UN Trust Fund was only one of several sources of income for the Project that, drawing upon foundation contacts, provided funding for expert witnesses, legal observers, and judicial opinions on relevant points of South African and international law. Directly arranged by the Project was for the Biko family’s lawyer to travel to the United States and meet with medical experts who were unavailable in South Africa. It also arranged, with the help of the American Bar Association, for the renowned legal specialist and dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Louis Pollack, to sit in as an observer during the inquest. Upon his return, Pollack was able to issue an “important” and widely-circulated report on the Biko legal case. Such

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interventions by the Project that were extended to the Washington scene could be quite effective on unrelated matters dealing with South Africa. Thus, the Project, after characterizing apartheid’s brutality, could seek a rejection of a plan to ship South Africa Cessna aircraft. As always, Project staffers and volunteers were frequently called upon to participate in consultations on Capitol Hill and at the State Department. In Washington, it was apparent that the Project had taken on a preeminent, virtually independent, and unequalled role in dealing with South Africa. Rather quickly, it had lined up other prominent donors, including the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation and various strategically placed church groups. Once again, the Project committed itself to “reduce [its] dependence on Foundation funding,” although this did not preclude “the possibility of further modestly-scaled assistance” in 1981. And, indeed, the next foundation grant to the Lawyers Committee’s Southern Africa Project totaled a modestly scaled-down rate of eighty-five thousand dollars for two years, beginning on October 1, 1980. Sufficient additional funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, the Paul Guenther Foundation, and other sources made the slight reduction possible while still maintaining the Ford Foundation as the principal contributor to the core program of the Lawyers Committee.

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Chapter

9

A H i s to r i c Ro l e

By the beginning of the eighties, the struggle against apartheid had become a priority concern of the foundation. Funds would be appropriated on various levels to affect American and international public opinion. Of special importance were grants to the foundation’s favorite nongovernmental organization, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, and to the committee’s especially vigorous operational arm, the Southern Africa Project. The new grant to that body, even if slightly diminished from very recent years, was still substantial. The new grant reflected a major change in the very top leadership of the foundation. Franklin Thomas had replaced McGeorge Bundy in the middle of 1979, and, this time, when the allocation was made on August 29, 1980, David Bell addressed the memorandum to Thomas.1 At the very beginning of the foundation’s background report for the grant, it revealed that outside additional funding enabled the foundation to provide funds to sources other than the Project in order to assist additional “institutions engaged in defending the rights of victims of apartheid.” Thus, a grant was made to the University of Witwatersrand in order to “strengthen the labor program of the University’s Centre for Applied Legal Studies.”2 Apparently, this was not the first time that the Centre had been given a grant. Of course, legal issues involving the migratory labor problem in South Africa had become intertwined with legal defense. What was revealed here was how some South African universities, including those founded by and serving the Afrikaaner community, were becoming linked to a major human rights program to which the foundation was committed. Two earlier grants were made under the same rubric by the foundation. The first, a rather large one, was given to the Legal Resources Centre, a “public interest law firm” in Johannesburg. The total grant was for $210,000, an amount that was to cover a three-year period beginning January 1979.3 It was to provide direct legal assistance to black trade unions. The second grant was to the South African Council of Churches, and it was designed to help “train staff” for paralegal advisory services in black townships. It totaled $19,500 and was to run for two years, starting in July 1978.4 Spelled out in

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a footnote was the very significant sum of $424,553 given to the Southern Africa Project over eight and one-half years since April 1972. The background, as elaborated upon by the foundation in granting the newest request of the Southern Africa Project, was fairly detailed. But stressed this time was that the Project had been “involved in more cases” over the last two years than at any other time in its history. Special attention was given to its suit for damages in the death of Steve Biko while he was under detention. This was referred to as the “primary” among the various cases. Significant, too, as noted in the report, was a case referred to in the Project’s latest annual report that involved the death of Mohle Mohapi while he was in police custody. The Southern Africa Project brought to South Africa a former agent of the FBI and a leading forensic expert. He was able to provide evidence demonstrating that the victim was killed while under police detention, rejecting the official assertion that he had committed suicide. Of particular significance in highlighting the Project’s unusual versatility was a meeting it hosted in October 1979, at which twenty-three South African Parliament members came together with key U.S. Senate and House leaders. The meeting enabled legislative officials to consider a range of issues affecting U.S.-South African relations. Also noted in the grant was the fact that the Project’s director at the time, Millard Arnold, had served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the UN Commission on Human Rights. At the particular UN Commission session in Geneva, Arnold “gave a powerful and widely quoted address on the American position vis-à-vis South Africa and the abridgment of human rights in that country.”5 The 1980 grant was unusual in reporting what the Project planned to do “during the years immediately ahead.” The focus was upon “the needs of black law graduates.” An extraordinary leap was made in order to significantly increase the number and improve the qualifications of African attorneys in South Africa. At the time, there were only seventy-five to eighty black African lawyers in the entire country. As anticipated by the Project, approximately 10 to 15 percent of black African law graduates would serve in clerkships in major law firms that were run by whites. In these clerkships, they “would receive practical legal training under guidance of senior members of white law firms.” Funding would be provided by the State Department and by the UN Trust Fund, which had agreed to triple its annual subvention to the Project in supplying counsel for defendants in political trials. The proposed second initiative was a three-day workshop on civil and human rights to be held in Johannesburg in late 1981. In attendance for informal talks would be U.S. civil rights lawyers and their South African counterparts. The noted purpose of the meeting was “to help combat the sense of isolation” of the South African defense lawyers. Both initiatives were to be overseen by the special subgroup of the executive committee servicing the Lawyers Committee. That unusual subgroup was authorized to review and approve all proposed staff recommendations before any specific case was undertaken by the Project. Individuals from several new and very prominent legal firms had been added. Of interest was the fact that the former attorney

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general of President Jimmy Carter’s administration, Ramsey Clark, had been added to replace Theodore Sorenson. An odd note appeared at the end of the grant document. As with other foundation documents, it pointed out that the Lawyers Committee had a twenty-two-member staff of which fourteen were females and nine were minority persons. Yet, for the foundation, this representation was called “disappointing” even while it asserted that the committee was “strongly committed to affirmative action” in both program activities and hiring policies. Apparently, the foundation was seeking perfection in employment ratios and its “affirmative action” orientation. Of course, the foundation’s affirmative action policy would be enormously enhanced by the choice of a black for the top job. The selection of Thomas as president of the foundation was an altogether unusual and remarkable appointment. He did not emerge from an elitist category, like his predecessor; nor had he been reared in an upper-class business world. Especially striking was the fact that he was black, the first of that minority group to head a major American philanthropy. Thomas was born in 1934 in a Brooklyn area hardly known for its wealth or status—Bedford-Stuyvesant. Indeed, it acquired notoriety for its numerous street gangs that made life itself a danger and an uncertainty. Encouraged by his mother to reject any notion that external limits might hinder his advancement, he went to Columbia College and, later, Columbia University Law School. After short stints working in the Federal Housing and Home Finance Agency and as assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Thomas moved on to become deputy police commissioner of New York in charge of legal matters. Community development marked the next stage in a career constantly spiraling upwards. In 1967, at the rather tender age of thirty-two, he was appointed as president and chief executive officer of a large-scale major community project—the Bedford-Stuyvesant Development Services and Restoration Corporation. The area embraced four hundred thousand persons, the second largest black community in the United States. Significantly, he was recommended for the job by Robert Kennedy, then the senator from New York State. His job covered an extensive variety of tasks—public services, building restoration, finance and banking, and health and education—and constituted a veritable hands-on rehabilitation approach to a vast community that was greatly, even desperately, in need of repairs from the ground up. The Thomas initiative proved highly successful in bringing about new jobs, homes, and businesses, as well as a solid structure with a new spirit.6 After ten years, Thomas retired from the job, and was accorded broad recognition in creating community solidarity. A significant funder of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Corporation was the Ford Foundation, and it was, perhaps, not too surprising that Thomas was invited in 1978 to join the foundation’s board of trustees. Still, it was a rare appointment. The board was largely comprised of executives of vast corporate enterprises with a sprinkling of top-layer lawyers and academics. For a black man to enter this rarefied atmosphere was most unusual. That Thomas made it

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was indicative of how well he had already moved among the well-polished giants of the corporate world. Even more stunning was the decision of the board, after a year-long search by a high-level committee, to name Thomas as foundation president. In a memorandum to the foundation staff, the board chairman, Alexander Heard, who was president of Vanderbilt University, waxed enthusiastic about the choice. “The Trustees look forward with keen anticipation in working with Frank Thomas in the years ahead,” read the memo.7 But while the appointment decision was made by the foundation’s trustees, few could doubt that the markedly courageous act could not have come about without a process that had been nurtured by McGeorge Bundy. He had, from the very beginning, considered the race problem a central one in American history, and had urged his staff “to come up with ideas for projects [on race issues] that the foundation could uniquely do,” as a foundation officer recalled.8 Another program officer, Thomas Cooney, told an interviewer that Bundy had “brought race and civil rights out of the closet. And during the budget cuts of the last few years, he kept them from going back in.”9 Not only on program matters had the foundation turned a corner under Bundy; personnel-wise, a similar decisive change was made. For the first time, two black program directors were named by Bundy. And he was the first president to support the election of a black man to the board of trustees. This person was, of course, Thomas. Later, when he was named foundation president, the staff reaction to the selection was electrifying. Most staff members had doubted that the trustees had the courage to name a black person to a job of this magnitude, of foundation presidency.10 On the outside, the response was a stunning one. Vernon Jordan, head of the Urban League, observed, “this is the first real example of a case where whites have turned over meaningful power to a black.” Interestingly, it was not the first time that Thomas was offered an authoritative and powerful national position. President Jimmy Carter, two years earlier, had asked him to become secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Although Thomas turned down the cabinet position, he was clearly highly regarded in prestigious circles. A position in the government, even a top position, was, for Thomas, not what he had been preparing himself for in his directorship of the BedfordStuyvesant Corporation. He told a reporter for the New York Times that a housing cabinet position would mean, “I would be spending half my time or more testifying before committees of Congress about existing programs, a lot of which I have questions about.”11 He sought to change things in a fundamental way, not to implement existing programs. When the Ford Foundation offer was extended, Thomas said, “all the vibrations felt right to me.” As a member of the foundation’s board of trustees, he was deeply aware of what it was doing, how it was “an initiator of activities,” how it was “open to risk-taking,” and how it was flexible enough to “change directions without having to write new legislation.”

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By the time Thomas became foundation president, as he acknowledged to a reporter, he was keenly aware of its world-wide programs. When interviewed in 2003, almost a decade after he left the presidency, he told the interviewer that, while serving on the foundation’s board of trustees, “you become aware of what the Foundation is doing in different parts of the world.”12 Certainly, Thomas would have been quick to approve the Carmichael breakthrough fund request for the Southern Africa Project in 1980 after only a half-year as president. As a member of the trustees’ board, he followed closely the work of the Project, and he would acknowledge, in an interview, that “the Project’s director wouldn’t have been able to function . . . without the Foundation.”13 But, it was not only the Project that intrigued or concerned him. Rather, it was the entire South African apartheid issue that had occupied his attention for at least two years prior to taking on the leadership role at the foundation. Even if he was necessarily involved with human rights issues in various parts of the world, this area became a priority concern. And, when it was finally resolved—and peacefully—with an open and free election that brought Nelson Mandela to the presidency of South Africa, Thomas would feel free to retire from the foundation. In essence, a primary goal he had set for himself in 1979 had been accomplished. Preoccupation by Thomas with the South African problem in its totality had become publicly evident when the monumental work, South Africa: Time Running Out, was published by the University of California Press in May 1981.14 This work, which almost immediately exerted an extraordinary public impact, was prepared under the direction of an eleven-member commission of which Thomas was chairman. Not surprisingly, the body came to be popularly known as the “Thomas Commission.”15 Actually, the moving force in creating the commission was not the Ford Foundation, but rather the Rockefeller Foundation. As early as November 1976, the officers of the International Relations Division of the latter foundation began exploring the possibility of “a major new initiative” focused on southern Africa.16 The November date seemed most appropriate. Jimmy Carter had just been elected president of the United States and had committed himself to a policy of advancing human rights. If the already burning and tormenting issue of apartheid required addressing by the international community, it would appear reasonable and logical that a Carter administration might undertake the task. In June 1977, a half-year later, the Rockefeller Foundation appropriated $250,000 for the purpose of establishing a commission to oversee the planned study. At this point, two months later, in August 1977, Thomas was asked to conduct a feasibility study of the proposal.17 By then, Thomas had acquired the reputation, from his BedfordStuyvesant days, for being at home in involving top-level industrialists as well as academics in developmental projects. That he could perform easily in this kind of environment was clear. His election to the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation, at the very same time, was indicative of his skills and connections.

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Nor was Thomas a novice in knowledge about South Africa. He had visited the country in 1976 for the first time. He acknowledged later that during that visit, he “was struck first by the enormity of its [South Africa] problems” as well as “by the vast potential of the people, black and white.”18 In the remarks covering his earlier recollection about the visit to South Africa, he meticulously avoided any angry comments about apartheid. Instead, he focused upon how apartheid had limited the potentialities of development for both races in South Africa. At the same time, he and the other new commissioners came to the study “with a firm conviction that apartheid was wrong.” The term was not intended to suggest a judgment based primarily on moral overtones. Clearly, he was determined to avoid appearing as a radical or revolutionary. His only emphasis was upon the need for “change.” He remembered that during the visit to South Africa, he had “felt that if a chance arose to make even a small contribution to change in South Africa, [he] would take that opportunity.” The invitation from the Rockefeller Foundation had been quickly accepted. The ten other members of the commission were extremely influential in industrial, academic, and foundation circles. From the business world came C. Peter McColough, chairman of the board at Xerox Corporation, and J. Irwin Miller, chairman of the executive committee of Cummins Engine Company. Also named was Howard D. Samuel, president of the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO. Among the academics were Alexander Heard, the chancellor of Vanderbilt University (who was also chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation), Robert C. Good, president of Dennison University; Professor Charles V. Hamilton of Columbia University’s Government Department; and Professor Ruth Simms Hamilton, of the Sociology Department of Michigan State University. Included from the foundation world were Alan Pifer, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and Constance Hilliard, the director of the Booker T. Washington Foundation. An urban affairs consultant, Aileen C. Hernandez, was the tenth member of the commission.19 The “advisers” to the commission were no less influential. One came from the banking industry—G. A. Constaza, vice-chairman of Citibank; a second was from the corporate world—William S. Sneath, chairman and chief executive officer of Union Carbide. The third was Professor Donald F. McHenry, from the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University. Associated with the prestigious assemblage of commission members and advisers were no less than seventy-five consultants, fourteen staff members, and a host of expert witnesses. Numerous commissioned papers were prepared by specialists.20 Buttressing the skilled researchers and writers were an accumulation of testimonies and firsthand observations acquired by the commission during two overseas trips. That the undertaking was monumental is self-evident, with the cost running to over $2.6 million.21 The cost of few research projects in the social sciences come even close to this huge sum. The objective of the commission was “to increase public understanding of the evolving situation in South Africa, with specific reference to South

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Africans.”22 But significantly more was expected from the commission’s study, analysis, and specific proposals. As described by Thomas himself, the purpose was not mere “public understanding,” but rather to shape American foreign policy toward South Africa. He expressly noted that the study was designed to create “a morally defensible coherent and sustained U.S. policy towards South Africa.”23 This was stated in mid-1978. It was made more explicit by Thomas in an article five years later as follows: Our assignment was to determine how the United States could respond to the problems posed by South Africa and its dismaying system of racial separation and discrimination.24

The acting president of the Rockefeller Foundation, Sterling Wortman, in announcing the formation of the commission on August 15, 1979, linked the two goals together in the following single statement: to conduct a comprehensive examination and appraisal of the policy options available for dealing with the issues confronting the U.S. in South Africa.25

The bulk of the published volume, sixteen of nineteen chapters, or more than 80 percent of the text, was devoted to the substantive examination of the apartheid system and of the society in which it operated. A detailed evaluation of the study by a specialist, Pauline Baker, considered it to be “probably the most comprehensive examination of South Africa in print.”26 Illuminating the scholarly analysis prepared by specialists were extremely valuable sketched portraits of twenty individual South African types. Insights ineluctably flowed from the characterizations showing how the various types of inhabitants were affected by the dynamics of the apartheid system. The portraits and the text were richly augmented by a detailed host of maps and tables containing almost all the basic data a student would need. By the time Baker prepared her evaluation—in 1985—the volume, she reported, “has become a standard reference work” in the opinion of her sources.27 What was particularly impressive in the commission’s study, according to Baker, was its critiques of three major “myths” that all too often had shaped decision-making in foreign policy circles, especially among political conservatives. A frequent argument advanced in these circles was that South Africa was a bulwark against communism, and, therefore, to advance policies against apartheid would play into the hands of the Soviet Union. The commission demonstrated that this argument was questionable and, indeed, without much validity. A second invalid myth had contended that unless the apartheid regime was supported, the United States could be deprived of access to essential strategic minerals. A third myth was also oriented toward security considerations. It held that South Africa was upholding the interests of the United States and the West by protecting the sea lanes around the Cape of Good Hope. Baker noted that the commission report constituted “a credible refutation . . . [of] these outward arguments.”28

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Still, even while exploding the several myths that had acted as a restraint upon U.S. policy toward South Africa, the proposals advanced by the Thomas Commission were remarkably moderate. A sweeping arms embargo was rejected in favor of a tightening of certain gray areas as well as a mild reduction in nuclear cooperation.29 More significant were the conclusions reached in the area of investments by or in U.S. corporations doing business in South Africa. If the more militant opponents of apartheid strongly backed disinvestment, the commission rejected such a course. And, of course, the commission could hardly accept a campaign then beginning on college campuses for disinvestment of holdings in corporations engaged in South African industrial or commercial activities. (This had been initially advanced for dealing with military dictatorships in Latin America.) Instead, the commission study recommended that each U.S. company engaged in business in South Africa be judged on a case-by-case basis, with the understanding that no new investment be taken. But even this modest action was to be done on a voluntary basis by individual corporations that chose to do so. Such a cautious and hesitant approach would obviously be more acceptable to the prominent corporate heads who sat on the commission and who had close ties with the U.S. corporate community in general. In an interview more than two decades after the commission study was published, Thomas explained that account had to be taken of two realities: First, the commission was dealing with “the rulers of South Africa,” and it was seeking “to change their behavior with respect to the black majority in the country. Secondly, we wanted to avoid ‘further damaging the life-sustaining need of the population.’”30 The considerations required a rejection of more radical methods of affecting Pretoria’s policy-makers. The “damage” to the public’s needs would ineluctably follow, thought Thomas, were a policy of “isolation” of South Africa to be followed by withdrawal of investments and other forms of economic activity. Besides, Thomas thought, isolation reinforced by a hostile investment policy would “drive the South Africans into the embrace of the Communist [or] whoever, you name it, whoever the enemy was out there.” While the commission—and Thomas—opted for a voluntary program geared toward making no new investments but maintaining old investments with the view to “engage” the apartheid regime and possibly influence it toward change, Thomas himself told an interviewer that he also had looked sympathetically upon a compromise or a “middle” path program between isolation and engagement. He was referring here to the so-called “Sullivan Principles” advocated by the Reverend Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia. As interpreted by Thomas, the argument for the principles was: “Let’s make those businesses [already operating in South Africa] model examples, of openness, of opportunity, of advancement of social justice for their employees and their families, so that within this very structure of apartheid, you would have these very desirable economic entities as social forces inside the country in furtherance [of the] human rights agenda.”

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How much Thomas sympathized with this position was not made clear in the interview. Certainly, he was more disposed to embrace it as an alternative to the isolation option. In his view, the “middle path” constituted “a particular form of engagement” that might prove helpful. A striking feature of Thomas’ recollection of the intense debates of the early eighties was that they “made that period both difficult and also frankly so interesting and challenging.” He even rejected any thought of placing the isolationist policy beyond the pale. Indeed, and most significantly, in the interview he expressed full awareness that Gay McDougall, appointed as the new director of the Southern Africa Project in 1980, had “joined the isolationist part of the antiapartheid movement.”31 Her militancy, obviously backed by officials of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, would lead her to support embargoes against South Africa as well as disinvestment. Yet, her group remained a favorite instrument of Thomas and the foundation; few other NGOs received the kind of financial support and funding from the foundation as did the Project. That the Thomas Commission study, especially the sizable substantive sections, would receive strong support and approval in the community of business leaders was evident. This section—eighty percent of the book—was called by Baker “especially comprehensive.”32 Baker also found that a “substantial consensus” had emerged “about the uniformly high quality accuracy and balanced analysis” in Time Running Out. Her evaluations, which came four years after the book appeared, concluded that “it had stood the test of time in its dissection of the fundamental structure, processes and human impact of apartheid.” Apparently, the endorsement of the substantive sections came from virtually all interested parties—scholars, journalists, activists, government officials, and businessmen. In sharp contrast, the policy recommendations of the Study Commission in the book’s final three chapters were found to be unclear, controversial, and less than adequate. The important journal, Foreign Affairs, held that this section of the book was “less sharply defined” and that its “significant insights” were muffled.33 In various quarters of the American community, especially among those committed to the anti-apartheid struggle, disappointment reigned. Equally critical were voices from conservative circles. A letter to Thomas from the director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation concluded that the commission had “apparently decided to take a somewhat narrow perspective of the topic.”34 On the other hand, observers could not fail to notice the composition of the commission and its primary sponsor—the Rockefeller Foundation. The reviewer in The New York Times Book Review (August 2, 1981), Anthony Sampson, for example, commented that “this hefty volume is less interesting for what it says than for what it represents.” The very prestigious character of the commission, especially the elite personages from the business world, made the commission’s analysis and recommendation “little short of sensational.”35 Thus, even the modest and quite limited proposals for contending with apartheid carried significance given “this kind of backing and

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membership.” The more professedly liberal journal, The New York Review of Books, in a review written by Conor Cruise O’Brien, expressed a sympathetic reaction to an “establishment” group that “advocates specific limited pressure on South Africa to move toward reform”36 (November 5, 1981). O’Brien, properly, dubbed the commission study an “establishment liberal document.” When the Thomas Commission began its deliberations during the latter part of the Carter presidency, it probably had not expected that Carter would be replaced by a Republican administration under Ronald Reagan. The political irony was that the document apparently could not be completed before President Carter left the White House. The commission’s recommendations were hardly appropriate for a very conservative administration, like Reagan’s. Thus, it was not surprising that liberal institutions might welcome the recommendations, even if not enthusiastically, while ideologically conservative organizations, like the Heritage Foundation, found them irrelevant and inadequate. In a real sense, then, the commission had failed in its principal purpose of directly influencing U.S. policy toward South Africa. According to Baker, the failure was due to an unfortunate political miscalculation: the commission’s recommendations were “premised on the re-election of President Carter.” A Reagan administration could hardly be expected to favor a policy oriented to political and economic reform in a foreign country. Instead, even the very modest proposal of no new investments would be seen as objectionable. The Reagan policy of “constructive engagement” did not seek any basic reform in apartheid society, and certainly rejected trade pressures even in the area of nuclear material. In one area, there was a certain harmony between the commission study and what the Reagan administration would later practice. The commission had recommended “an increase in educational opportunities available to black South Africans.”37 The Ford Foundation, itself, had placed great emphasis upon this theme. It was seen as a critical element for the strengthening of black leadership programs, an objective to which the apartheid philosophy had devoted the most limited attention. One U.S. government agency did annually bring two hundred South African blacks to the United States for professional career training in a number of fields. If the commission sought “more financial support” for the proposal, little change in government policy in this area took place until 1984, when the U.S. Agency for International Development began providing ten million dollars annually for external scholarships for black South Africans to study in the U.S.38 But if Time Running Out did not directly influence government policy, it played an extraordinary role in educating the public about apartheid and the various options for the United States to deal with it.39 That the Rockefeller Foundation and the Thomas Commission were determined to make the various sectors of the public fully aware of its findings was self-evident. The study was widely distributed to government officials, the U.S. and foreign press, domestic groups concerned with the issue, scholars and members of the

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diplomatic corps, leaders of the black community in the United States, and institutions and individuals specially concerned with the South African region. The volume was reviewed in scores of scholarly and popular publications. An estimated two hundred newspapers, according to Baker, featured the book whether in articles, magazine pieces, editorial comment, or book reviews. The other media was hardly neglected. Commission members and staff members made personal appearances on TV and radio programs. And briefings were provided by them to executive branch officials, congressional representatives, journalists, and businessmen. They also made themselves available for seminars or meetings with various foreign affairs organizations. Particularly important was the determination to carry the commission’s message to the business world, and especially to its highest and elite officialdom. Copies of the study were sent to the CEOs of the 350 companies that had operations in South Africa as well as the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies. The more militant Gay McDougall, who had taken over the Southern Africa Project just prior to the publication of the commission study, later recognized that it had exerted “a significant impact.”40 What McDougall found especially impressive was the fact that “it wound up on the shelf of nearly every corporate CEO, even though they only read the title.” She considered the volume with its recommendations “really very important” in that they generated a peer-to-peer interaction among top corporation executives. For that reason, she believed that even if the study emphasized “voluntary” initiatives instead of tough-minded actions, it, nonetheless, was “a significant step forward in the disinvestment campaign.” Presumably, initial modest, voluntary acts would enable corporations to later take on or support stronger measures. The interview with Gay McDougall brought out the intriguing point that at an early stage of the planning of the study under Thomas’s direction, she had been “asked . . . to be on the staff.”41 She declined the invitation because she doubted that its conclusions would be “consistent enough with [her] own.” At the time, she reported that earlier when she had studied at the London School of Economics, she had been heavily involved with the militant national liberation movement of Africa. The Study Commission was seen by her as an “activity that had as its audience corporate America,” and, at the time, she sought a job that would place her “more directly in contact with the people in Southern Africa.” Given the perceived differences in outlook, McDougall considered that she would be “uncomfortable” in taking a position on the commission’s staff. From a later perspective, she acknowledged that the contribution of the commission turned out to be “far, far more significant to the overall effort than I could see at that point.” If she would come to regard the commission’s work as “very important,” she still “wasn’t sure that [was] where [she] wanted to place [herself].” McDougall also disclosed that, even though she had refused a staff position with the commission, she nonetheless “was invited to the various meetings [of the commission] that took place over the years in various places.”

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Meetings of the group continued after the study came out, and she remained active in them.42 In this way, she frequently had contact with Thomas, but apparently that contact had very little to do with her work on the Southern Africa Project.43 Rather, her discussions concerning the Project and her relations with the Ford Foundation were always with William Carmichael of the top foundation staff. If the commission volume was unsuccessful in influencing government policy during the Reagan administration, it nonetheless significantly achieved its goals in general public education. The Baker evaluation in 1985 noted that Time Running Out “[was] still widely used by schools, corporations, public interest groups, the media and government officials as an authoritative reference.”44 In public education, the study was regarded as a basic source. Baker found that “it is used in many college courses across the country.”45 At the secondary school level, the volume was perceived by the Ford Foundation as a critical tool. A broad effort of distribution of the study “was embarked upon,” noted Baker, with the assistance of the Ford Foundation.” Specially prepared publications drawing upon the commission’s study were distributed to no less than eighteen thousand schools across the United States. But as earlier indicated, a special target for the commission was the business community. Baker’s evaluation indicated “that the report has been widely circulated and digested, especially among firms with a high profile presence in South Africa.”46 This was emphasized by Gay McDougall. Indeed, it was seen by one executive as a “marvelous training tool” in those industries where there were executive training sessions that took account of social issues and programs. Strikingly, a 1983 survey by the Investor Responsibility Research Center that was based upon responses to a questionnaire found that “many of the respondents made reference to the recommendations of Time Running Out.”47 And while the federal government had little use for the study, it became “a basic education resource in Congress,” where staffers to senators and congressmen used the volume for quick reference.48 However, no national legislative proposals drew upon it, as public pressure was not exercised in this direction at the time. At lower levels of government, whether in state or urban legislative bodies, the interest in sanctions was already beginning in the early eighties, stirred by lobbying on college campuses. Already in two key city councils, Washington, DC, and New York, the commission report became a critical element in the local legislative debates.49 To the extent that Time Running Out exerted a major impact upon public education in a variety of areas, it ineluctably added to the stature and authority of the Study Commission’s chairman, Franklin Thomas. This, therefore, impacted the Ford Foundation, which selected him as its president. It was hardly surprising that the Ford Foundation, some years after Time Running Out was published by the University of California Press, would undertake to publish a series of additional volumes updating the initial study. Indeed, Baker’s evaluation recorded that all the persons she interviewed,

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representing a broad variety of sources, agreed “that there should be an update of the analytical sections of the Thomas Commission Report to insure that it remains a valuable educational and reference document.50 Five volumes would follow, all published by the Ford Foundation. In each case, the Foreign Policy Association was identified as a co-publisher, but the Ford Foundation held the copyright. The volumes were formally referred to as the South Africa UPDATE Series.51 Perhaps not surprisingly, the first volume of the series, published in 1989, was written by Pauline Baker, who had done the evaluation for the Rockefeller Foundation in 1985. But no longer was the Rockefeller Foundation involved. The enormously important educational works had been totally transformed into a Ford Foundation function of which Franklin Thomas took great personal pride. As is evident, he saw in education a critical means for bringing about major social and political change. The five-volume series, he emphasized in an interview, set forth the nature of the issues involved as well as the special interests of the United States.52 But it was not only written works and the media and journal coverage that added to a broad understanding in the United States of the apartheid issue. Especially important, Thomas thought, was the role of television and, notably, CNN in guiding the U.S. public to learn about the South African scene and then to act upon this understanding. In his view, “the development of CNN play[ed] a critically important role in getting broad coverage to cases of abuse and . . . oppression.”53 He went on to explain that “it’s the picture . . . the visual image of what’s happening; it’s almost like an accelerant to the movement—this is a personal view.” Less oriented to education as a means of bringing public attention to the effects of apartheid was Gay McDougall, who had become, in 1980, director of the Southern Africa Project. It marked a major step in the development of the Project. Her academic and professional background was unusual in combining high-level legal training in the United States and England with real human rights experiences in New York. She had received a doctorate in jurisprudence from Yale University and a master’s degree in international law at the London School of Economics. Prior to joining the Project, she had served as counsel to the deputy mayor for criminal justice of New York City.54 All previous directors of the Project would serve but one or two years. This young, dynamic, and articulate black woman would serve for the next fifteen years, and would play a most significant external role in facilitating the historic collapse of apartheid in South Africa. McDougall’s virtual independence in running the operation of the Southern Africa Project was recalled later with a certain panache and pride. In the interview, McDougall reported, “I’m not sure I paid a lot of attention to the Ford Foundation.”55 She even expressed some amusement abut this. At the same time, she emphasized that her “interface [with the foundation] was Bill Carmichael who was supremely supportive,” adding that “the money [from the foundation] kept coming.”56 No other individual in the foundation,

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including Thomas, was mentioned by her. Nor did she remember being given advice or instructions by the foundation. Any such interference “never happened,” she said, noting that “absolutely” she had felt a total independence.57 This applied to Carmichael’s role as well. Never was there any “hint” from him as to what “[she] should be doing.” On the contrary, he gave her “a sense of being supportive,” and she recalled that their “relationship was always very easy, very friendly.” Significantly, as McDougall recalled, it was Carmichael who first indicated to her that a job with the Project was available and that they had had “a conversation” about it.58 Carmichael, of course, did not hire her; that, she noted, was done by the executive director of the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights under Law. Still, it was quite likely that Carmichael had intervened with the executive director of the Lawyers Committee. How McDougall first met Carmichael was not specified in any detail. She had initially gone to him to “get a grant to do something.” And, she recalled that he had “given [her] a $1,000 or something to go to some international law conference in Geneva, something like that.” This occurred before 1980, the year she was hired. McDougall recognized that her background was quite different than the backgrounds of her predecessors as director of the Southern Africa Project. Those who ran it before her were primarily lawyers, mostly civil rights lawyers, but they had, as she noted, “no background . . . in international affairs, in Southern Africa, in human rights issues.” Basically, they were young administrators, mainly black, but with not much familiarity with either international or human rights concerns. Still, the Project made significant strides in the tasks it undertook to provide legal defense for apprehended militants in South Africa, and to sensitize the American legal community to the nature of apartheid as it impacted blacks. In great contrast, McDougall came to the project with “a totally different background.” For quite a few years, she had been involved with and “working with liberation movement personalities in London.” And, there, she was provided with a rich background “in international human rights, in particular, the issues that were arising in Southern Africa.”59 Thus, she displayed certain basic skills that would prove to be invaluable as the crisis deepened in that area, with its inevitable impact upon various interest groups in the United States. No wonder, then, that McDougall would be sought out by Carmichael and would be given a veritable carte blanche in her Project leadership. Once she took over, there were no longer comments that foundation grants would be seriously reduced in future allocations. On the contrary, grants would remain high, even as sizable additional funds were forthcoming from other foundations. What enabled McDougall to effectively function in the open was the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law. This group formally requested grants for the Project on southern Africa. But it was significantly more than a grant-receiving agency from the Ford Foundation. Since the Project and

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its new director undertook highly politicized tasks and utilized methods that were hardly conventional in character, they were in need of a respectable cover. McDougall would quickly recognize, upon assuming her position, she recalled, that the Lawyers Committee provided “the mantle of establishment . . . respectability.”60 They “were white, established lawyers . . . heads of or senior partners of law firms.” And, she acknowledged, “one of the things I quickly learned to do was to trot them out every time cover was needed.”61 The comment was accompanied by an amused laugh. But she was quick to emphasize that the “device” of respectability was designed less for the Ford Foundation than it was for impacting “on the South Africa government.” The Lawyers Committee was hardly the big organization that some may have conceived it to be, to judge from the numerous variegated activities of the Project under McDougall’s direction. In fact, the committee’s size was unusually small—only 162 persons, as she remembered it.62 She recalled that the committee had been largely a domestic organization, and was suddenly transformed into a group with concerns about South Africa by sheer accident, flowing from a personal relationship. Someone on the staff of the Committee “had a personal connection with the [left-wing] Joel Carlson.” While defending those accused of terrorism in South Africa, Carlson wrote to his friend, “I’m down here, can you give me some help.” Cover was needed because “most of the work [in which she was engaged] was actually channeling funds into South Africa to defend [those charged with terrorism].” Thus, McDougall acknowledged that her work was “somewhat surreptitious,” even though the Project was supposed to act within South Africa’s legal structure.63 McDougall indicated that getting funds into the country required an infrastructure that she chose not to describe in any detail. Before she arrived on the scene, only one person was involved in the “infrastructure.” She “then broadened” it by tapping into other sources like the UN Trust Fund. The total would become, she said, “really substantial.” The job of getting the money into South Africa so that lawyers could be hired and paid, or getting it out in special cases, was complicated. She had to use circuitous methods.” In “many instances,” it was as “simple as wiring it in”; but “sometimes it was sent through other people or to neutral places.”64 Aside from money transfers, she was also burdened with obtaining and getting information out of South Africa at a time when the apartheid regime declared “a state of emergency.” In the mid-eighties, for example, she recalled, “she had to communicate back and forth [with her legal contacts in South Africa] and got instantly out . . . names of people [who were detained].” At the time, the fax machine was only in its beginning stage and very few companies had it. But McDougall “had a contact in South Africa who ran a company” that had access to the fax technology. So she “was able to produce a list of people who were in detention, and [they] had it read into the Congressional Record.”65 McDougall saw her immediate task as the development of solid methods for getting new sources of funds into South Africa and getting information

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out for the purpose of disclosure in Washington. To pursue these initiatives, she actively cultivated prominent members of significant law firms in Washington and across the country and sought to have them become directly involved.66 And if assisting in actual legal defense was not appropriate enough for these “types” to do, she “at one point had them marching outside the South African Embassy” in Washington or “using their names as prestige and cover for pressure on the South African government.” It was obviously a multilayered task that she relished doing. McDougall had also to deal with the very limited number of black South African lawyers. According to her recollection, when she took on the job, “there weren’t 10 black lawyers in the whole country who were defending [against] political pressures.” One of them was “brutally assassinated” some six months after her arrival. She recalled that she had “to find ways to get a broader array of lawyers involved in these [detention] cases.”67 Prevailing upon some white lawyers in South Africa for assistance was also crucial, and it was obviously undertaken in a major way, but McDougall did not explain how this was done. When asked about other human rights organizations that might have provided the project with assistance, McDougall noted that “it was very lonely” for her in the United States where she worked. Until the middle or late 1980s, she said, “there were no outside organizations involved.” Referring to Amnesty International, she explained that as black South Africans actively began to fight back after a state of emergency was proclaimed, the very nature of Amnesty’s policy precluded involvement. She commented that “as soon as the situation was such where people were actually charged with things like terrorism, Amnesty wouldn’t adopt them.”68 The flat comment carried a caustic resonance. Gay McDougall’s appointment came at a transitional moment in South African history. As predicted from the sixties onwards, and especially after June 1976, the hardening of apartheid policies was certain to evoke and energize a militant black response that, in turn, would unleash evermore forceful measures of repression. The Southern Africa Project could expect to assume greater responsibilities and, indeed, political trials increased. In the foundation’s next grant to the Project on July 1, 1982, its introductory note captured the external reality in the following way: “the past two years have been turbulent in South Africa.” On the one hand, “black opposition to government policies . . . has mushroomed,” with virtually every community institution affected—churches, schools, trade unions, media, and organizations. The apartheid regime, on the other hand, responded with even greater “large-scale abridgements of human rights.” Hundreds were detained without trial. Newspapers were shut down and journalists were “banned.” The number of political trials “escalated.” According to the foundation, “the testimony of defendants and witnesses to these trials suggests that torture is a commonplace feature of political detention.”69 The nature and depth of the repression required continued and strong foundation support for the Southern Africa Project. Impressively, the Project

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was now drawing more and more financial support from church groups like the Episcopal Church of the United States, the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, and the Netherlands Inter-Church Coordination Committee. Of special importance were contributions from the governments of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. The diversification of the fund-raising sources for the Project permitted the foundation to reduce the scale of its funding by ten thousand dollars for the next two-year period. But it would remain the principal source of funding for the Project’s core operating budget.70 That the work of the Project could be expected to expand during the McDougall administration was almost a certainty. In July 1982, a new and comprehensive Internal Security Act was enacted that continued and codified the restrictive powers of the regime in responding to the growing dissent of the black community. Particularly brutal was the new act’s acceptance of detention for an unlimited period of time. And such a decision might be made by a government official whose orders would not be subject to court review. The ruthlessly repressive act of “banning,” initiated several years earlier, was also renewed. The new comprehensive law did incorporate, as a sop to bitter international complaints, certain concessions to liberal demands. It provided that persons detained for interrogation might be visited in private by a magistrate and a local medical doctor every two weeks. Earlier repressive acts carried no such humane consideration. Still, the foundation noted that case studies of several recent deaths that occurred while the victims were in detention suggested that these liberalizing measures were “inadequate” to prevent police abuse.71 The foundation grant to the Project in 1984 would increase by three times the grant of 1982. A total of $210,340 was allocated for a two-year period. It was to cover the operation of the Project in its legal defense work and in affecting opinion in the United States concerning apartheid. The legal defense work of the Project had already been extended to include torture and wrongful death in the case of major instances of detention when the prisoner died. Particularly noteworthy was the Muofhe case. An inquest into his death resulted in a suit by his family, charging security police officers with murder. Given the most unusual aspects of the resulting murder trial, the Project sent an outside legal observer to attend the proceedings. After the court acquitted the government defendants, the Project observer wrote, “in the light of the evidence, one must conclude that the judgment was incredible.” In his comments, he said that the court, despite “overwhelming pathological evidence,” offered “not a word of reproach or caution” against the security police.72 Neither the Project nor the family of Muofhe would quit in their search for justice. When the family brought a civil suit against the authorities, it resulted in an out-of-court settlement of about $140,000. The outcome was remarkable: the settlement was “the largest known payment to the family of a detainee who died in police custody.” Focusing on the legal aspects of local and specific cases was not the Project’s only concern. Under McDougall, it also sought, in a major way, to focus

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world attention on human rights abuses in South Africa. In September 1983, the Project published a comprehensive study entitled Deaths in Detention and South Africa’s Security Laws. It was distributed widely to UN bodies, to members of Congress, to the media, and, of course, to lawyers and human rights activists. McDougall, herself, testified in May 1984 before a UN body. She drew upon the study in a report to the Ad Hoc Working Group of Experts on Southern Africa, then meeting in London. The Working Group was created by the UN Commission on Human Rights. Besides its traditional defense work, the Project moved into new areas of concern: the apartheid regime had been engaged in efforts to bring about the “forced removal” of black villagers from various areas in which they lived.73 Initiatives were undertaken by the Project to prevent this removal. Sometimes it would achieve success after provoking “a widespread international outcry.” To deal with the forced removal problem, the Project had created, during the previous two years, “an impressive network of church, community and legal service organizations” to help local communities from being removed. Other foundation-funded groups, like Black Sash and the Legal Resources Center of the University of Witwatersrand, would provide advice to local attorneys involved in the defense of local communities faced by the threat of removal. The Black Sash organization merits special attention. It was a women’s paralegal service and public education association that had “developed an effective network of technical assistance . . . [programs for] black communities” threatened by forced removal.74 Significant grants from the Ford Foundation provided the group twenty-five thousand dollars in February 1982 and one hundred thousand dollars covering two years beginning in October 1983. Meanwhile, the Legal Resources Center was also granted funds to research and study the labor-law field and enhance the freedom of expression program at the university. Fairly large sums were allocated to this group: twenty-five thousand dollars for two years beginning August 1980, and two hundred fifty thousand dollars for a little more than two years starting in October 1982. These sums, together with the greatly increased grant to the Southern Africa Project, demonstrated the new extraordinary commitment of the Ford Foundation under Franklin Thomas’ leadership to creating change in South Africa.75 It implied that the increasingly large-scale grant program was based on the assumption that significant change was feasible. The grant document of 1984 offered little in the way of doubt or caution about the future. A reflection of the foundation’s willingness to allocate huge sums to the Project, too, reflected the new orientation. The Project was itself willing to draw ever-larger sums from the United Nations Trust Fund for South Africa: over one and a half million dollars had been taken since 1974 to assist “the defense of individuals charged with political offenses.” The 1984 foundation grant of over two hundred thousand dollars to the Project set a record for foundation grants to the McDougall group and

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reflected the foundation’s strong support of her operation. The grant spoke of the foundation’s “recognition of both the quality and growing quantity of the Project’s activities.”76 The effectiveness of the Project’s work, noted the foundation, could be found in the reality that it “successfully generated substantially more opportunities for productive contributions than two people [could] handle” (reference here was to McDougall and her assistant, Micaela Missimind). A second attorney was now needed as per the request of McDougall, and the foundation was most willing to respond favorably. An increase in the budget of the Southern Africa Project could not have been more welcome. The year 1986 was to mark a major, if not decisive, turning point in the long-term struggle against apartheid. That turning point involved an extraordinary confrontation in South Africa, and another extraordinary confrontation of a different sort in the United States between Congress and the president. The date June 16, 1986, was seen as a crucial day, for it marked the tenth anniversary of the Soweto uprising that had provided a critical spark to black consciousness that would never again be snuffed out. Four days before the anniversary, the apartheid government, expecting large-scale demonstrations, chose to prevent these anticipated demonstrations by declaring a national “state of emergency.”77 Under its provisions, South Africa’s security forces would be enabled to arrest anyone without charges, to search and seize property, to impose curfews, and to seal off areas, using whatever force was deemed necessary. Thousands were arrested during the following days, and some offices of religious groups, political organizations, labor unions, and the press were raided and sealed off. Unprecedented press censorship was imposed, with security forces seizing copies of independent newspapers and raiding their offices. While the total number of detentions remained unknown, in August, the government released a list of over nine thousand detainees that climbed another four thousand by February 1987. Independent monitors set the detention figures at twenty-five thousand. The Project estimated that over five thousand persons were detained, but not under this security legislation. Among those detained, the Project stated in its Annual Report, were leaders of the more than six hundred community, labor, and student movement groups—all affiliated with the liberal United Democratic Front. By midOctober, some three hundred organizations affiliated with the United Democratic Front were banned. At the beginning of 1987, the entire national executive of the United Democratic Front was either in detention, on trial, or banned from political activity. The scale of the repression was obviously designed to intimidate everyone associated with the anti-apartheid movement. Entire communities were terrorized. Fear and insecurity in the black townships prevailed. Blacks were prevented from gathering in churches or in any other place that could serve as a venue for demonstrations. Repression was accompanied by certain rather significant reforms. The hated pass and influx control laws that had prevailed for over sixty years were repealed. At the same time, security officials and vigilantes were encouraged

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by the regime to engage in the forced removal of black inhabitants from various areas, resulting in massive homelessness. Brutalities included killings, the torching of shacks, and the use of fire bombs. The angry response of the black Africans took the form of a general strike that brought about an eerie silence in the major urban areas. The Project, in 1986, became heavily preoccupied with extensive responses to the government repression. It financed the defense of over nine hundred detainees, including hundreds of children, and it filed applications for the release of nearly one thousand persons who were detained without trial or charges. With the crackdown leaving little area for maneuver, only the courts provided loopholes. Test cases were brought before the courts, with particular attention focused upon trade unions embracing the independent unions from the mining, metal, and food industries. The various unions’ efforts to organize a consumer boycott, in the meantime, were held to be violations of the emergency regulations. But in the black townships, a rent boycott that was rapidly moving forward and embraced 54 percent of residences in Soweto, the areas around Johannesburg, and the eastern part of the Cape of Good Hope. When the authorities challenged the boycott with evictions and various forms of intimidation, the Southern Africa Project responded with suits challenging local housing administrators.78 And when the evicted were hurt or killed by the security police, the Project vigorously took up their cases. Consumer boycotts in urban areas were particularly devastating, with a precipitous decline in daily sales. To halt the spread of the boycott, the security agencies of the regime sought to intimidate leaders of the boycott with arrests and beatings. The Project would not be silenced and aided victims by bringing legal suits before the courts. As the boycott drive spread to the “Homeland” provinces of South Africa, and arrests followed, the Project still would not budge. It continued to be the prime defender, its courtroom resistance mounting. During 1986, at least 721 persons in 116 separate trials faced charges of terrorism and subversion. In a number of the trials, the Project, wherever possible, would provide the defense lawyers. Particularly valuable was the work of the Project’s lawyers in disclosing how alleged “confessions” were extracted after months of abuse by the police.79 Legal defense tactics focused on exposing coercion at various levels of the detention prison, in a number of major cases. At times, defendants were acquitted or prosecutors were restrained by injunction, or those detained for long stretches of time were released. Especially outrageous were the trials of youngsters under the age of twenty (three quarters were under twenty years old, and one half were under eighteen in the trials of 1986). The Project lawyers were heavily involved in their defense. The Project’s legal team, during 1986, did not neglect the repression in Namibia that, in violation of UN Security Council decisions, continued to be administered by the South African government. The Project undertook a crucial case of detention without trial and won the release of a sixteen-month

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detainee. It was an unprecedented decision.80 Of equal importance was the Project’s defense in cases involving press freedom. Its lawyers, in one case, submitted a memorandum on precedents in Canadian and in American law. In another case, the Project obtained a strong decision by the judge that the closing down of the leading newspaper violated press freedom. These cases became the subject of testimony by Gay McDougall to the UN Fourth Committee dealing with trusteeships.81 Within the United States, the Project was almost as active as it was in South Africa. Here, the central political and legislative issue was the imposition of sanctions on South Africa. By fall 1986, Congress was prepared to enact the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, despite President Ronald Reagan’s vigorous opposition. The legislation was “the toughest and most far-reaching sanctions legislation” introduced by any of South Africa’s trading partners.82 It would ban the following: all significant exports to South Africa; most imports from South Africa, including the Krugerrand gold coins; landing rights for South African Airways; and all U.S. government purchases of South African goods and services. The measure provided for the president, with congressional approval, to suspend or modify the various sanctions should South Africa release Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners, and repeal most of its egregious apartheid legislation. The Project, under McDougall’s direction, helped in lobbying Congress on the issue, as did other NGOs, most notably the American Committee on Africa. If the legislation, in itself, directed a cataclysmic assault against South Africa’s economy, it also included clauses that could compel South Africa’s other trading partners to undertake similar enactments or run the risk of jeopardizing their valuable marketing opportunities in the United States. Congress provided U.S. citizens the “legal right” to seek damages against any person who takes “commercial advantage of a sanction or prohibition.” President Reagan vetoed the legislation that had been adopted in August and September 1986, calling it a policy of “cut and run.” The House of Representatives overrode the veto by an overwhelming 313 to eighty-three vote, and the Senate followed shortly afterward with a seventy-eight to twenty-one vote. It was the first time since 1973 (when Congress overrode President Richard Nixon’s veto of a War Powers Resolution) that the White House “had suffered such a heavy loss on an important foreign policy issue.”83 Nelson Mandela, released in February 1991, ultimately recognized, “there is no doubt” that “sanctions played a decisive role in the collapse of apartheid.”84 Once applied by the United States, it was only a matter of a few years before the entire structure of apartheid would come crashing down. But the Project, creatively, went beyond mere support for the legislative sanctions. It established a Sanctions Monitoring Group that would monitor the implementation and enforcement of the act’s sanctions. Composition of the new group would come from the Project’s staff and from voluntary lawyers who worked for law firms and law school faculties with expertise in international trade and customs. The Sanctions Group would consult with

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relevant departments of the U.S. government and key administration agencies. As part of its portfolio, the Sanctions Group discovered that South African Airways was challenging the efforts of the U.S. Department of Transportation to implement the new act. On the basis of the group’s initiative, the Department of Transportation revoked the lauding rights of the foreign air carrier on grounds that it was actively lobbying against U.S. legislation, and when South African Airways sought to delay the revocation, the Project quickly intervened with a lawsuit. Imaginatively, the Project’s Monitoring Group found that the Reagan administration sought to use a loophole in the law banning South African uranium imports that would have permitted the importation of uranium ore and uranium oxide. The Project responded by formally petitioning the key government agency—the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—to block any type of uranium imports.85 On a totally separate issue, the Project filed an amicus legal brief in a case involving a Baltimore city ordinance that required that the city’s pension funds in no way be invested in South Africa, as had been the case earlier. The brief argued that the city ordinance, which might have earlier been considered an unconstitutional intrusion into the exclusive federal authority to conduct foreign affairs, had now been preempted by the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. The range of the Project’s defense activities was extraordinary and illuminates the unique and special honors bestowed later upon Gay McDougall. U.S. economic sanctions could not but exert a powerful impact on South Africa. Only several years after they were enacted, the already isolated apartheid regime recognized that it had no political future. On February 2, 1990, remarkably close in time to the collapse of the military regime in Chile and the Communist satellite governments in Eastern Europe, the ruler in South Africa, President F. W. de Klerk, announced a series of astonishing steps that brought apartheid to an end. All the race restriction laws were abolished and those arrested under them freed; the ban on the African National Congress and all other political groups was removed; and the symbol of the antiapartheid struggle, Nelson Mandela who had been interred in 1962 was provided his freedom which came the following year in 1991. What constituted a climactic moment for the Project and McDougall’s career were the four days of April 26–29, 1994, when South Africa held its first free elections. It was the historic moment that would mark “apartheid’s funeral.”86 In January 1994, McDougall was appointed to South Africa’s new sixteen-member Independent Electoral Commission; she was the only American accorded this honor and responsibility. Voter education programs had to be started from scratch. The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law was active with a variety of civic groups, urging the holding of workshops and the building of an administrative structure essential for the election process.87 That the election process would have a positive outcome was, by no means, certain. One of the Lawyers Committee representatives commented, “People were afraid that there wouldn’t be an election—that it

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would be violently disrupted, that the turnout would be insignificant, that there would be assassinations or civil war.” Instead, and despite widespread anxieties and fears, the election turned out to be remarkably peaceful. Patiently, people waited in long lines to vote, mostly in good humor. An observer recalled one of the voters saying, “Hey, we’ve waited 32 years for this. We can wait another couple hours.” For McDougall, the election was more than an historic watershed. “Through all the work I’ve done over the past twenty-three years, I never imagined that this would happen at this time,” she said. But the unique moment that she would especially remember was the one during which she accompanied Nelson Mandela to the polls: “To be with him when he voted for the first time in his life, after spending a lifetime fighting for this simple right was very special.”

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Chapter

10

Wo m e n’s R i g h ts : “A Po s i t i o n o f E m p ow e r m e n t ”

A t a Ford Foundation staff discussion, in November 1978, of women’s

roles across various cultures, a foundation vice-president, Mitchell Sviridoff, lauded women staffers for the quiet internal pressure they had used for two years on behalf of gender rights. Hardly an active advocate of women’s rights—he had been a specialist on labor and social services—Sviridoff was so impressed with what had been internally accomplished that he told the staff that he expected that women could achieve “a position of empowerment.”1 The extraordinary progress in the number of women staff members in the course of several years convinced him that there was no limit as to what levels would be reached. In the course of only thirteen years, 1973–86, the number of professional women staffers doubled from 23 percent to 53 percent.2 It also marked the beginning of a major, almost revolutionary, shift in foundation programming, running parallel to its giant human rights strides in taking on major repressive regimes. Writing in the introduction of a Ford Foundation work on women’s rights, the foundation’s then president, Franklin Thomas, observed that in 1972, his organization “began making grants aimed explicitly at enhancing the rights and opportunities of women.”3 Over the course of the next fourteen years, Thomas noted, the foundation’s women’s program evolved from a very limited number of discrete activities “into a major influence” on the foundation’s work. In at least one sense, the fundamental shift in policy and programming between 1970 and 1972 did not result in a sharp and total break from what had prevailed during the foundation’s previous quarter century. It had had a program on reproductive rights that was situated within the International Division’s Population Office. The purpose of the office was population planning, not women’s rights.4 Population growth explosions, especially in the Third World, had been a burning issue in the post-war period, and the foundation gave it appropriate attention. Women staffers in the Population Office recognized that the elevation of women’s status would tend to diminish the number of births. What was more important, they contended, was

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that the foundation adopt a new and separate goal: promoting “women’s well being as an end in itself, not just as an instrument of population policy.”5 How the transformation in foundation policy came about makes for instructive reading. It was not the product initially of foundation leadership nor of direct influences exerted by leadership. Rather, it was the result of a groundswell from the lower reaches of the foundation, from women staff associates, clamoring, first, on behalf of their own personal needs and rights, and then for women’s rights generally. The sixties, of course, provided a powerful initial stimulant, with the drive of blacks in the United States, for meaningful civil rights. The response of the Ford Foundation was a positive one in a variety of domestic areas. But the foundation, during that decade, “virtually ignored in its equal opportunity initiatives,”—as recorded by one study—the women’s rights issues.6 That subject was not, however, entirely neglected. In asserting the civil rights of disadvantaged blacks, the foundation supported programs for day care and the betterment of conditions for domestic workers. At the same time, in keeping with its very early tradition of helping strengthen universities, the foundation also significantly assisted the programs for the encouragement of women’s careers in science, engineering, and mathematics. Moreover, as part of its earlier support for birth control, the foundation provided “massive support” for research and education on matters related to methods for achieving this aim. However, the intent at that time was closely related to the goal of limiting population growth, not to the needs and rights of women. If no programming was advanced for women’s rights during the sixties, it was not likely that any effort would have been mounted to promote women to key staff positions, which would have offered a harbinger for future programming. A foundation report in 1974 acknowledged that even if women indirectly benefited from the foundation’s general social, educational, and civil rights activities, the extent of women’s direct representation in them had “been as proportionately low . . . as in many other parts of American life.”7 The board of trustees, in 1966, may have designated “equal opportunity” the first concern of the foundation, but it certainly did not apply to women, nor even to women on its own staff. As late as 1971, every one of the foundation’s senior officers were men, as were every member of its board of trustees.8 The highest ranking woman staffer was an assistant general counsel, Sheila McLean, who would play an important role in the foundation’s work against apartheid in South Africa. Several other women held program officer positions. Stirrings of criticism leading to a breakthrough began only in May 1970, when a junior staffer in the foundation’s National Affairs Division prepared a memorandum, signed by 150 staffers and sent to President McGeorge Bundy, noting the absence of any women on the board of trustees. The memo pointed to an embarrassing reality by listing the names of prominent women who could easily qualify to serve on the board. During the same month, at a foundation staff convocation, the issue of the status of staff women was resumed.

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A few more challenging initiatives were taken in the next month by a woman staffer from the education and research division, Gail Spangenberg. Already quite familiar, personally, with women’s rights, she wrote a long memo to Bundy urging him to undertake four tasks: appoint women to the board of trustees; examine, generally, the foundation’s practice concerning women; hold seminars on women’s issues; and, most importantly, set up a mechanism in the form of a task force to implement these initiatives.9 The display of courage by the young woman, who had never met Bundy, was rewarded by the foundation president with a personal invitation to his office. Bundy displayed keen interest. Following a one-hour meeting, he appointed a committee to look into the proposals, designating, at the same time, a foundation vice-president as its chair, thereby giving the group a certain status. A month-long inquiry resulted in a report with several wide-ranging recommendations that closely adhered to the Spangenberg proposals. Within a few years, most were implemented, beginning with the election to the board of two prominent professional women. Specific benefits, like salary increases aimed at eliminating the gap between male and female staffers, were extended. More pertinently, the foundation’s maternity leave policy was significantly improved. Even more dramatic was the decision to subsidize day care for staffers. The foundation was one of the very first employers to accept this responsibility. While no immediate staff breakthrough came at the highest, senior level, meaningful changes were wrought at the mid-staff level, where a gain of twenty-five professional staff posts for women was won. Among those who achieved a significant breakthrough was the current president, Susan Berresford, who at the time was promoted to program officer in the National Affairs Division. She had only joined the foundation in 1970. A decade later, in 1980, Berresford achieved an even more spectacular upgrading, to vice-president. Sixteen years later, in 1996, she was appointed to her present position. No sooner had women begun occupying new mid-level positions in the foundation than they sought to impose such affirmative standards upon the very group that they dealt with: recipients of foundation grants. A survey by the National Affairs Division found that only 6 percent of its 340 grantees employed women in high-level positions in their institutions, and in addition, these women earned lower salaries than men. Several women middlelevel staffers, including Berresford, urged the foundation to require institutional grantees to establish affirmative action with respect to both gender and race in their hiring practices. The recommendation was acted upon in a positive manner by Bundy in 1974. Institutional grantees were called upon to remove “restraints” with respect to hiring and promotion. Statements of commitment along these lines were required of those making application for grants.10 A small group of women activists at the foundation, including Berresford, McLean, and Spangenberg, began meeting frequently at lunch, initially in the latter part of 1971. An outcome of the meeting was a new focus upon the awarding of grants for those researching women’s issues. The informal

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network for a feminist agenda would soon assume an institutional shape. And the very impact of their lobbying was quietly felt. Bundy, in a paper to the board of trustees in March 1972, acknowledged that the foundation “[had] been relatively insensitive to the special problems and needs of women and the unfair, often unreasonable, obstacles and barriers they faced.”11 The foundation, he recommended, through its grant-making efforts, “should be able to foster changes and social progress” with respect to women’s rights in such areas as employment, education, and law and public policy. It was apparent that the foundation president had become more than responsive to suggestions flowing from the small group of women feminists in the organization that had become whistle-blowers. Bundy was transforming the feminist staff drive into formal policy. An innovator, as he had showed himself to be on other human rights matters, he even went to the trouble of formalizing his until-then informal cabinet of female advisers. He created, within the foundation, a Task Force on Women. Soon thereafter, a black woman staffer was added to the previous all-white group, also a result of lobbying, this time by black women professionals. At the same time, Bundy sought to enhance the Task Force’s internal power and influence by selecting two foundation vice presidents to co-chair the Task Force. While national grant programs of the foundation would easily be adopted, international programming was more subject to “cultural constraints,” as the vice-president in charge of the international division, David Bell, noted. Although the division had supported grants dealing with birth control and family planning, programs had been prompted for population control purposes and not because of a deep awareness that women played a key role in agricultural production. Elinor Barber, a member of the Task Force who worked in the division, was soon priming the pump for specific women’s programs and grants in the international field. In its final report and recommendations to the board of trustees in March 1973, the Task Force called for across-the-board programs—whether dealing with domestic or international issues—in affirming affirmative action, women’s economics status, equity in education, and the need for changing attitudes toward women. Bundy now moved to make the valuable internal lobbying apparatus a continuing institutional factor in the foundation. He created, at the very end of 1973, the Coordinating Committee on Women’s Programs to replace the Task Force. The influence of the Coordinating Committee and its predecessor was conducted delicately, so as not to alienate males in the still male-dominated organizational structure. But the Coordinating Committee would have a long-term impact. A foundation vice-president noted, “the screw is tightened every day and very carefully.”12 He was referring to the constant pressure of the women activists. But that pressure and the positive response to it made the organization, far and away, the leader in the field of women’s rights. A top official of the major lobbying organization, National Organization for Women (NOW), Mary Jean Tulley, declared, “among the [philanthropic] giants, only the Ford Foundation has moved in all the appropriate ways to meet the needs of the feminists.”13

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While the women’s issues were more slow to reach priority attention in the international field as compared with the domestic area, it was nonetheless clear that the overseas offices of the foundation were now rather quick to gather information about the condition of women in the labor force in various countries, particularly in rural areas with notable reference to agriculture. The accumulation of research findings would be followed with foundationsponsored conferences and publications whose purposes were to promote general awareness and consciousness-raising that might then be followed by experimental projects that the foundation could support. The office in Dhaka, Bangladesh, proved to be especially productive with its programs, although other offices followed similar methods, if only on a smaller scale. While the broad issue of women’s concerns were highlighted, as elsewhere, by research, seminars, and reports, the foundation also actively helped establish a pilot project for rural women’s cooperatives. The intent was not only to make rural activity more productive, but also to enhance significantly women’s skills.14 At the same time, the foundation provided the Bangladeshi government with a grant of two hundred thousand dollars to establish a research unit that might explore all aspects of the topic of women in agriculture. A second grant of one hundred twenty thousand dollars offered training for women who might seek to do research in the field, or who might wish to be involved in policy formation as related to rural development, population control, and education. Elsewhere, the foundation funded other types of research. One hundred thousand dollars was given as a grant in Brazil for research on women’s education and employment. A quarter of one million dollars was awarded to Beirut University in Lebanon to establish an Institution for Women’s Studies, and still another grant of one hundred sixty thousand dollars was given to the well-known African Training and Research Centre for Women in order for people to study women’s legal and economic status.15 A second aim of this grant was to train women in food production and in small business management. Other sizable grants were given to the University of Dar es Salaam designed to enable Tanzanian women to pursue post-graduate education. Any impact of the foundation’s program in the Third World during the early part of the seventies was very limited. Absent were women pressure groups through whom advice and assistance could be channeled. And Third World governments were hardly responsive.16 By 1975, the external situation had changed, as Western feminists began to exert a serious pressure upon international institutions. The United Nations formally declared 1975 to be International Women’s Year, and organized a world conference to be held at the beginning of the summer in Mexico City. While examining, in various UN conference sessions, reports on the prevailing women’s status, the representatives went on to reach an agreement on a broad ten-year program, “Decade for Women Program.” The focus of the UN clearly had crystallized on the women’s rights issue, and it assumed the shape of a long-term project. If the early seventies saw the foundation, as a result of pressure from women staffers, take on women’s rights as a priority concern, that concern,

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nonetheless, was limited to domestic U.S. programming (with some spillage to Canada and Western Europe). The Third World of Africa, Asia, and Latin America was largely excluded from the exciting new programming. While the International Division of the organization, through its Population Office, remained concerned with providing information and knowledge about both birth control and family planning, the focus was not on women’s rights, but rather on reducing excessive population. An internal document in November 1975 frankly acknowledged that the work of the foundation’s Coordinating Committee on Women’s Programs were devoted to domestic women’s problems “even though the Coordinating Committee,” in principle, “[included] among its concerns the status of women in developing countries.”17 This is not to say that the International division was totally unconcerned. Grants by the division on women’s issues, while mainly related to its primary population concerns during 1973–75, totaled $1,200,000, which was broken into categories of research, education and training, and action-oriented programs. The actual number of grants during this period was a very modest seventy-one.18 Recognizing the limited character of the appropriation and of the grants, the critical “Information Paper” commented, “the wisest of opinion in the International Division at this time strongly favors the view that a good deal more needs to be done.”19 What would then bring about the change in division programming and in the foundation as a whole was indicated in an interoffice memorandum on August 6, 1975. It was attached to the internal memorandum dated November 1975. The interoffice memo was written by Adrienne Germaine, a mid-level staff member of the International Division, to David Bell, the vice-president of the division. The subject reported in the memorandum was, “World Conference of the International Women’s Year,” held in Mexico City, June 19–July 2, 1975.20 Appended to Germaine’s memorandum was a detailed report of the UN-sponsored conference on International Women’s Year. It is clear from her writing that she regarded the conference as a guidepost for future planning by the foundation’s International Division. In her introduction to a detailed summary of the conference proceedings, Germaine observed that the proceedings enabled her to outline “the major theme” of the UN meeting and draw “conclusions for International Division programming.”21 In the same memo, after briefly referring to the “World Plan of Action” adopted by the conference, she wrote, “Most important from a Foundation perspective, the Plan calls on international agencies . . . for assistance in its implementation.” The summary, with comments by Germaine, indicated how the International Division could find the conference decisions to be a point of departure for, especially emphasizing a particular section of the conference’s Declaration of Mexico, which stated, all women, “whatever differences exist between them, share the painful experience of . . . unequal treatment.”22 To underscore her point, she quoted the following comments at the conference by an official from the Nigerian Ministry of Public Health: “now I know that women all over the world have this same pain.”23 What was signaled by the declaration,

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Germaine contended, was the need for international assistance to enable women to define and act upon their priorities and goals. Employment, education, and family planning were given emphasis by the conference, as set forth in the summary. While Germaine commented favorably about the adopted declaration, she could hardly fail to note that the resolution vote on its adoption was not unanimous: eighty-nine voted in favor but two voted against it—the United States and Israel—and about twenty from Western Europe abstained. The negative votes were prompted by the inclusion in the declaration of hostile references to Zionism, which was equated with every form of political evil such as colonialism, neocolonialism, and apartheid. The women from Arab countries had lobbied successfully for this condemnation of what in essence is the Jewish political aspiration of national self-determination. Several months after the Mexico City conference, Arab countries, joined by the Soviet bloc, would successfully win the endorsement in the UN General Assembly of a resolution defining Zionism as a “form of racism and racial discrimination.” Apparently, the political abuse of a conference on women by the introduction of harsh language on Zionism did not trouble Germaine. She offered no evaluation of how the hostile references to Zionism were included in the declaration. The only comment she would make was that the vote on the declaration was “overwhelmingly positive.” That it might carry later a serious negative impact did not seem to evoke concern. Later, at UN women’s conferences, the Arabs and their Soviet and Muslim allies would seek to again equate Zionism with racism, only to meet with powerful resistance from the Western democracies. Thus, at UN conferences on women in Copenhagen in 1980 and in Nairobi in 1985, anti-Zionist references would find no echo. Especially at the conference in Nairobi did the Arabs press heavily for an antiZionist resolution, apparently presuming that they would find strong allies among African women. This proved to be a miscalculation. Adamant opposition from the United States, including the threat of a walkout, won support from the West and even from some countries in Africa. The determination of the United States and the West to refuse acquiescence to what was considered a political intrusion was summed up by a top U.S. official in the American delegation, Ambassador Alan L. Keyes, as follows: “we reject the obscene notion that Zionism is a cause of racism and we believe, no matter how often that slanderous lie is repeated, no amount of reiteration shall ever lend any truth to this whatsoever.”24 The episode, while but incidental to the significant work that the Ford Foundation was achieving in the field of women’s rights at international conferences, nonetheless appeared to allow itself to appear indifferent when anti-Zionist resolutions were introduced, even when they were not relevant to the objectives of the conference. Later, this indifference at a UN-sponsored conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, would produce embarrassing repercussions. In September 1975, only one month after Germaine’s interoffice memo to David Bell, the International Division held a special conference at foundation

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headquarters, attended by all of its overseas representatives.25 The topic was “Status, Roles, and Opportunities for Women.” Agreement on a policy decision was reached calling for “strong support for increased attention to the position of women.” Two months later, a paper was produced reflecting the new policy with respect to women’s rights in developing countries. There was to be no question about the need “to intensify international program activities related to women.”26 The only thing that remained for the foundation to undertake, read the “Information Paper,” was to explain “why this problem should claim [the Foundation’s] serious attention and whether and how [the Foundation could undertake] anything significant towards mitigating it.” Answers to the question of “why” flow from the fact that “in the last few years, there [had] arisen in many parts of the world increased awareness of inequality between men and women.” The documentation had been provided in Mexico City. But, already, the foundation had recognized the seriousness of the gender problem and what had to be done to respond to it. A summary of the UN Plan of Action adopted at the conference in Mexico City emphasized the following range of problems that existed and persisted: a general pattern of discrimination against women; a “marked disadvantage” of women and girls in access to education; and the need for improved access for women to health, nutrition, and other social services. A delineated fourth area was less a matter of deprivation than the need to provide women with the autonomy to govern their personal and family responsibilities with respect to births. The number and spacing of children were seen as essential to the presentation of women’s autonomy. The “Information Paper” underscored how the place of women in society was intertwined with economic development. The foundation was already fully aware of this problem. In a 1972 staff working paper about the foundation and less developed countries, it was recognized that the effect of development on income distribution was by no means uniform.27 What was especially valuable in the “Information Paper” was how it chose to elucidate the reasons why the foundation had to pay “special attention” to women’s roles and opportunities. First, most importantly and “most fundamentally,” the Ford Foundation was an organization “espousing egalitarian values.” In addition, it was an organization that was “devoted to increasing human welfare.” These features inevitably prompted “Foundation concern” with women who were “disadvantaged” or treated unequally.28 At this point, the “Information Paper” brought up an issue that had been at the heart of the foundation’s previous work in developing countries—welfare. It had been an area of primary concern, but that objective had been consciously avoided, to any significant extent. The issue had only recently surfaced dramatically, especially at the Mexico City conference. The foundation “Information Paper” now argued that the relationship between women and development “[had] been raised with good reason,” for recent evidence pointed to the reality “that gains in welfare that [were] being stimulated through programs, like [the Foundation], [were] not necessarily equal for women and men.” It was not that the foundation’s welfare programs in

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developing countries should be junked, but rather that “we should give more attention to the participation of women” if “the effectiveness of existing programs” was to be “increased.” The mea culpa may not have been as significant as a somewhat similar apologia that the foundation had taken at approximately the same time in Latin America, when it argued that economic welfare programs could not be allowed to overlook basic human rights violations that had become a crucial part of programs of the foundation. Indeed, the issue of human rights was perceived as central and vital to the foundation, transcending even its welfare program. At the same time, even while pressing for women’s equality in agricultural production as well as in access to education, the “Information Paper” took a very strong position on birth control. In the following quote from the section entitled “Fertility limitation,” the policy position outlined was quite striking, as was its language, which even today, would evoke a harsh negative reaction in various quarters: Greater freedom of choice with regard to the number of children women have (including even the notion of having no children), would not only enhance their human dignity, but would also permit them to achieve great economic productivity and independence and to raise the children they have more effectively.29

How, then, to achieve progress in the field of women’s rights? Once again, it would come as no surprise that the foundation stressed research, especially on women’s roles in rural development. Research would seek to ascertain the different constraints on productivity, on access to more technology, to training or to credit, and most important, to education itself. Besides the need to fund research, it was seen as necessary to support the funding of educational and training facilities for women. And such education, the foundation paper noted, could not be restricted to only formal educational facilities, but rather had to be extended through the women’s “participation in action programs.”30 Among these action programs, those targeted specifically to women’s needs would be family planning, maternal and child health, and nutrition. Parenthetically, the paper offered here an exception, pointing out that “recent [foundation] programs in Bangladesh have been directed at economic opportunities.” Because of the broader functions that the International Division would undertake, and given the budgeting restrictions of the foundation at this time, in 1975, the paper proposed that a staff member of the division be assigned the responsibility of serving a “circuit-riding” function. That person would travel to all the regional offices of the foundation and would help provide “coordination” among development projects in the field. She would also assist in the development of local projects. The new position would not preclude the need “to strengthen [the Foundation’s] own staff experience.” With the much higher priority now assigned to women’s rights in Third World countries, it was hardly surprising that the International Division

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would want to emphasize this internal need, even to the extent of employing consultants specializing in women’s issues and roles. The results from the Mexico City conference, one of the first international initiatives on behalf of women, could hardly be more than modest, even if they appeared to produce several breakthroughs. Many Third World governments, for the first time, established women’s bureaus or commissions to advance the respective national agenda of women’s rights.31 In most places in Africa and Asia, the progress was limited, but in Latin America, a strong and vocal feminist movement had already emerged, insisting on social change. More significantly, the embryonic movement in the Third World for women’s rights was now provided with strong international backing by the UN. Although the Ford Foundation’s role in Mexico City was extremely modest, largely limited to subsidizing the travel to the UN conference of a small number of Third World women, a beginning had been made. All future UN women’s conferences would find the foundation playing a prominent role in attendance and follow-up. There could be little doubt that the seventies constituted a watershed in the foundation’s taking on of women’s rights. Program budget data illuminates the radical transformation. In 1972, the foundation spent only 6 percent of its overall program on grants designed to advance opportunities for women. The absolute figure was somewhat more than $1.2 million. By 1979, when Bundy relinquished control of the organization, the allocation of grants for feminist purposes had jumped to an absolute figure of approximately $4.1 million.32 A study of financial expenditures for women programs noted that the total allocated on feminist issues for all of the foundation divisions reached $9.5 million. For the entire eight-year period, 1972–80, a total of more than thirty million dollars had been allocated. If early women’s rights programming signaled a milestone for the Ford Foundation, credit for it must be extended to McGeorge Bundy, who broke ground on this issue just as he had broken ground on such crucial international issues as the Helsinki Final Act in Eastern Europe, authoritarian regimes in Latin America, and confronting apartheid in South Africa. Nearing retirement, he chose to accord appropriate recognition of the success achieved on women’s issues by terminating in 1978 the Coordinating Committee on Women’s Programs, which had been his most recent principal instrument for promoting gender rights. In closing down the committee, Bundy pointed out that all of the major foundation divisions had developed well-staffed programs and projects on behalf of women.33 At the same time, he recognized, the Foundation’s [work on behalf of women is not complete,” and he assumed that it would “go forward within the regular offices of the Foundation.” But, of course, Bundy was hardly the sparkplug of the decade-old transformational changes at the foundation. It was the handful of female junior staffers who had inaugurated the struggle in the early seventies and incessantly pursued further and further goals. They had initiated the objectives of promoting women to policy-making positions in the foundation and the hiring of additional personnel to fulfill increased program goals. If, in 1972,

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there were but a few female program officers, by 1976, there were almost a dozen women whose responsibilities entailed the preparation and consideration of grants that furthered the feminist agenda.34 And the tiny group of women staffers would not quit and call it a day. In the preparation of papers for the board of trustees meeting in 1976, the activist group, which included Berresford, urged the board to expand the women’s program and make it a high priority for the decade of the eighties. This pressure was not in vain. The new foundation president, Franklin Thomas, was as keenly interested in women’s rights as had been his predecessor, and the board of trustees was equally responsive. In an almost revolutionary step, the trustees approved an increase of more than 100 percent in expenditures for women’s projects for the years 1980–81. In absolute terms, the new budgetary allocation was to be $19.3 million. This figure would constitute no less than 10 percent of all foundation project spending during those two years. Even more significant was President Thomas’s decision to restore the foundation-wide mechanism that had triggered the historic change in women’s rights. Now to be called the Women’s Program Group, it was to oversee and review all women’s programs.35 Susan Berresford was chosen as its chairperson. A number of members of the original group from the early seventies— the Task Force on Women—were asked to serve. Having achieved such significant progress, the group was even more determined than its predecessor, the Coordinating Committee, to guide the foundation in a more dynamic direction. It reviewed every group that had been approved for a previous grant, and then prepared a statement to the foundation’s president about the proposed grant’s relationship to women’s concerns. Staff members proposing grants had to become sensitive to gender, even if the grant had little to do specifically with gender. To underscore the new significance of the gender issue, Berresford was assigned the responsibility of interviewing most of the finalists who were currently candidates for all professional staff positions. Shortly afterward, she was named by Thomas vice-president in charge of programming for both the U.S. and the International Affairs Divisions. It was a most significant step in symbolizing how women’s rights had come to occupy a central place in the foundation structure and policy. Of landmark importance was a special meeting in June 1979 of the Women’s Program Group, during which a detailed review of their experiences and achievements was undertaken. The review later took the form of a staff paper that was submitted to the board of trustees in December 1979. It was soon published and widely distributed as a booklet entitled, “Women in the World.”36 The study placed the foundation’s work on women’s rights in the global context of the persistent social and economic disadvantages for women, with emphasis on the universality of sex discrimination and the urgent need for a sustained effort to attack it. A crucial theme of the work was that gender discrimination had to be seen as a violation of fundamental human rights; at the very same time, it had to be vitally dealt with in order to significantly invigorate and fulfill development programs in the Third World.

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What made this theme especially relevant was the decision taken by Thomas early in his administration to eliminate the separate domestic and international geographic divisions dealing with women. They were now to be one indivisible program unit that would include poverty, human rights and social justice, and education.37 The integration took place even as the appropriation for women’s rights doubled.38 The new focus in the eighties would be on the foundation’s field offices, which arranged for lectures and seminars about the new thrust. The higher budget enabled the assignment of newlyhired staff members to the field offices, specializing exclusively on women’s issues. In the largest field office—in New Delhi—there was created a crossprogramming operation similar to the Women’s Program Group in New York headquarters. To intensify the focus of the overseas offices, a budgetary mechanism was created whereby headquarters would match, on a four-toone allocation, all regional offices’ expenditures on women’s rights.39 This built-in funding incentive could only help overcome expected resistance in overseas offices to the new emphasis on gender. The unified program division would be subdivided into six thematic areas: urban poverty, rural poverty and resources, human rights and social justice, governance and public policy, education and culture, and international affairs. A gender component would remain of critical importance to pursuing overall genderoriented targets in each of the categories, with the expansion of attention to gender-related elements in the various areas. Moreover, in grant-making, foundation staffers consciously sought out nongovernmental organizations with special interests in gender issues as related to the subgroups. In the Third World, such NGOs may not have been quickly available on a local level. Nonetheless, grassroots initiatives were explored, as were NGOs in developed countries who were in a position to embrace the gender question in developing countries. What was to be critical in the shaping of grant-making decisions was a recognition that the livelihood of the bulk of poor women in Third World countries rested on agriculture.40 Thus, to take account of this reality, grants went to both governmental agencies and NGOs that provided rural women with technical assistance. In Bangladesh, the foundation supported initiatives to women’s programs and female development staff in the Ministry of Agriculture. In Peru, the governmental Center for Peasant Research and Advancement would be allocated funds, one half of which were earmarked for projects that were designed for generating income specifically for peasant women. The principle was similarly applied to agricultural programs at universities. Grants were extended, for example, to Tamil Nadu University in India and Bogor Agricultural University in Indonesia for incorporating specific women’s needs within their research and training programs. This overall orientation did not preclude grants being given to nonagricultural activities in rural areas. Thus, the Rural Women’s Advisory Services could and did receive a grant for helping women in certain types of jobs like soap-making, market gardening, and goat-raising. In India, where vast

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numbers of women were employed in silk production and dairying, the object of grants was to upgrade women’s skills and, therefore, income. Employment in cities was, by no means, excluded. In Madras, India, for example, the Working Women’s Force served as a model in offering credits and technical assistance. The domestic-work focus required much attention. Grants were made by the Brazilian regional office to the Professional Associates of Domestic Workers of Rio and Sao Paulo in order to provide meeting places for women domestic workers who had left rural areas to study such fundamental concerns as health and legal rights. Another Latin American group, the Colombian Association for Population Studies, was similarly supported. In South Africa, the Institute of Race Relations, which had always been a favored group of the foundation, was singled out for support, and its Domestic Workers’ and Employers’ Project in particular was lauded. Early in 1971, the Ford Foundation had one of its major staffers, Mariam K. Chamberlain, an economist, begin inquiries on the advisability of creating and supporting women’s study centers. Chamberlain, at that time a program officer in the foundation’s Higher Education and Research Program, found that there was a strong interest in this subject among highly placed women educators. At the end of the year, she convened a meeting of top women academics to be held at the foundation. More importantly, she arranged for the meeting site to be President Bundy’s conference room, with the hope that he might sit in for at least a limited time. As it turned out, Bundy appeared at the opening of the meeting and was so intrigued that he not only stayed for the entire discussion, but he decided to actively participate in the dialogue. This purely informational meeting, Chamberlain observed, turned out to be “a strategic one.”41 Soon, funds totaling a half million dollars were allocated for study center programs. In 1972, the foundation started a faculty fellowship program concerned with research on the role of women in various societies and in women’s studies programs. Chamberlain wrote about this particular “testimony” of how the foundation had become seized with the issue. She amusingly entitled her contribution, “There Were Grandmothers, Too” (she was already senior both in age and position at this early period). Her conclusion bears noting as follows: “The impact of the [foundation] program went beyond anything we could have imagined.”42 However, the initial programmatic activity of the foundation with respect to women was geographically limited. Besides the United States, it applied to a much lesser degree only to Canada and Western Europe. Third World women were not covered. Only with the United Nations’ “Decade for Women,” initiated in Mexico City in 1975, would it assume a global character. That UN conference, said Chamberlain, acted as “a galvanizing force” upon the international agenda.43 Women’s studies at a high academic level may have been inaugurated in the United States, with the foundation playing a key role, but as the international community, through the United Nations, had become seized with the

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central issue of women’s rights, the program spread rapidly. The UN “Decade for Women,” launched in 1975 and further extended in Copenhagen in 1980 and especially in Nairobi in 1985, deepened and broadened the base of women’s studies outside of the United States. Even before the UN Mexico City conference, the foundation had begun funding women’s studies in the developing world. In 1973, it provided a grant to Beirut University College to enable it to establish the Institute for Women’s Studies, the first in the Arab community. Later, it helped create the Women and Development Unit at the University of the West Indies in Barbados. Of particular importance was the foundation’s funding in Senegal of the African Association of Women for Research and Development.44 The major instrument of the international women’s rights program was the NGO Forum, attended largely by women from a great variety of countries. At Copenhagen, the Forum held a special seminar on the subject, attended by five hundred representatives from over fifty-five countries.45 A leading organizer of the seminar was the Feminist Press, which had been funded, in part, by the Ford Foundation. As noted by two scholars who had worked for the Ford Foundation, the seminar resulted in “a world-wide network of women’s studies, scholars and practitioners.”46 A major result of the Copenhagen seminar was a powerful increase in women’s studies programs in India. At the Nairobi 1985 conference, the NGO Forum specifically included women’s studies programs that had been cosponsored by twenty-six organizations that represented fifteen countries. Attendance was remarkably high, including over one thousand people.47 Foundation funding was very much integral to the conference’s seminars. Some attendees were provided with direct grants, and the international congresses were provided with funds for planning purposes.48 When the conference ended, the foundation’s field offices in India, Bangladesh, and Latin America picked up the slack. They supported women’s study centers as well as research and documentation programs on women and gender. While other foundations did offer assistance as well, the Ford Foundation was “the chief supporter of research and programming.”49 Throughout the Third World, the foundation served as the major player in the funding of women’s studies. Especially was this the case in Latin America, where, since 1990, assistance was provided to the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the Pontifical Catholic University in Peru, as well as the University of the Andes in Colombia. Elsewhere, institutes and study centers in Uruguay, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic benefited. Nor was Africa neglected. For example, assistance was provided to the Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Center for the creation of a women’s documentation center and research network.50 Contributions by the foundation went beyond academic centers to specialized courses on women’s studies, to scholarly journals dealing with the subject of women’s studies, and to the organization of scholarly conferences.

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Examples were the International Resource Network of Women of African Decent in Harare, Zimbabwe, which published the journal, Network, and the Women’s Caucus of the African Studies Association, which, in 1991, convened a conference on “The Status of Women’s Studies in Africa.” It was held in November 1991.51 Summing up the impact of funding by the foundation, the researcher, Beverley Guy-Sheftall, concluded, “without this systematic and sustained support, it is fair to say that women’s studies would have had a very different history within the academy.”52 Nowhere in the developing world did the foundation play as prominent a role in advancing women’s studies as it did in India.53 The year 1981 served as a starting point following the decision of the board of trustees to significantly expand work on women’s rights. In that year, a National Conference on Women’s Studies was held in Bombay. It was a trailblazer in seeking to expand serious concern about the oppression of women and about their inequality in social and economic life. Significantly, the conference was funded by the Ford Foundation and UNICEF. The conference was organized by the Research Unit on Women’s Studies, which itself was created by the SNDT University of Bombay several months earlier. Clearly, Indian higher education was already taking positive steps with respect to women’s rights. Indeed, a Ford Foundation grant had come through in October to enable a specialist on women’s rights to head the unit. Another foundation grant permitted this key academic unit to expand its library through the acquisition of policy documents, periodicals, and books.54 Even more important was yet another foundation grant that allowed for staff training and the holding of a workshop dealing with the methodology of women’s studies. The Research Unit was on its way to becoming a champion in the preparation of teachers on women’s studies. At the end of the decade in 1990, an additional grant from the foundation envisaged building academic expertise and preparing teachers in continuing research efforts and in networking.55 Foundation assistance was not restricted either to universities or particular cities. M. S. University was among those that focused upon women and development. It acknowledged that its efforts to build a library and documentary center on women’s rights was “facilitated” by a grant from the foundation.56 The new center was reported to have had “some remarkable successes in collaborative work arising out of the Ford Foundation funded project” dealing with women and development. A similar development took place at Mysore University in 1989. Once the Women’s Studies Centre was established there, a leading woman scholar, Rameshwari Varma, played a major role in its assuming a variety of significant functions. Significantly, she traced her personal involvement to having been given a Ford Foundation Fellowship that, after a productive stay in the United States, permitted her to visit and study various women’s studies centers in India.57 The foundation was viewed as providing training and know-how for the field of women’s studies centers, which Indian national policy sought to have adopted in every university.

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Sometimes, the university did not serve as the sponsoring organization; rather, a workshop would be created that acted as an inspirational source for giving expression to women’s rights. One major workshop, which was initiated in the 1980s through funding by the Ford Foundation and the prominent Tata Institute of Social Sciences, exerted what a leading feminist advocate called “a tremendous impact on all the participants,” each of whom would be very much involved in programs for women.58 As law was often perceived as a critical element in securing women’s rights, it was hardly unexpected that centers for women would ultimately become intimately related to law schools. In 1987, the Centre for Women and Law was started and funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation.59 It was expected to act as a law reform group that would work closely with women’s organizations. One of the major aims of the Centre was to offer legal assistance to women. The foundation was seen as performing vital services to the Centre. Its initial grant, wrote a leading figure in the Centre, “made possible the birth of the centre and its legal aid activities, especially in the rural mediation centre.” Various programs connected with mediation, such as legal literacy and paralegal training programs, the writer observed, “would not have been possible without the [Ford] grant either.”60 A corollary aim to the enhancement of women’s income was the need of some to obtain bank loans for small strategic projects. This might have been accomplished on a collective basis by poor women if assistance was extended. Thus, the Grameen Bank and Working Women’s Forum were to facilitate a group of small loans to Indian and Bangladeshi women, a practice foundation regional offices encouraged. With its strong traditional links to higher education and research centers, the foundation could be expected to concentrate attention on appropriate mechanisms for the advancing of women’s rights in developing countries during the eighties. Prior years largely involved experimental initiatives, except, of course, in the United States, where attention to women’s rights had been already initiated in the seventies. Vigorous support was now extended by the Ford Foundation to the Carlos Chagas Foundation in Brazil and other academic institutions. In these institutions, the foundation was performing the following two interrelated functions with a flow of grants: preparing young women scholars in a number of areas essential for research and scholarship, and creating courses to broaden the educational base of the entire field. India, especially, provided considerable evidence of the foundation initiatives. The field of women’s studies, spurred by the foundation, had developed in autonomous research institutes and played a key role in improving women’s participation in development programs.61 Four major education centers in India were selected to be recipients of foundation funding for research purposes as well as for travel-study awards. One of them, the Center for Women’s Development Studies, was actually created by the foundation. Halfway around the world, in the Caribbean, the foundation laid the basis for another successful undertaking at the University of the West Indies, where a grant by the foundation established the key Women and Development

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Unit. As the university occupied a most strategic position in shaping the future for Caribbean leaders, the allocation inevitably made possible the special programming for women’s rights. Institutes, research centers, and universities in Africa were not neglected. By means of grants to the African Association of Women for Research and Development in Senegal, an entire network of social scientists and feminine researchers was established. The purpose was to promote the better understanding of women’s roles among planners and policy makers throughout the entire continent. Senegal had always been an academic leader, but Sudan was added when a research center at the University of Khartoum was started. The Development Studies Research Center of Khartoum in the center of Africa would now be offered support for research and seminars to advance the broad program of women’s rights. Further south, grants were made to the University of Addis Ababa of Ethiopia and the University of Zimbabwe to help train the pool of qualified women professionals in the development field. These centers were to serve as trailblazers in making available the research that would ultimately challenge “entrenched attitudes, practices and policies” about women in specifically the African continent.62 Even if not endemic to women’s rights, health issues generally and issues related to pregnancy had emerged as primary concerns once the foundation moved into an area where the problems of the poor became a significant object for public attention. Research, as well as objective reality, demonstrated that there was a close linkage between early pregnancy and poverty. Thus, to cope with poverty among women, the question of early pregnancy had to be confronted. Various foundation field offices assumed the task of educating women about their reproductive health as well as their own sexuality. Involved in this process was the need for support groups. The foundation’s Brazil office and its Cairo office prepared demonstration booklets and held workshops as part of a basic learning process.63 Ineluctably related to the education process, especially as it bore closely upon poverty issues, was the controversial problem in many Third World countries of freedom of choice for abortion and the related need for access to safe and sanitary practices. Given the hostile attitudes in Third World countries to abortion, few abortion-related grants emerged in most field offices in Asia and Africa. Bangladesh was an exception, where the government provided support to the Bangladesh Women’s Health Coalition for purposes of educating and training providers of pertinent reproductive services. An additional foundation concern about women’s rights in many areas of the Third World was violence against women by their husbands or families. Such violence was often deeply engraved in the cultural practices of various societies, and it was not a problem that could be easily treated. However, as more and more women’s groups became preoccupied with the problem, they began organizing as a social group. Especially was that the case in parts of Latin America and in India. A related problem flowing from tradition, mainly in Africa, was female circumcision. The foundation did not shirk from seeking to deal with this highly cultural problem that held obvious overtones of

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personal considerations. Being on the cutting edge of women’s rights, it supported local women’s groups in their efforts, enabling them to develop strategies for coping with circumcision issues. In addition, the foundation supported studies of cultural patterns and practices. It was the foundation’s view that the studies could exert a positive impact and result in changes in public attitudes and policy.64 The outreach of the foundation had become extensive by the early eighties. Not only was the foundation’s staff that dealt with women’s issues significantly enlarged by additional female personnel, but a special new position was also created—the “circuit rider”—to service women’s groups that needed assistance. Now, with a foundation vice-president newly appointed to oversee a significantly expanded staff, and with the permanently functioning Women’s Program Group assuming more and more functions, it was quite apparent that the foundation, institutionally, had become a dominant element in the field of women’s rights. To underscore the prominence of its role, the foundation published and distributed documents, like “Women in the World,” that spelled out its goals and how they were being implemented. Even as the foundation’s women’s program was considerably enhanced, economic and religious developments were moving in an opposite direction and, therewith, posing new, serious problems. The last years of the UN decade on women’s rights were marked by a worldwide economic slowdown that could not but deleteriously affect women’s economic prospects. At the same time, the emergence of an increasing religious fundamentalism produced a growing resistance to many of the policies oriented to improving women’s status.65 The timing of the profound clash between progressive developments and retardation forces took place at the very time when the second major UN conference on women was taking place in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1985. Nearly fifteen thousand delegates and women NGO participants were in attendance, one third of whom came from developing countries. In addition to sessions of the official intergovernmental conference, there was held a large scale “Forum 85” organized by women nongovernmental organizations. No less than one thousand workshops and panels were established by the Forum. They served to enable participants to take pride in what had already been accomplished by the women’s movement, and they instructed them on how to deal with the emerging problems. Foundation staffers met in June and October 1985 to discuss and re-assess program strategies and priorities. Drawing upon the experiences and discussions of the Nairobi conference, the foundation chose to borrow the special technique of the UN meeting, the sponsoring of seminars on the various critical issues that could be expected to challenge women activists in the forthcoming decade. The basic conclusion reached at Nairobi was that the work on behalf of women’s rights had only begun. This conclusion would serve as a point of departure for the foundation. Increasing women’s income had to remain as the staple of the next decade, according to foundation staffers. In

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addition to the satisfaction of women’s needs, the greater income would serve to benefit development itself. Income generation was thus seen as central to the goals of the foundation. Therefore, grants were to be extended to enhance the local capacity to design and evaluate such projects. Other grants were to be used for the training of researchers and of advising institutions that provided technical and financial assistance for such projects.66 In this context, the foundation and its field offices would seek to bring women directly into the employment process and income-generating projects. With this new objective, the foundation would actively encourage affirmative action, which had been the keystone of the foundation in the previous decade. Linked to affirmative action was the foundation’s emphasis on creating opportunities for the education of women. This was seen as the passport to improved employment options. Encouragement of women’s education and training was established as a priority in the field offices of Asia and Africa.67 Nairobi was also perceived by the foundation as highlighting women’s reproductive health, as this was seen as central to the maintenance of the family. Maternal mortality was held to be unacceptably high. To maintain the improved economic position of women, programs for the delaying and the spacing of childbearing ineluctably moved to the heart of women’s rights. Programming at Nairobi, too, demanded that considerable attention be paid to the rise of religious fundamentalism as limiting the horizons of women with respect to childbearing. The foundation saw it to be essential for the protection of women’s rights that laws be introduced or the legal system be reformed so that personal control over the childbearing process could be assured.

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Chapter

11

Fr o m N a i r o b i to B e i j i n g

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he UN Nairobi conference was by no means seen as the end of the women’s rights decade. At the foundation’s Women’s Program Forum, held on September 29, 1986, a year after Nairobi, a leading Third World activist emphasized that the Nairobi conference should be viewed as the beginning of an effort to improve women’s lives.1 This point was vigorously made by Sandra Kebir, speaking on behalf of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. It was a point that the foundation took seriously, as the Forum’s very perception of its role was the “need to rely on local initiatives.” At the heart of the foundation’s Third World program was the thesis that, in pinpointing “critical issues,” it was essential “to maintain the pluralism that [had] been the source of creativity for the women’s movement.”2 Such a perception underscored the foundation’s philosophy for not imposing Western values upon the cultures of the Third World. A priority program of the foundation for the mid-eighties grew out of the tormenting data on documented child survival. The documentation was provided by specialists in a review of foundation programs on child survival and reproductive health. According to the documentary evidence, some forty thousand infants and young children died daily in developing countries.3 The studies showed that child health was closely related to women’s rights, and that inadequate medical and social services for women were identified as a major component of the problem of infant and child deaths. Then a population-based study of gynecological diseases among rural women in Bangladesh showed that “social problems, not technological ones” were the source of early deaths.4 Having determined the causative source, the central problem that emerged was to ascertain where to obtain appropriate services for women. Women’s needs on three separate levels had to be fulfilled. Contraceptive funding had been a basic formula of the foundation since the 1950s, but it had to be updated to account for such other needs as abortion and quality care. A second need was recognized at the conference in Nairobi and, indeed, had become a prime concern of the foundation since the seventies; this concern was “the relationship between women’s empowerment and provision of health within the [family] household.”5 Implicit was the recognition that the

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increase of women’s earning abilities could help children’s health problems, and, therewith, maintain at least modest degrees of health for the children of the family. The third and final need focused directly upon the child and its survival. Until 1987, it was recognized that the foundation had not yet established a “well-defined and unified program with a rounded rationale.”6 With the three categories as a frame of reference, the researchers examined the sizable commitments made in four field offices of the foundation—three in Asia and one in Africa. They were located in Jakarta, Dhaka, New Delhi, and Cairo. The funding showed that in 1987, grants for $1.5 million went to New Delhi, India, $1.3 million was split between to Jakarta and Cairo, and one million dollars was for Dhaka. The anticipated total grants for all developing countries in 1987 was expected to reach between six and seven million dollars.7 The Asian field offices of the foundation were the principal operating means for effectuating the medical thrust. The New Delhi office disbursed funds to enable local institutions and agencies to extend their epidemiological and management capabilities, encourage innovation designed to facilitate the distribution of contraceptives, and to provide social-service research support aimed at improving child survival. In Jakarta, the principal foci were upon the testing of different strategies in order to increase community involvement in child survival and women’s health, supporting research for identifying specific determinants of infant mortality, and supporting epidemiological research within local communities. Dhaka’s special focus was upon “reproductive health and, therefore, upon contraceptive safety” and the prevention of “reproductive system infections.” In Cairo, the increase in public health skills throughout the entire Arab region was the priority objective, especially through epidemiological as well as social-service training.8 Examples of guarantees that had produced basic changes in women’s status in Third World countries were highlighted. Particularly outstanding was the Indian group in Ahmedabad called the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). A long-term grantee, SEWA, by 1986, had acquired sixteen thousand members. In order to promote women as vital contributors to society, SEWA pursued the goal of “gaining access to banking institutions” essential for credit purposes. It also sought to win helpful labor laws from which workers might benefit. At the same time, SEWA focused upon getting governmental institutions to require that labor contracts be honored. A final and important objective of SEWA was to acquire “police protection against physical abuses.” The overall purpose of SEWA was to win respect for women and to win access to existing community health programs. If the foundation focused attention upon the group and provided valuable funding, it was because “the process at work within SEWA [would] provide lessons for other organizations.”9 A unique program was supported in Cairo. The foundation allocated funds for television programming that was based upon the popular American program, “Sesame Street.” At the same time, it supported institutions providing

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a range of healthcare services for children, such as immunization and oral dehydration therapy deemed essential for overcoming diseases accompanied by diarrhea. In Dhaka, the field office provided support for the Dhaka Women’s Health Coalition, a private voluntary organization that managed four clinics in rural Bangladesh. Its services included providing contraception, the treatment of infections connected with pregnancy, and child care. In assessing the foundation’s advantages and achievements as compared to other organizations, the researchers concluded that it was making a unique contribution by providing “social solutions for problems of the human condition.”10 It was axiomatic that poverty had to be addressed socially, and the foundation encouraged grantees to be creative in developing distinctive responses to critical problems. The following final comment was especially appropriate: “when the history of the foundation’s work is compared with the parallel history of major national and international agencies, it is no exaggeration to say that grantees of the foundation . . . have defined issues and pointed to solutions that were subsequently adopted on a large scale.”11 As evidence, the authors pointed specifically to the health programs of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN Fund for Population Activities, the World Bank, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. A much earlier and important, if not too well noticed, international conference on human rights, held in Tehran in 1968, accorded recognition to the following thesis not yet recognized in law and practice: “parents have a basic right to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children.”12 The thesis was highly relevant, though not implemented, in most of the Third World, with quite a significant demographic consequences bearing upon women’s health in these areas and, equally significantly, upon poverty. It was a problem with which the Ford Foundation was very much concerned, firstly in terms of population considerations, and then more determinedly with respect to women’s rights. The issue became far more pressing as considerable progress in women’s rights was registered during the seventies and eighties. During the early nineties, the issue moved to the forefront of the women’s struggle. Not surprisingly, the foundation would become deeply preoccupied with the problem. Of necessity, a meaningful solution required carefully devised strategies. A paper was prepared for the foundation’s board of trustees that was to be of central concern. Entitled “Reproductive Health: A Strategy for the Nineties,” it was quickly turned into a booklet designed for a wide audience.13 President Franklin Thomas, in a the preface, highlighted its immediate pertinence by noting that the board chose to approve a ten-year program totaling the huge sum of $125 million, which made reproductive health “the centerpiece” of the foundation’s program on women’s rights.14 Of special attention, Thomas noted, was the situation of “disadvantaged women of developing countries in both rural and urban areas.” That the strategy paper would begin with fundamental demographic data in Third World countries was not unexpected, as the foundation had very early on been seized by population explosion problems in developing countries. In

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fact, said Thomas, the foundation, during the fifties and sixties, provided “grants [that] helped develop demography as an independent discipline.” In the subsequent decades of the seventies and eighties, the focus of the foundation shifted to women’s rights, which, when translated into Third World terms, meant improving the lives of “disadvantaged” women with a host of grants to improve women’s incomes, education, and health. Now in the nineties, the focus once again had shifted to reproductive rights. New data on the extent of the population explosion that the foundation had assembled and the consequent impact upon increasing poverty in the Third World, most notably affecting disadvantaged women, were decisive factors compelling a return to reproductive issues. During the preceding forty years, from 1950 to 1990, an unprecedented population growth had taken place. The world’s population had more than doubled, from 2.5 billion to 5.3 billion. Most of that increase occurred in developing countries. Running parallel with the demographic growth was a sharp decline in death rates, including dramatic decreases in infant and child mortality rates. Medical and scientific advances were responsible for the dramatic population development.15 If projected into the future, the population was expected to more than double during the next century. The population explosion, noted the foundation study, “resulted in a massive increase in the numbers of people living in poverty, with women and children bearing the largest share of the burden.” It should be pointed out, of course, that advances in contraception had also taken place, especially in the sixties, with the pill and intrauterine devices.16 However, for the “disadvantaged” woman and her family, initially, there were severe limitations to the applicability of the newer contraceptive devices, with information about them and their use being especially limited. In the early sixties, only 9 percent of all women of reproductive age in the developing world were using contraceptives; by 1991, this figure jumped to 50 percent as a result of familyplanning educational efforts. Still, considerable unevenness prevailed in the Third World. In the more developed parts of Asia and Latin America, contraceptive use was thought to be 60 percent or higher. In contrast, in most of Africa and in various parts of Asia, especially in the Arab world, educational “programs [were] weak or non-existent and contraceptive use was under 15 percent.” Strikingly, it was found that fertility rates dropped by 25 percent in the more advanced countries of Latin America and Asia.17 Contraception alone, research studies showed, did not significantly reduce birth rates. Rather, economic development and broad family planning programs, when combined with education about contraception, could make deep inroads into the limiting of population growth. This was an essential finding of the foundation. Its specialists emphasized: “Women must be able to achieve social status and dignity, to manage their own health and sexuality, and to exercise their rights in society and in partnership with men.”18 Thus, the economic status of women had to be a vital concern of society, as in developing countries, women workers accounted for more than half of the

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food produced and, at the same time, they worked up to eighteen hours a day, while holding segregated low-paying jobs. In consequence, during the eighties, the foundation placed emphasis on the improvement of women’s economic opportunities, as well as their education and health. If its grants for women projects had doubled in 1980 as compared with 1972, during the next three years, the total allocation again doubled.19 The grants covered the improvement of women’s incomes and employment opportunities, along with the fostering of women’s study programs and policy research relating to women’s issues. At the same time, grants were provided to safeguard women’s reproductive choices, including the improving of “access to safe abortion services.20 The support for abortion showed a certain courage, as religious fundamentalism became increasingly influential and the open advocacy of abortion was a risky pursuit in the public arena. It would become much more so in the following two decades. But the foundation was not reluctant to be forthright on this issue, even as it assumed a forthright posture in appropriating a $4.5 million grant to combat the AIDS pandemic.21 The foundation perceived the new decade of the nineties as requiring a program for women to develop solutions to their reproductive health and population problems. In 1991, a ten-year program was developed requiring the funding of an estimated $12.5 million per year. Social science, a favorite form of inquiry and policy formulation, was to be its weapon of choice. Research and training sites were to be established in developing countries. A variety of disciplines from the social-science field was to be employed, tapping major social-science institutions. It would necessitate graduate training, travel, and study awards, research staff and even the establishment of libraries and the holding of seminars. But a major objective of the new strategy was “to empower women and women’s organizations,” to overcome “barriers to improved reproductive health” by means of “better health services” as well as “through changes in cultural, social and economic factors.”22 Public discussion and consciousness-raising were regarded as especially important in Third World areas. To illustrate the new and expanded role of the foundation, the reproductive report pointed to several grant programs. In Nigeria, grants were provided for the specialized training of doctors to cope with urinary problems and other health problems affecting women in dealing with prenatal and postnatal matters. In India, the Self-Employed Women’s Association, which had begun as a union of street vendors, was provided with loans to develop close links to the existing health care system. Women, in this way, were to be empowered as providers and users of health services. In Bangladesh, grants were made available so as to enable women’s groups to be more closely linked to the formal health education programs. More specifically, women were to be trained to secure and refrigerate needed vaccines, as well as to assure regular vaccination of their children. These were extremely modest, even simple, programs, but for poor villagers, they were indispensable and invaluable tasks. On a higher

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level, nurses and midwives in Nigeria were given grants for training purposes related to women and children issues. At the same time, the foundation offered grants for educational activities that would enable women “to make informed choices” as well as to “raise questions important to them with their health providers.”23 For the foundation, education on all aspects was of central importance and extended to the most simple needs as well as to the more complex. Thus, the foundation called for programs that would “strengthen women’s ability to participate in discussions in their own country and at all levels of public debate.”24 Thus, in India, the foundation funded the state’s National Planning Commission in the women and development chapter of its Five-Year Plan designed to stimulate discussion at every level so that a forum might be held to discuss the diverse problems that women faced in a variety of areas. Similarly, it funded, in part, a symposium in Rio de Janeiro in 1988 by the International Women’s Health Coalition. The symposium was intended to produce a comprehensive discussion of abortion, covering all aspects of the issue—medical, ethical, economic, legal, and social. The UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China, from August 30 through September 8, 1995, constituted the climactic event for the Ford Foundation in its efforts on behalf of women’s rights. It was approximately a quarter century earlier that the foundation had embarked on its tradition-shattering program for advancing women’s economic status, promoting the teaching of women’s issues in higher education, expanding reproductive rights—including the formerly circumscribed issue of abortion rights—and opening up the topic of violence against women to judicial scrutiny and counteraction. All of these matters would be on the agenda of the NGO Forum and the intergovernmental conference that immediately followed. For the foundation, Beijing was to mark a goal of intense activism, of the biggest expenditures of funds, and of helping guide the largest-ever assemblage of women for consideration of a specific series of gender objectives in history. The UN event made huge headlines in the media, but, behind the scenes, a well-orchestrated staff operation of the foundation mobilized masses of women toward objectives of gender rights. And the conference was held in a city and country where the very words “women’s rights” were not in use. But the Beijing meeting was itself the culmination of a series of preliminary regional conclaves begun over a year before this final event. The first was held in June 1994 in Jakarta, Indonesia, for the countries of Asia and the Pacific Ocean; then in September in Mar de Plata, Argentina, for Latin America and the Caribbean; in October in Vienna, Austria, for Europe and North America; in November in Dakar, Senegal, for Africa; and again in the same month in Amman, Jordan, for the mainly Arab countries of Western Asia. A final preparatory session, known as “Prepcom,” was scheduled for March–April 1995 at UN headquarters in New York.25 What was unique about the preparatory and regional meetings—and this was vital for the foundation’s role—was the authority provided by the UN

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for NGOs to hold their own conferences parallel with or prior to the regional official governmental gatherings. The new UN procedure was unprecedented with respect to women’s conferences. It was tried, however, in 1993 with an UN-sponsored conference on human rights, and proved fruitful. That intergovernmental conference held in 1993 in Vienna, Austria, had been preceded by an NGO conference whose proposals then influenced the succeeding intergovernmental conference. As the foundation was a great sponsor of NGOs, it was in a position to influence the NGO meeting and, thereby, the intergovernmental meeting. Preparation by women’s groups for participation in the Beijing meeting began remarkably early—in 1991, four years before the historic event.26 A series of UN conferences during the intervening years at which women’s issues were aired, mostly in a marginal way, and in which some women activists were involved, hastened the preparation. The conferences were on “Environment and Development,” and were held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992; on the already mentioned issue of “Human Rights,” held in Vienna in 1993; on “Population and Development,” in Cairo in 1994; and on “Social Development,” in Copenhagen in 1995. The human rights conference in Vienna warrants special attention, as the women’s issue emerged in a major and significant way here.27 A key figure at the Vienna conference who was especially prominent in the women’s rights movement was Charlotte Bunch, executive director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University. She had already established her reputation as an effective policy analyst and leader of women in September 1986 when she wrote a special study for the foundation’s Women’s Program Forum.28 Highlighted in her address were the several NGOs that had given meaning and vitality to the thrust of the foundation in supporting the work of women’s organizations. Only a few years later, when women’s organizations were beginning their early planning for Beijing in 1991, her group at Rutgers was given a huge grant by the foundation that was to run from 1991 to 1997. The total was for $660,000. On the eve of the human rights conference in Vienna, which was not initially gender-oriented, she was given fifty-five thousand dollars for media training. Then, in 1995, when Beijing was about to begin, Bunch was provided with sixty thousand dollars. Two years later, her group was given one hundred thousand dollars, and then $1,476,000 for the ten-year period from 1997 until 2006.29 Bunch’s role leading up to and at the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights was nothing less than extraordinary. This major UN-sponsored conference was responsible for the breakthrough that finally created the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. At the same time, it established, for the very first time at the UN and in international human rights circles, the theme of the total identity of women’s rights and human rights. Previously they were mot considered as identical in meaning and character. How this was achieved at Vienna is no mystery. A central concern in the women’s movement, as Bunch would note, was violence directed specifically against women. In an essay published by UNICEF,

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she perceptively would capture the nature of this women’s issue as it seized hold of the international imagination during the last decade of the twentieth century.30 Statistical data, presented in a bullet-like fashion, illuminated the literally monumental scope of the problem: roughly sixty million women who should have been alive at the time were “missing” because of gender discrimination, predominantly in southwest Asia, China, and North Africa. Then came data on forms of other violence confronting women: in the United States, where overall violent crimes against women had been growing in the last quarter of the twentieth century, a woman was physically abused by her intimate partner every nine seconds; in India, more than five thousand women were killed each year because their in-laws considered their dowries inadequate; rape as a weapon of war had been documented in seven countries in recent years; about two million girls each year, or six thousand every day, were genitally mutilated, with the total number of victims being 130 million in twenty-eight countries; and more than one million children, overwhelmingly female, were forced into prostitution every year, the majority of these cases occurring in Asia. Gender violence, mainly at home, according to Bunch, has come to be recognized only in the 1990s as a human rights issue. She cited a World Bank analysis of thirty-five recent studies from industrialized and developing countries showing that between one-quarter to one-half of all women have suffered physical abuse from an intimate partner. In the United States, only one in one-hundred battered women ever report the abuse. Statistics on rape in industrialized and developing counties revealed similar patterns: between one in five and one in seven women will be victims of rape in their lifetime. The figures on rape become huge in circumstances of ethnic violence and genocide: twenty thousand women in Bosnia and more than fifteen thousand in Rwanda were raped. It was at the World Conference in Vienna in 1993 that the subject of “women’s rights as human rights” formally entered into international discourse. This breakthrough was as significant as the breakthroughs on recognizing the “universality and indivisibility” of human rights and the formal call for a High Commissioner for Human Rights. And, as with the other milestones realized at the conference in Vienna, it was NGOs, with women NGOs in the lead, who pressed for according the topic of women’s rights the full status of a human rights issue.31 As early as 1991, the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, the Rutgers women’s NGO, launched what would become known as the “Global Campaign for Women’s Human Rights.” With violence against women as a focal point, the campaign would assume a coordinated character, having human rights as a framework with which to link the women’s struggle.32 Soon, it would become apparent to the Rutgers Center that the World Conference, already decided upon by the UN General Assembly in December 1990, should be the occasion that warranted an all-out effort to connect women’s rights to human rights. Meetings of women’s groups in various regions of the globe began taking up the issue. At the 1992 conference on the environment in Rio de Janeiro,

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women activists acquired the know-how on operating at UN-sponsored meetings. The skill was reinforced in Latin America, where the Inter-American Institute for Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica, offered intellectual and organizational leadership training, along with financial resources. Initial planning was further advanced at the regional preparatory meetings before Vienna. These meetings were preceded by NGO regional conferences at which women’s groups could urge government representatives that women’s rights should be placed on the agenda for the conference in Vienna. The Asian NGO Forum, preceding the Bangkok preparatory meeting, was especially noteworthy in revealing the intellectual and emotional gulf between NGOs and governmental representatives on women’s issues. The NGO declaration in Bangkok stressed that “women’s rights are human rights” and that “crimes against women are crimes against humanity.” Such strong language was missing from the regional intergovernmental document. Later, the equation would be adopted at the NGO Forum in Vienna. At the Vienna World Conference, a genuine watershed was reached on focusing international attention on women’s rights. Charlotte Bunch, joined by Florence Butegwa of Uganda, would present the following statement to the World Conference that constituted a ringing declaration: Abuses of women have too long been dismissed as private, family, cultural or religious matters. Today, we demand that they be seen for what they are: fundamental violations of the “right to life, liberty and security of the person,” as guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.33

Bunch and her associates were to prevail, a striking demonstration of the newfound power of women’s NGOs, supported by NGOs in general. Rarely before were women’s groups so visible on specifically women’s human rights issues. The reasons were not hidden. Of the total number of 2,721 NGOs in attendance at the NGO Forum, 49.4 percent came from women NGOs.34 A large double room was set up in the NGO area of the conference center, called “The Rights Place for Women.” The women brought with them hundreds of thousands of signed petitions that they were to present to governmental representatives at the later conference. Greatly reinforcing the highly visible participation was a well-organized, professionally-staffed media campaign that was located right next to the double room headquarters. A team from the Center for Women’s Global Leadership and the so-called Communications Consortium Media Center briefed reporters on their issues and made available to them diverse expert voices. In advance of the conference, the team prepared and distributed three thousand sophisticated press kits with background fact sheets on thirteen key women’s rights issues, and sent press releases to some 3,400 U.S. reporters and 1,200 editorial page editors. During the World Conference, professional women journalists arranged for numerous interviews and press releases of specific interest to women. The impact was enormous. More than one

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thousand stories in the U.S. press during June 1993 referred specifically to women’s rights topics. The “defining moment” of the phenomenal women’s NGO campaign in Vienna, according to Bunch, came at the so-called Global Tribunal on Violations of Women’s Human Rights.35 It was “theatre” rather than a formal courtroom procedure, and the dramatic impact was powerful. For an entire day, thirty-three women offered what turned out to be “riveting personal testimony” about the abuses they had suffered. The abuses fell into five categories: human rights abuse in the family, war crimes against women, violations of women’s bodily integrity, socioeconomic violations of women’s human rights, and gender-based political persecution and discrimination.36 The staging included four “judges” who were knowledgeable officials from the UN and human rights groups. They ruled that the outcry of the witnesses must be “investigated and sanctioned, and the violations of their human rights must be redressed.” The tribunal was an outgrowth of the petition drive conducted by women NGOs at the various regional NGO hearings in preparation for the World Conference. Its aim was to demonstrate “the failure of existing human rights mechanisms to promote and protect the human rights of women.”37 Bunch pointed to the “rapt attention” of the audience to conclude as follows: The Tribunal marked an official end to the centuries-old cover-up of these atrocities and it awakened many women and men to the international community’s responsibility to protect women from such abuse.38

Supported by two hundred and seventy thousand signatures from a massive petition drive started in April, the activists, who were quite impressively organized, helped achieve the aim of making women’s rights issues highly visible. Violence against women was specifically condemned for the first time in an international document—the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. Violence against women in armed conflict situations was defined as a violation of human rights and of humanitarian laws. Women’s rights were held to be integral to the universality of human rights. While the Vienna conference established the intimate equation of women’s rights and human rights, it did not initially sit too well with the Ford Foundation. Berresford recalled that those at the foundation “running” the human rights program may “have felt that women’s rights issues had legitimacy,” but, at the same time, such issues did not belong under the human rights banner, as that banner was “non-gender specific.” Others took an opposite view and it became “quite an argument.” Ultimately, she concluded the side that argued that “it all ought to be the same set of issues, part of the same concept” prevailed. Indeed, on the action level, the Vienna Conference called for women’s rights to be integrated into all UN human rights activities. In this context, the conference proposed that the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979, be strengthened with an optional protocol for individual petitions. The impact

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of women NGO pressure upon the Vienna meeting was felt shortly afterward in UN bodies. In December 1993, the General Assembly adopted a formal Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The declaration, in effect, was an extension of CEDAW, which never mentioned violence against women. Of greater significance was the decision taken at the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1994 to appoint a Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women. Bunch was correct in observing, “few social movements have registered as great an impact in so short of time—and with such remarkably peaceful methods.”39 A second activist at Vienna was Felice Gaer, who had been a professional staffer at the Ford Foundation during the late seventies. She was serving at the World Conference as a member of the U.S. delegation, but, at the same time, she was helpful in advising, informally, key women NGOs on the political situation in various delegations. That the subject of women’s rights, however, would resonate loudly in Gaer’s myriad general rights activities afterward was certain, particularly as events moved from Vienna to the Beijing conference in the fall of 1995. Beginning in March 1994, at meetings of the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, where Gaer also served on the U.S. delegation, she saw herself as “a watchdog on the [commission’s] resolutions,” making certain they included “concern over violence against women.”40 She urged the State Department to broaden the scope of strategy planning for the Beijing meeting to encompass the theme of violence against women. At the same time, Gaer helped create a special lobbying group in Washington—the Washington Working Group on the Human Rights of Women—the key persons of which were Lea Browning of the American Bar Association and Anne Goldstein of Georgetown University.41 This group, together with Bunch’s center, Gaer wrote, “were to play the central role in keeping pressure” on Western governments as Beijing approached. An initial focus of the emerging Washington group was a document produced by the Economic Commission of Europe (ECE). It was designed for the European regional preparatory meeting, scheduled for Vienna in October 1994. That, along with other regional meetings, would culminate in the worldwide conference in Beijing. Not unnaturally, the document carried an economic frame of reference with attention concentrated upon women’s economic empowerment. Women’s rights activists in Washington were shocked by the failure of the ECE report to deal meaningfully with the broad gamut of discrimination and violence against women. A detailed blistering critique in which Gaer was involved was prepared that sought to alert the State Department to the need for protecting the achievements of the conference in Vienna and building upon them for Beijing.42 Inadequacy of the ECE document was but one concern of women activists. There was also a growing fear that a number of countries were seeking to weaken or undermine the Vienna achievement of integrating women’s rights into the UN human rights system.43 According to Bunch, China was a “silent partner” in these downgrading initiatives.44 Indeed, at the March 1995 session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, China effectively

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prevented the adoption of language in a resolution that specifically called for the human rights of women to be on the agenda of the Beijing conference. A reflection of the Beijing reversal tendencies was the emergence of initiatives to restrict NGO participation. The UN secretariat had decided not to recommend 493 NGOs that had formally applied for NGO status at the Beijing conference. At this point, a coalition of twenty-four NGOs— women’s groups and general human rights groups—signed a letter dated January 9, 1995, and sent it to U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, urging that the State Department “use its influence publicly and privately” to intervene with the Chinese government and the UN to ensure that they adhere strictly “to established rules.”45 These rules would permit all NGOs that met the standard UN criteria to be allowed to attend the NGO Forum that was scheduled to be held prior to the Beijing Conference. And such rules also required the host government—China—to issue visas to all accredited participants. The joint letter was drafted by Felice Gaer.46 The United States and the West were effective in realizing greater “transparency” and in enlarging, to a considerable extent, NGO accreditation. To preclude the threat of possible Chinese government repression, which had even penetrated into the draft Beijing Platform for Action, NGOs chose to urge UN High Commissioner Ayala Lasso to address the issue, as if he were the UN’s formal defender of established norms. On July 16, 1995, Gaer and the head of the International Women’s Human Rights Law Clinic at City University, Rhonda Copelon, sent him a detailed fax outlining ten major principles and commitments on the human rights of women adopted at the conference in Vienna that they held were undermined by formulations in the draft Beijing Platform for Action.47 The fax stressed his “responsibility under the [Vienna] mandate” to act to preserve the prevailing norms. He did follow through, which prompted Copelon and Gaer to write to him on August 18, congratulating him on his “authoritative and compelling critique” of the draft Platform for Action that already had had a salutary effect.48 Especially emphasized in the letter to Ayala Lasso was the fact that his stress “on the priority of human rights over religious and cultural claims to the contrary” was of “particular importance” for the Beijing conference. Opposition to the integration of women’s rights with human rights came from regimes of Asia and Africa that had argued that particular religious and cultural patterns limited or transcended general human rights. By the time the Beijing Conference opened in September 1995, women’s rights NGOs, supported by general human rights NGOs, had laid the groundwork for moving beyond Vienna to a new plateau, in the sense of concretizing a section of the final Vienna statement that read, “the human rights of women are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of human rights.” The NGO movement was now to impose its own much simplified formulation as the prevailing theme that “women’s rights are human rights”—period. A well-organized campaign had pressed the United States to assume a major leadership role in the West and throughout the world.

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Women turned out to be remarkably effective as part of delegations from the Third World. At the largest women’s and NGO conference ever and with emotions already at an exultant level, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as head of the American delegation, would electrify the huge audience with a powerful speech that demanded, “it is time for us to break our silence . . . to say here in Beijing . . . that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.”49 The First Lady brought the audience to their feet as she orated, in a mantra-like style, that each of the following was a violation of human rights: “when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated . . . because they are born girls”; “when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution”; “when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are too small.” The list went on in this dramatic fashion to include individual rape and mass rape in military conflict, domestic violence against women, genital mutilation, forced abortion, and forced sterilization. To everyone, she drove home the principal message that she thought would emerge from Beijing: “human rights are women’s rights . . . and women’s rights are human rights.”50 It was a moment of unparalleled excitement, as recorded by Gaer. Hillary Clinton, in her recently-published autobiography, observed that, at the time of her address, she did not realize the extraordinary impact it exerted: “What I didn’t know at the time was that my twenty-one minute speech would become a manifesto for women all over the world.”51 Later, however, she had come to realize its significance. Wherever she stopped during her travels abroad in subsequent years, foreign women would come up to her, she said, “quoting words from the Beijing speech or clutching copies they [wanted] her to autograph.” Obviously, the communist rulers in China recognized its importance. They had blacked out her speech from the closed-circuit TV in the conference hall that had broadcast highlights of the proceedings. For the women’s rights movement, Beijing would reach a milestone in UN and world history. Even as Gaer chronicled the history of that movement, she privately would convey to a colleague that she “was heavily involved all the way through” Beijing on a variety of matters, including such “specific issues” as religion, language, universality, and inheritance.52 On the one hand, she served in a crucial advisory capacity to the vice-chairman of the U.S. delegation, Geraldine Ferraro. On the other, she met frequently with NGOs, offering information, suggestions, assistance, and recommendations. She was functioning on two separate but interrelated tracks at the conference in Beijing. No one else did or could have performed such a role. Vienna was but one step in the determination by the foundation to have Beijing be a turning point in the history of women’s rights. As early as 1993, at the very time that the Vienna conference was being held, the Women’s Program Forum, the key coordinating agency of the foundation on women, was given the huge sum of nine hundred thousand dollars “to support a world-wide grant making program” with respect to the forthcoming Beijing

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Conference.53 The initial grant was designed to provide support for strengthening the infrastructure of the Fourth World Conference on Women and its NGO Forum. The foundation report, written by its consultant, Rebecca Nichols, may not have indicated how the funds would be used to strengthen the conference infrastructure. At the same time, however, the extensive grants, it was noted, would be used “to facilitate the participation of developing countries and grassroots women and women’s organizations in regional and world-wide preparatory activities and to enhance related media and communication activities.”54 In doing so, it was evident that the NGO Forum infrastructure would be, of course, positively affected. But the initial grant was only the beginning. In order to reinforce the broad-scale efforts across the entire structure of the foundation in preparation for the Beijing conference, the Women’s Program Forum arranged for an allocation of nine hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars to service both the New York–based and the various regional office programs. Clearly, Beijing was to be a priority concern of the foundation, and in order to enhance the visibility of that priority, the foundation extended “a series of grants” in order to “advance media communications and information programs worldwide.”55 Travel support to Beijing and the preparatory meetings remained a crucial goal. A vast initiative was anticipated by the Women’s Program Forum that would be embraced by the grant-making. Linkages would be established with the various departments of the foundation, with the regional offices and with a variety of separate agencies involved. Information and planning sessions with Beijing at various intervals would be prepared in advance, and materials selected for NGO guidance would be accumulated and shipped out or distributed at meetings. The Forum established, within its own midst, a subcommittee, called the 1995 Conference Planning Group, to assist in defining programming directions and in reviewing specific grant possibilities. A gifted consultant, Rebecca Nichols, was hired to assist in coordinating the heavy workload. Later, she would prepare the basic report of the foundation and its Women’s Forum. Of central importance in the preparation for the Fourth World Conference on Women was the production of an edited volume, The Challenge of Local Feminisms; Women’s Movement in Global Perspective, which was to serve as a history of individual women’s movements in seventeen countries and regions. It was to constitute a key programmatic document suggesting goals and guidelines for the women’s movement generally. If it was to be published in time for the conference, a complex consultative process was set up that would result in substantive discussions at the Beijing conference itself.56 Nothing was neglected. Staffers of the Women’s Forum hosted preconference luncheons at which potential donors met with the UN’s director of the conference, Gertrude Mongella. Other foundations with interest in women’s issues, like the Carnegie Corporation, were brought into this grant-making operation. A key aspect of the process was the critical involvement of the

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foundation’s full-time Beijing office. Consultations were frequent and, of course, essential. A consultant to that office served as a central player—Lisa Stearns. The Beijing office had to coordinate logistical arrangements for an extraordinarily complex operation. Especially important was its role in assisting the foundation’s major staffers in arriving in Beijing and in establishing essential communication with delegates from governments and with nongovernmental representatives. A fairly large foundation staff was represented at the Beijing Conference and its Forum. Twenty-five staff members and consultants came from foundation headquarters in New York and from eleven field offices. That the costs would balloon was hardly unexpected. All told, the foundation contributed nearly five million dollars to Beijing-related programs, according to an official report of the Women’s Program Forum.57 The breakdown in expenditures was not included in the report, but judging from the size of the attendance at Beijing, the travel grants for attendees must have been quite large. According to the official Women’s Forum report, Beijing “added up to the largest UN conference ever convened.” Over forty thousand participants was the figure used in the report.58 But that applied to the entire Beijing set of meetings. UN estimates placed the number participating in the intergovernmental conference at seventeen thousand, which included UN officials and approximately three thousand NGO representatives accredited as observers. On the other hand, the NGO Forum, held at Huairou, a distant suburb of Beijing, involved about thirty thousand participants, which was twice the number who attended the previous UN women’s conference in Nairobi. Actually, this total could have much been higher, by at least fifteen thousand, were it not for obstacles created by the Chinese government in the granting of visas on a timely basis to those seeking to attend. The greatest obstacle was the Chinese government’s decision to situate the NGO Forum at Huairou, about sixty kilometers, or forty miles, away from Beijing. The distance was made worse by the serious transport deficiencies between this suburb and Beijing. All previous UN conferences that had closely involved NGOs were situated within a short distance from the main conference. The closeness led to a synergistic relationship between the two and, therefore, to a successful outcome of the entire conference and especially of the intergovernmental meeting. The very successful human rights conference in Vienna was strongly indebted to the preceding NGO forum that had met close by. Besides, the Huairou site was an utterly uncomfortable one, with a lack of adequate facilities as well as poor accessibility for disabled or elderly persons. It was not surprising that once the intergovernmental conference began, many of the more experienced NGO representatives were drawn away from the NGO Forum. The others felt blocked from attending. But this may have been the very purpose of the Chinese communist regime when it announced in March 1995 that the NGO meeting site had been shifted to Huairou. The decision came on the heels of an unfortunate episode in Copenhagen involving the Chinese Premier, Li Peng. He was

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attending a UN-sponsored conference on social development near the conference site, when he came face-to-face with NGO demonstrators who were engaged in a hunger strike. In one NGO newspaper displayed nearby, he could see a picture of himself with a caption reminding readers of his role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of students. Might such an incident take place in Beijing by women activists?59 Other incidents had also disturbed the Chinese leader. At a meeting of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva in February 1995, a resolution calling for an investigation of human rights violations by China was almost successful; it failed by only one vote. Earlier, negotiations in December 1994 for China to become a member of the World Trade Organization did not go well. In addition, the characteristic totalitarian reaction to the possibility of social instability must have inclined the leadership to move the NGO Forum to an isolated place. This was not the only reaction. Chinese security forces harassed some participants in the NGO Forum and, at times, even members of official foreign delegations at the Beijing conference. Still, in the formal report of the Women’s Program Forum in evaluating the NGO meeting at Huairou, which ran from August 30 through September 8, 1995, “it was judged a success overall.”60 This resulted, said the report, from “the spirit, diversity and commitment of its multitude of participants.” A special foundation report on the reaction of Chinese women’s groups recorded an unusually positive response. “For Chinese women in the forefront of the Chinese women’s movement, the images, energy and language of the NGO Forum,” it observed, had acted “as a catalyst for a small but influential community of Chinese women.”61 The report went on to say, “a wider group has been mobilized to ask new questions and still others have become curious enough to listen to new ideas.” If these judgments applied to a group almost totally ignorant of the women’s movement throughout the world, including Asia, how much more was this to be characteristic of the impact upon the women’s movement in the rest of the world? The intergovernmental Beijing Conference began on September 4, while the NGO Forum was still in session, and would run until September 15. The impact on the delegates of the efforts undertaken by the Ford Foundation, its grantees, and their allies could be found in the Beijing Declaration adopted by the conference.62 The governments committed themselves to ensuring the “equal rights and inherent dignity of women and men,” to guaranteeing “the full implementation of human rights of women and of the girl child,” and to providing for “the empowerment and advancement of women.” The declaration went on to declare that “women’s empowerment” meant their “full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society, including participation in the decision-making process and access to power.” Then, after declaring that “women’s rights are human rights,” the declaration went on to assert that “equal responsibilities” of men and women are essential to maintain a “harmonious partnership” for the family. Two essential points that had been underscored by the foundation followed: “eradication of poverty based on sustained economic growth” required “the

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involvement of women” at all levels; and there had to be “explicit reception and reaffirmation of the right of all women to control all aspects of their health, in particular their own fertility” as “basic to their empowerment.” Four major elements of the foundation’s programming were emphasized and incorporated in the document: the promotion of women’s economic independence, including employment, and eradication of the persistent and increasing burden of poverty on women; the prevention and elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls; the assurance of equal access to and equal treatment of women and men in education and healthcare; and the enhancement of women’s sexual and reproductive health as well as education. The subsequent “Platform for Action” in the huge UN document, numbering 179 pages, goes into considerable detail on all facets of women’s rights and in opposing gender violence. It was an extraordinarily impressive document, with fingerprints of the foundation’s Women’s Program Forum easily recognized on virtually every page. And the designer of those fingerprints was a vice-president of the organization who would take over as president of the foundation the next year, Susan Berresford. In a recent interview, she refused to claim credit for herself or her associates, but she nonetheless acknowledged, in a modest manner, that she and the foundation had been very much involved: I don’t think the Foundation ever claims a victory; its not our victory, but I think we back the right people, we walked along with the [women’s] movement and helped support it.63

Berresford went on to explain, “[the foundation] has a wonderful record of supporting social movements,” and when the women’s movement “ignited around the world, [it] was not because [the foundation was] funding it”; rather, it was because “people woke up with new ideas” and the foundation welcomed the opportunity of funding those ideas. Speaking about the women’s rights leaders, who were, she said, “wonderful people,” Berresford speculated, “I think they would have had their voices heard anyway.” But then frankness entered into her comments: “But I think it made a difference that there was a funder ready to back them. And we stuck with the [women’s] organizations and people for a long time.” Even as she disassociated herself from the achievements at the conference in Beijing, Berresford acknowledged the role of her predecessor, Franklin Thomas, in the conference’s preparations and achievement. He had been the foundation’s president prior to and at the time of Beijing.64 It was Thomas, she insisted, who had made women’s rights issues a priority concern of the foundation. At the same time, she recalled that she had been Thomas’s “right hand.” Early on, she noted her own role and the work of some of her women associates in affecting his attitude from the beginning: When Frank Thomas became the president in 1979 . . . a group of us who worked internationally and nationally here, got together over the summer

246 Taking on the World's Repressive Regimes/William Korey before he came in the fall, and wrote a paper to him proposing that he double the size of the women’s program around the world, overseas and domestically, and it was the first staff initiative he received, the first day he was here, and we came and put it on his desk, and said, “this is what we think you should do.”65

The foundation did not consider the Beijing Declaration and Plan of Action to be the only objectives it had in mind. After all, the Conference was occurring in a major totalitarian regime when the language of women’s rights was virtually unknown. Besides, the foundation operated a specific office in Beijing, a rarity for philanthropic organizations. Might it not be appropriate to utilize its facility to impact a society in which the subject of human rights was regarded with indifference, if not disdain, by the totalitarian regime? Indeed, the foundation sought to use its heavy involvement in Beijing to exert its limited leverage to achieve modest successes. The effort had not been inexpensive. In 1993, the foundation had approved a special project (FAP—Foundation Approved Project) costing three hundred thousand dollars for use by its China office. The amount would be supplemented by a grant of ninety thousand dollars in January 1995, and by an additional twenty-five thousand dollars the following year. The funding enabled the Beijing office to engage an international consultant with a Chinese assistant. How the project functioned and how the significant, if modest, results were achieved were described in a special and fascinating report by the consultant, Lisa Stearns.66 The report made explicitly clear in its “précis” that the funds were “earmarked” for “the support of Chinese activities related” to the Beijing Conference, with “special emphasis on preparations for and follow-up to the NGO Forum.”67 At the same time, the consultant’s specific functions were outlined. She was to strengthen the ability of new Chinese women’s organizations to build coalitions locally, regionally, and internationally. She was also to assist the official All Chinese Women’s Federation (ACWF) in developing a familiarity with the goals of the international women’s movement. While pursuing this function, she was also to seek to enhance foreign understanding about women’s activities in China. Significantly, the foundation proposal was “crafted” by its “reproductive health program officer between March and June 1993. This was hardly surprising, as the two preceding years were characterized by “innovative programming in the reproductive health area.” A “first women’s hotline” was created and expanded, a “network” of women’s groups interested in health issues was consolidated, and a special fund was set up by the China office for projects on women’s studies and initiatives. What needed not be recorded in the report was that the broadening of its initial scope beyond reproductive health might have brought into play security and political concerns of the Chinese regime. Indeed, the report noted that “political uncertainty colored” the work of the Beijing office.68 Nonetheless, the early initiative seemed to pay off. By the end of 1994, according to Stearns’ report, the foundation’s efforts had “resulted” in “a

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growing number of colleagues” inside ACWF who had become “excited about, rather than threatened by the process of taking part in a global movement.”69 The report concluded that the China office had played “a significant role” in enlarging the community of Chinese women in preparing for the NGO Forum. Especially important was its work in arranging for “networking,” which was said to be a “centrifugal force on women’s lives.” Such networking on a regional level as part of the preparation for the NGO Forum exerted “a powerful impact on Chinese participants,” as other previous Chinese women’s contact for “official meetings” had been “highly routinized.” Once the NGO Forum began, the impact was all the greater, as the “open and energetic process of NGO advocacy” proved to be “particularly eye opening.” While the official Chinese body ACWF “reinforced” stereotypes of “communist uniformity” during the preparation period of 1993–95, the ACWF nonetheless “internally absorbed many lessons” during the two years with respect to the “informality and flexibility of international NGOs.” Regrettably, no examples were offered on how this supposedly affected the ACWF “internally.” Still, the China office consultant sought to obtain a modest level of encouraging comments from Chinese participants that were then included in a foundation-coordinated book, “Reflections and Resonance.”70 It was published in both Chinese and English and carried the essays of sixty-two Chinese women who traveled with the foundation-organized groups to attend the international preparatory activities associated with the Beijing Conference. That the book received warm comments from various women participants from different countries is apparent from the report of the China office. Of particular importance to the China office was the need to harness the media to serve the goals of the women participants. A particular technique was used for this purpose with reference to Chinese women participants. It so happened that in March 1995, the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communications convened a special program geared to the forthcoming Beijing Conference. It was entitled, “World Women and Media Workshop.” The foundation contributed to the funding of eight Chinese women journalists to attend the Iowa media program. If the results were not too encouraging for achieving an open-mindedness, at the same time, a modest positive achievement was registered at a small-group gathering of the Chinese journalists. One participant was quoted as saying, “when the session ended we didn’t eradicate our cultural differences, but everyone came away with a greater understanding of just how wide the cultural chasm can be.”71 According to the China office consultant, a solid final result emerged from the various preconference travels coordinated by the foundation, which involved various foreign women groups, including Chinese women. The networking produced nearly one hundred Chinese women “who [identified] themselves as part of a special network. Many of them [were] at the center of building a new women’s NGO community in China.”

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The China office report was particularly intriguing with respect to a special concern of the foundation—the plight of rural women everywhere. At the NGO Forum, the subject received a modest degree of attention. But outside the Forum, the China office pursued the subject diligently, in hopes of involving them. One way was related to the obtaining of rural credit. In China, this took the form of a tapestry project involving three thousand women from Chinese village groups in ten counties of four provinces. The object of the project was to encourage empowerment through small enterprise development. While the tapestry project failed to win the support of village authorities and no village women involved in the project were permitted to participate directly in the NGO Forum, the tapestries were nonetheless exhibited in Beijing, and a book based on the tapestries was “widely distributed” during the conference.”72 In the end, the key question for the China office and the foundation’s special focus was—at a minimum—did the ACWF reach “a more tolerant understanding of NGO activism and the value of diversity?” The consultant, sounding out various colleagues, found “widespread, if not unanimous agreement that since 1993 many ACWF cadres, including some in leadership positions,” did precisely that. One small test was offered: Professor Wu Qing, who was identified as a founding member of the Foreign Languages University Women Studies Forum, in 1990, at the very first Sino-American Women’s Conference, had been refused by the ACWF the right to attend. In sharp contrast, in March 1996, Professor Wu Qing was seated at the main table at the AWCF celebration, and she has had “regular access to AWCF activities” since.73 A second example cited involved Professor Li Xiaojiang of Zhengzhou University, who was described “as a pathbreaker in the development of Chinese women’s studies” over the previous decade. During the preparatory period before the Forum and the conference, she was “personally harassed,” which prompted her to boycott the NGO Forum. She then explained her refusal to attend in a letter that contended, “being a Chinese woman means that I have no alternative but to keep silent when I have to make a choice between the State and Women.”74 Her courageous letter was widely circulated, and she was not silenced by state repression. So far as the China office was concerned, its success should be measured not by what occurred before and during the NGO Forum, but rather by the activities supported by the office that “contributed to a momentum of activism that [would] survive.”75 The answer was a positive one. The Chinese women who did play an active role at the conference in Beijing were enthusiastic, basing their optimism upon three considerations: the NGO Forum provided “something of a catharsis of vindication,” they felt “less alone now with the values they [cared] about . . . and the ideas they [were] developing,” and the very act of being with so many women and “understanding their concerns and mission was worth it all.” This optimism could not easily be challenged.

Chapter

12

A St u m b l e a n d St r i d e s Fo rwa rd

W

ith the huge international human rights achievements in the last quarter of the twentieth century, the foundation was set to assume even greater responsibility in the twenty-first century. Its investment portfolio in 2004 was valued at $10.5 billion.1 The next year, the assets were valued at $11.5 billion, exceeded only by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation among the one hundred top U.S. foundations (the Gates foundation totaled $28.8 billion in assets2). When the category of grant making focuses on Human Rights/ Civil Liberties, the Ford Foundation exceeds all others by a geometric dimension. In 2004, the total amount of Ford Foundation grants was $59.2 million, and its closest competitor extended grants totaling $4.6 million.3 The major international NGOs supported by the Ford Foundation are still flourishing. Human Rights Watch’s reports, press releases, and comments by its leaders are cited frequently in the leading media sources, like the New York Times, sometimes as often as everyday or every other day. This Pygmalion NGO, created by the foundation itself, has been awarded, since 1991, a total of $15,519,000 through thirty-five grants (between 1978 and 1989, the HRW predecessors and divisions received eight grants totaling three million dollars4). Its close competitor, Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights) received, since 1987, nearly $15.4 million. The Boston-based NGO, Physicians for Human Rights, received nearly five million dollars. But even with the positive achievements of the international human rights NGOs, not every initiative of the foundation has gone well. Indeed, it stumbled badly in dealing with the NGO Forum of the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Religious Intolerance (WCAR), held in Durban, South Africa, in late August 2001. Sponsored by the UN and strongly supported by the Ford Foundation, it resembled in no way the latter’s earlier accomplishments. Durban turned out to be a propagator of vulgar anti-Semitism. Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and voice of Holocaust victims, called Durban “a moral catastrophe” characterized by “wholly unadulterated hate and cruelty.”5 WCAR, adopted in a General Assembly resolution in December 1997, of course, was not the first time the UN would attempt to deal with a central

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evil of the contemporary world. Similar world conferences on racism, under UN auspices, had taken place in 1978 and 1983. A major theme of those earlier conferences was the elimination of the apartheid system in South Africa. But a potent secondary theme that had bubbled up from Middle Eastern political tensions, and which hardly related to racism, was a reiteration of the infamous “Zionism equals racism” resolution of the UN General Assembly in November 1975, as if its endless repetition would serve to alter the political map of the Middle East. However, the very echoing of the “Zionism equals racism” chant, while it may have invigorated hate-Israel campaigns and, more dangerously, stirred up anti-Semitism in various places throughout the world, only incensed the West. Kofi Annan had openly denounced the equation of Zionism with racism,6 and, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1998, only a short time after the World Conference on racism was projected by the General Assembly, advised the future conference participants “to denounce anti-Semitism in all of its manifestations.”7 The UN Secretary-General was reinforced in this advice by a stunning and successful effort by the United States and its democratic allies to achieve the extraordinary repeal of the “Zionism equals racism” resolution by a vote of 111 to twenty-five in the General Assembly on December 16, 1991. A key foundation report of October 2001 disclosed that, in the year 2000, twelve months before Durban, there was an already-strong foundation preoccupation with the planned World Conference. A livelink site was established on the Internet that had much of the pertinent information of the conference, including position papers, calendars of events, a list of the foundation grants toward the various processes of the conference, as well as “UN briefing notes to assist Ford staff in their programming decisions in this process.”8 Certainly, foundation staffers were strategically placed to have sensed an unfolding drama of distress. According to the foundation memorandum, no less than forty staffers from the Ford Foundation were scheduled to attend the World Conference Against Racism in Durban.9 How many participated in the regional conferences and at the preparatory conferences in Geneva was not specified. However, the “Closing Memorandum” noted that “various program officers” of the foundation attended the regional meetings in Santiago and Tehran. Besides, a foundation grant report of a “Foundation Administered Project” (FAP) indicated that a one-hundred-thousand-dollar grant was made on October 1, 2000, almost a year before Durban, that would provide for information-sharing, networking, and the convening of NGOs in preparation for the World Conference Against Racism.10 The NGO Forum ran from August 28 to September 1 and involved thousands of participants. In the foundation’s “Closing Memorandum,” the total number of “representatives” to the World Conference was noted to have been “over 16,000,” but this number included government delegations, UN employees, and NGOs.11 Obviously, the largest percentage of participants came from the last category. The Forum was held in a cricket and soccer

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stadium—Kingsmead—in Durban, where white tents were set up for the NGO sessions. An extremely valuable summary of the bigotry that transpired at the Forum was a detailed day-by-day account prepared by David Matas, a former long-time prominent lay official of Amnesty International, who is an expert immigration lawyer from Winnipeg, Canada. He was attending the Forum as a representative of B’nai B’rith Canada. His following description of what impacted the minds of Jewish NGOs upon their arrival at the NGO Forum is startling: On entry to the Forum grounds, every participant was accosted by virulent, anti-Semitic slogans, pamphlets, slurs and chants. There was a steady stream of incidents of people from the Jewish caucus being threatened, verbally abused and harassed for no other reason than that they were Jewish. . . . The overall impression and effect was to make anyone who was Jewish feel unwelcome and unwanted.12

Especially stunning was the booth at the Forum of the Arab Lawyers Union that handed out a large amount of anti-Semitic hate propaganda, including cartoons portraying Jews with hooked noses, blood dripping from fangs, with pots of money surrounding their victims. Equally frightening was a display at one of the Forum tents of copies of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,”13 the notorious czarist forgery of the early twentieth century that had enormously impressed Adolf Hitler and led to his ruling, once he took power, that it be required reading for every member of the Hitler Youth. The name Hitler entered the Forum in a special, if particularly distressing, way. A popular flyer, widely distributed to NGOs, was a photograph of the Nazi Fuehrer in which the question was asked, “What if he had won?” Below the photograph came the answer: “no Israel and therefore no Palestinian bloodshed.”14 Frequently and sometimes persistently, the virulent hate that spewed forth at the Forum was of a character that transcended propaganda and took on a directly threatening and intimidating form. Throughout the Forum sessions, according to Matas, “almost consistently,” marches and chants of an antiSemitic nature took place, with participants shouting “Zionism is racism.” Of even greater concern were the open threats of violence against Jewish participants at the Forum. Matas listed them as follows: “You do not belong to the human race,” “Chosen People? You are a cursed people,” and “Why haven’t the Jews taken responsibility for killing Jesus?” At a rally on the formal opening day, the poster carried the traumatizing language: “Hitler should have finished the job.” At another rally, the extremists shouted threats, like “Kill all the Jews.” “These sorts of comments,” wrote Matas, “were incessant, endemic.” An especially frightening episode came at the very beginning of the Forum, but the target was not the international Jewish NGOs, but rather the local Jewish community of Durban. It took the form of a rally against racism,

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but turned into something else. The demonstrators chose as its target the Durban Jewish Club, where they literally blocked its access while threatening the occupants. The club, of course, had nothing to do with the Forum, except for the demonized reality that its members were Jews. The Forum’s ending resembled its beginning. When the Jewish caucus, in the face of deepening threats, chose to leave the plenary, their walkout was accompanied by hostile applause and shouts of “Get out of Palestine” and “Free Palestine.” So harsh was the taunting of Jewish participants that the head of one of the most prominent non-Jewish NGOs, Catherine Fitzpatrick, felt shocked, fearing for the safety of the Jews. She, at the time, was the head of the important International League for Human Rights, having previously served as research director of U.S. Helsinki Watch. Fitzpatrick was aware of bodily threats posed by organized anti-Semites. She had for years covered the repressive and dangerous public scene against dissidents and Jews in the USSR. Now, while observing that she was “frankly frightened,” she wrote: “I have never been in a situation at home or in any foreign country, where I literally felt I had to cover Jewish colleagues with my body and watch out lest they be physically attacked.”15 Other non-Jewish individuals also could feel the atmosphere of hate. One major American figure at the Forum who had played a key role in the ending of apartheid in South Africa, Gay McDougall, related how the Jewish caucus was the only “victim’s caucus” at the final plenary to have its proposal on anti-Semitism challenged and eliminated.16 The caucus had submitted a section to be included in the Forum’s declaration that would have denounced attacks on synagogues and upon individual Jews anywhere that had been motivated by anti-Zionism. McDougall concluded that the extraordinary pressure under which Jewish delegates worked at Durban was “intimidating and undemocratic.” That the Forum’s draft declaration constituted a kind of epitome of antiIsrael vehemence was certain. The proposed declaration denounced Israel for “racism and apartheid and other racist crimes against humanity.” The Jewish state was accused of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” An “action program” was called for that would set up an “international war crimes tribunal” to which Israeli citizens would be brought and tried. In addition, an international anti-Israeli apartheid movement would be launched that would bring about “the total isolation of Israel” and “the full cessation of all links” to Israel.17 It was at about four o’clock in the morning when the NGO Declaration was approved. The Central and Eastern European caucus later issued a statement denouncing the Forum’s vote on the declaration as “neither transparent nor democratic” as well as being “permeated with procedural violations.” As for the declaration’s language on Palestine, it was found to be “extremely intolerant, disrespectful and contrary to the very spirit of the World Conference.”18 A statement from the European Roma Rights Center was equally angry that the language of the declaration provided “the kind of

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hatred and racism the Durban gathering was meant to challenge.” It went on to “deplore the fact that the Forum was “apparently hijacked by biased activists, who were promoting their own agenda.”19 Mary Robinson, the Secretary-General of the Forum, got the message. She proceeded to reject the language of the NGO Forum in its concluding declaration and refused to recommend its adoption by the World Conference. Publicly, she declared, “It’s sad for me that for the first time I can’t recommend to [government] delegates that they pay close attention to the NGO Declaration.” Her concluding remarks were especially scornful: “I am aware of and condemn those whose words and actions in Durban were themselves intolerant, even racist.”20 But it remained for the sole survivor in the U.S. Congress of Nazi rule in Europe, Tom Lantos, to have the final comment. “For me, having experienced the horrors of the Holocaust first hand this was the most sickening display of hate for Jews I had seen since the Nazi period.”21 Lantos was co-chairman of the Human Rights Caucus of the congress and recently became chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Though the Ford Foundation was heavily involved in the preparations of the NGO Forum, as was indicated by the official “Closing Memorandum” of October 16, 2001, strikingly, virtually nothing appears in that report about the expressions of anti-Semitism and the outpouring of angry anti-Israel tirades. And nothing was mentioned about how the Secretary-General of the NGO Forum sharply rejected the NGO Declaration because of its overt bigotry. It was not only the official foundation document that had failed to register the Forum realities on the radar screen of the organization; at least one observer found it difficult to persuade a foundation staffer what ought to be of concern. An activist, Judith Palkovitz, from the largest Jewish women’s organization, Hadassah, serving as a delegate to the Forum, later recalled to an interviewer the discussion she had had with an unnamed foundation staffer. She “spotted” him at a session dealing with what she identified as “African-American reparations issues.”22 Apparently asked by the interviewer whether the staffer was aware of the display of bigotry, she commented, “There was no way to miss the anti-Semitism. The Ford official would have to be blind [for] it was the most anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist stuff you ever saw.” When the foundation president, Susan Berresford, was interviewed several years after Durban and asked whether the foundation was lacking in “sensitivity” regarding the anti-Jewish bigotry at the NGO Forum, she acknowledged a sense of personal embarrassment: “I ask myself that . . . question a lot,” she responded.23 The problem tormented her and it led her to repeat the question in a particular way: “Why did this not appear earlier on the screen?” Under ordinary circumstances, she implied, the traumatic events at Durban would certainly have appeared on the foundation’s “screen.” Apparently, the profound sense of anguish that Jewish participants experienced at Durban was not unknown to Berresford. In her interview, she suggested that she had received alternative views of what had transpired than

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that articulated in the “Closing Memorandum.” The interview suggested that she would have begun an investigation of the critical reports had not a profoundly disturbing and overriding event intervened. In seeking to ascertain how and why the horrors of anti-Semitism had dropped from her and the foundation’s radar screen, she observed that “9/11 happened right after the [Durban] meeting . . . and for many of us here in New York, this was a devastating and destabilizing and shocking event.”24 She went on to observe that “Durban sort of got trumped; people here knew people [in the World Trade Center] who were killed; people here lived downtown and couldn’t go home; we had a lot of difficult times, institutional trauma. . . . And so I think people put Durban behind them.” Berresford went on to say that it was not until two years after Durban that she had begun to rethink and reexamine the initial perceptions about the World Conference and particularly the NGO Forum. The result would be a radical revision of the “Closing Memorandum” on the subject. And that revision would produce a new sensitivity to bigotry and Middle Eastern tensions. Of equal importance, the rethinking resulted in a fundamental policy change with respect to foundation grants. Berresford’s courageous leadership in producing these changes was especially impressive. But before the changes would be introduced, the foundation would be confronted by the challenge of sharply-posed data and information that appeared mainly in the Anglo-Jewish press. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) is well-known in the Jewish world as a principal source of information. Its Daily Bulletin provides Jewish organizations and leaders throughout the world with up-to-date information pertinent to Jewish life. Two years after Durban, the JTA hired a well-known author and investigator, Edwin Black, to determine how those NGOs that had organized the anti-Jewish and antiIsrael hate campaign had been funded. Following a two-month investigation, Black wrote a series of articles that appeared in mid-October 2003. The headlines of the articles could not fail to be embarrassing and disturbing: “Ford Foundation Aided Groups Behind Biased Durban Parley” was the stunning headline in the Anglo-Jewish journal, Forward, on October 17, and “Anti-Israel Activists at Durban were Funded by Ford Foundation,” which appeared in the JTA daily bulletin the same day. Two foundation grantees were the principal targets of the Black investigation. The first was the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment that, publicly, was known by its acronym, LAW (the letters of which came from its original name, Land and Water). The organization was reported to have received, since 1997, three grants from the foundation totaling $1.1 million. Black noted—as had eyewitnesses, like David Matas—that LAW officials “took leadership positions” on the Durban NGO Forum steering committee. Especially significant was LAW’s sponsorship of a preconference mission to the West Bank and Gaza designed for South African delegates “to convince them that Israel was an apartheid state.”25 The attempt to paint Israel as an apartheid state was a major theme of the anti-Israel groups at the NGO Forum. According to UN Watch, an NGO

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based in Geneva and sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, LAW “was instrumental in creating the anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic focus at Durban.”26 Black quoted a LAW official in Jerusalem as saying that “Ford has made it possible for us to do much of our work.”27 The second major Palestinian group at Durban that Black found was largely funded by the Ford Foundation was the so-called Palestine NGO Network, a coalition of some ninety Palestinian groups with the acronym PNGO. It played, according to the JTA investigator, a key role in the drafting of a resolution at the NGO Forum that called for the total isolation by the international community of Israel “as an apartheid state.”28 One of the key officers of the network, Allam Jarrar, a member of its small steering committee, was quoted by Black as saying, “our biggest donations come, of course, from Ford.” Black’s disclosures prompted harsh comments by prominent Jewish leaders. He quoted Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), as saying, “It is not only a sad commentary on philanthropy running amok, but outrageous and irresponsible.” Foxman added that the foundation, by failing to provide “oversight and monitoring” of its grantees, “wound up aiding and abetting extremists and political movements that [bordered] on anti-Semitism.” With the Anglo-Jewish weekly press throughout the United States carrying lead articles from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the foundation’s role at the Durban Conference, and with major Jewish organizations expressing dismay and criticism, it was hardly surprising that a strong reaction would be invoked in congressional circles, especially among legislators from New York. The American Jewish community had already been stirred to express great concern and anger about anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist developments in Durban during the fall of 2001 from reports of Jewish participants. That concern significantly deepened with extensive reporting of a potent outbreak of anti-Semitism in Western Europe, especially in France, during 2001–2002. Congressman Jerrold Nadler of New York was the first to raise the issue. Only a few days after the JTA articles appeared, Nadler, a liberal Democrat, raised the question of a federal probe into the role of the Ford Foundation at Durban. He and his colleagues in Congress had already been briefed by Congressman Tom Lantos about the latter’s essay on the “debacle” at Durban. He told the Anglo-Jewish newspaper, the Forward, that while the Ford Foundation had the “right to fund groups critical of the Israeli government,” it was “not right . . . to fund groups that [crossed] the line into antiSemitism or incitement to hatred against Israel.”29 He prepared a letter to the Ford Foundation urging it to scrutinize how its funds were being used. The Nadler letter was completed and signed by nineteen other congressmen at the beginning of November 2003. Forwarded to President Berresford of the Ford Foundation, the letter was a strong one, noting the reports about the Durban conference, which it said constituted “a virtual field day for anti-Semitic and anti-Israel activities.” Also noted was the JTA

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series showing that some of the Palestinian NGOs that had played a major role in promoting “hate activities were funded by the Ford Foundation.” Emphasized, too, were the JTA reports of how some Palestinian participants at the Forum called for “the destruction of the State of Israel and engaged in the promotion of violence.”30 The result was the Nadler-Berresford meeting, which turned out to be quite positive. The congressman reported to JTA that “we had a useful conversation” in which President Berresford “committed to me that the Ford Foundation [would] not fund groups that espouse anti-Semitism, promote violence or deny the legitimacy of the State of Israel.”31 The Nadler statement constituted a major breakthrough and significantly cleared the air of noxious fears and threats. The clarification was reinforced when the foundation vice-president of communication, Alex Wilde, publicly declared, “we will not fund groups that promote antiSemitism or challenge Israel’s existence.” Within days of the Nadler-Berresford meeting, the foundation took initial steps to give effect to the commitment made to Nadler. Funding of LAW, a leading organizer of the anti-Israel campaign at the NGO Forum at Durban, was halted. The foundation, said Wilde, had formally notified LAW of this decision and, at the same time, “[demanded] return of its unspent grant funds.”32 A second action taken against LAW was directed at the group’s former executive director, Khader Shkirat. The foundation had awarded him a grant of sixty thousand dollars in September 2001 to support his participation in a human rights program at Harvard University. The grant was cancelled. While LAW was the first to be specifically targeted by the foundation, under its new policy, all foundation grantees would be required to certify that they did not promote anti-Semitism or the destruction of any state. The foundation’s vice-president, Wilde, emphasized, “[all future funding] will be subject to our new and expanded world-wide program of grantee audits, our continuing investigation into the events surrounding the Durban conference and new grantee contract language that prohibits any organization receiving Foundation funds from promoting or engaging in violence, terrorism, bigotry or the destruction of any state.” The Ford Foundation initiatives following the Nadler letter brought a temporary halt to the drive for a congressional investigation. An editorial in Jewish Week in New York on November 21, 2003, reflected the changed attitude in much of the angry Jewish community. It commended the Ford Foundation for doing “the right thing this week” when it “acknowledged its harmful role” in providing funds to groups that had “turned the UN racism conference in South Africa into a shameful display of Israel-bashing and outright anti-Semitism.”33 The prime mover of the issue, Congressman Nadler, was pleased by the meeting with Berresford and the follow-up actions taken by the foundation. His top aide was quoted by the JTA as saying that the foundation “should be given a chance to correct their mistakes.” The same favorable opinion was voiced by Foxman of the ADL. He held that the foundation had “made commitments for change . . . [and] we should let that go forward.”

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Especially pertinent on this subject were the comments of Larry Cox, who was a principal human rights officer at the foundation. What was and is essential, from his vantage point and as demonstrated in the following quote, was the need to prepare the foundation grantees in advance in the event of another NGO conference:34 I think we should spend more time especially with our Middle East grantees . . . we should have spent more time talking with, preparing them, letting this [hate] stuff come out earlier and saying how important we thought it was to take a human rights principled position and not get involved in anything that went beyond that.

Cox, with obvious strong personal regrets, observed, “we learned a lot of lessons from Durban as a Foundation.” He revealed that in fact, he and the foundation, in advance of Durban, were “trying to certainly support efforts to head off the Zionism is racism resolution, we were trying to support efforts to not turn it into another debacle.” Obviously, the effort was not great enough, and the next time, he emphasized, he and his colleagues would be “much more careful about preparations with [their] grantees.” The foundation’s human rights specialist registered a kind of contempt for the leadership that dominated the Durban Forum. “In Durban you had a lot of groups that nobody had ever seen before. They were much more “grassroots,” types much more from the global South, much more politicized, angrier, very angry about everything.” It was in this context that Cox called attention to one of the more extraordinary events of the NGO Forum—the invitation extended to President Fidel Castro of Cuba to address the body, and the massive cheering response to his speech. To the foundation human rights expert, this was “the most disturbing thing.” In evaluating how Durban developed into a tragedy for the human rights movement, Cox would call attention to the responsibility of the UN administration. It “could have run a better show,” he concluded, pointing out that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights “was over its head” in terms of maintaining proper and responsible decorum. The Forum became “a failure insofar as that anti-Semitism and anti-Israel propaganda overwhelmed everything else.” Far more striking than the various initiatives to correct the blunders the foundation had made at Durban was an undertaking that was totally unprecedented in foundation history, and that was consciously initiated without any publicity. President Berresford began an inquiry into how and whether the foundation ought to encourage and support initiatives to combat antiSemitism in the West, more specifically in the Unites States and especially in Europe. Nothing like this had ever been attempted before by the foundation. Indeed, references to anti-Semitism, specifically, are rare in foundation archives. That the foundation, in its new focus on anti-Semitism, would turn its attention to Europe was quite natural. During 2001–2004, a dismaying upsurge of violent anti-Semitic incidents occurred throughout much of

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Western Europe, especially in France, which contained the largest Jewish community in that region.35 Much of the hate campaign was prompted by a virulent anti-Israel outcropping among the Muslim communities in Europe, especially in France, as well as in traditional extremist groups on the Right and among Leftists who strongly opposed Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. A recrudescence of the Fascist and Nazi mentality of the thirties was seen as a real possibility. Some five months after the foundation created the various means to diminish the possibility of a repetition of the Durban events, Berresford and her associates, on May 28, 2004, convened a conference in Brussels, Belgium, that Berresford chaired and that was cosponsored by the European Foundation Center and the King Baudouin Foundation. The conference was entitled “Understanding and Combating Anti-Semitism in Europe with Special Reference to France, Germany and Poland.” Invited to morning and afternoon sessions on that day were twenty-eight persons drawn primarily from the professional leadership of various European Jewish organizations, as well as selected Jewish academics at European universities who specialized in anti-Semitism. Chairperson Berresford, at the beginning, explained the purpose of the meeting: to assist the Ford Foundation and the other sponsoring foundations from Europe to develop a strategic grant-making approach to preventing the increase of anti-Semitism in Europe. She noted that the Brussels meeting was but one of a number of conferences that the Ford Foundation was organizing in several different settings in order to determine its own forthcoming “priorities.” Not only was anti-Semitism—the issue to be considered—a priority, but she also emphasized that halting it would constitute “a long-term investment” for the foundation. Beyond the Brussels meeting, Berresford had entered into several discussions with ADL director Abraham Foxman. During an interview with the author, Berresford frequently touched upon those meetings and how useful they proved to be. Separately, Foxman was interviewed and he characterized their exchanges as “candid” and “respectful” of each other’s views, even if they were not always in agreement. He was impressed by “her willingness to look deep into herself.” Foxman went on to praise her leadership qualities. Specifically, he added, Berresford was a “very strong leader,” which was reflected in the steps she had undertaken to rectify within the Foundation the damaged image of the Jewish community after Durban. In taking these appropriate and correct steps, Foxman observed, she “stood her ground” in the face of opposition from various quarters that were not described. Foxman especially welcomed her new interest in combating anti-Semitism. The cooperation of the two leaders resulted, according to Foxman, in working out a joint relationship to combat bigotry. The focus was upon ADL’s public school program to oppose racial and ethnic prejudices, “A World of Difference.” The foundation would actively cooperate in supporting this widely used program. ***

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An ADL press release on April 24, 2006, spelled out the new program for the “development and delivery of anti-bias training and diversity education programs and services.” Berresford’s comments, as quoted in the release are pertinent. After noting that ADL “is a leader in the fight against bigotry and discrimination,” she went on to observe the new program’s “practical approaches . . . to teach tolerance and promote diversity are more important now than ever.”36 Several months before the Durban debacle, the foundation had projected an unprecedented, massive program to deal with the world’s most pressing human rights problem of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century— transitional justice. The problem covered the spectrum of issues resulting from the overthrowing of military dictatorships, authoritarian systems, and totalitarian rule. How is accountability obtained for the many who were tortured, brutalized, or killed during the prior regimes? How can a sense of community be restored or established and reconciliation be achieved between the victims or survivors and those who abetted the practitioners of violence either by inactivity or by silence? And how is compensation to be made to the victims and survivors for the horrors perpetrated upon them? The problem had also embraced failed states or failing states where ethnic and religious tensions had exercised profound repercussions. Dozens of states, in virtually every geographical area, especially in Third World countries, were confronting these issues. It was not a surprise that the Ford Foundation, under the imaginative leadership of Susan Berresford, would take on this extraordinarily burdensome responsibility. The formal grant establishing the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) came on March 1, 2001. It took the form of a “recommendation” from Anthony Romero, a top-level human rights staffer who later became director of the ACLU, to President Berresford requesting “approval” for the totally new NGO with an unprecedented budget for one year of $6,208,900. Of this amount, the foundation would contribute four million dollars, and over one million dollars would be provided by other foundations—MacArthur, Hewlett, and Atlantic Philanthropies.37 The hefty size of the budget for the new NGO was rare in foundation annals. But equally rare was the “Foundation’s commitment” to the center of fifteen million dollars over “the first five years.” The huge grant sums testified to the faith Berresford and her associates had in its new creation and the significance of its expected role. (Just three months later, a high official of the center told the New York Times that the five-year budget would total twenty-six million dollars. A few months later, the official upped the figure to thirty million dollars.38) Of particular significance was the language used in the “recommendation” in characterizing the role of the foundation in bringing into existence the center. The grant was not for the specified work of a particular human rights organization, but rather “to establish the International Center for Transitional Justice.” The foundation had moved in an almost revolutionary manner to establish from scratch a human rights NGO. There was, of course,

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the precedent of the way the foundation helped launch the U.S. Helsinki Watch, but that was done in an extremely modest and, initially, in a most uncertain and exploratory way. In time, the Helsinki Watch, greatly enlarged, would require and be granted sizable sums, but, at the beginning, the response of the foundation was tentative and experimental. The grant recommendation spelled out in broad terms what tasks the center would embrace. In keeping with the discussions of the previous year as well as the preliminary papers prepared by the foundation’s consultant, Priscilla Hayner, the founding document emphasized what was to be the “purpose” of the center.39 The center was to “assist” countries, including governments and NGOs, to “respond to a legacy of human rights abuse” by advancing “accountability” as well as taking account of “the needs of victims,” and to “help prevent” the repetition of such liabilities in the future. It was a tall order for any organization to undertake, and, indeed, in a preliminary report by Hayner, in October 1999, it was noted that the principal human rights organizations in the human rights field were scarcely prepared to undertake the complex set of obligations.40 As pertinent as the defined “purpose” of the center was how the foundation envisaged the tasks that had to be undertaken by the center to cover the range of activities required to fulfill what in essence was a multifaceted purpose. The following five tasks were set forth: conduct a series of missions to obtain appropriate information; embark upon a series of “strategic research” objectives; engage in a crucial effort to build the capacity of local actors, enabling them to become experts in the development and formulation of transitional justice programs and their eventual implementation; engage high-level “decision-makers” to aid in the process of capacity-building by involving them through targeted retreats and seminars; and prepare to facilitate the process of networking by experts so as to maximize intellectual communication among various organizations and individuals already involved in some limited aspect of the process. Even in the abstract, the center would hardly be viewed as less than a monumental instrument. The first task of “conducting missions” was spelled out in the grant proposal in a way demonstrating a vastness of the scope entailed by any center inquiry. If they were to “provide general and comprehensive information,” at the same time, they would seek technical data with respect to legislation and local institutions to enable the center to develop an appropriate truth commission structure and permit it to implement its objectives.41 The missions would also serve to “empower local actors” to eventually make “policy decisions.” Here, the center’s aim was made explicit: transitional justice policy decisions would be carried out through “investigatory missions,” inquiries that were “specially tailored” to fit the local country situation. That Priscilla Hayner would be assigned at the very beginning of the center’s operations to travel to a dozen countries that had emerged from tormenting and brutal conflicts was hardly unexpected. She had studied intensively the value of truth and reconciliation commissions and how the

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new societies should be prepared for the rebuilding process. Her traveling companion, Peggy Hicks, who also served as general counsel of a leading human rights group, the International Human Rights Group in Washington, DC, would effectively summarize Hayner’s talents in being able to readily recognize the key problems of a transitional society. She had, said Hicks, a “dogged determination . . . [and] relentless focus,” enabling her to listen carefully and to move forward.42 The rush of media attention to the new NGO, accompanied by several interviews with its proposed leaders, was not altogether surprising. The New York Times Magazine, late in 2001, carried a short article on the center entitled, “The Year in Ideas,” as if the foundation’s creation captured the striking and distinctive feature of the entire year.43 As noted by the article, a feature of the center was the truth commissions, which had been launched that year, or were about to begin functioning, in nine countries—Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Peru, Panama, East Timor, the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia, and South Korea. The article found that the commissions had “proliferated” and “gone global.” And this was only the beginning of the “global” operation. The increase was anticipated by the center staff. An official of the center, Paul van Zyl, reported shortly after the foundation grant was extended that the number of requests for the services of the center “[had] been a deluge ever since.”44 By 2002, when a second grant of three million dollars would be forthcoming from the foundation, the number of countries seeking the services of the center had leaped from nine to fifteen.45 In the following year, 2003, the number of countries asking for assistance again almost doubled, reaching twenty-nine and thereby tripling the original number.46 And, appropriately enough, for the first time, the foundation grant file, when designating the “geographic area of concern,” now specified that it was “world wide.” Actually, the planning of the center was being shaped by Berresford and Anthony Romero well before March. A consultant to the foundation, Priscilla Hayner, for some time, had been researching the field of “transitional justice,” and had prepared a basic discussion paper on the subject after interviewing over fifty specialists in the field.47 At the April 6 meeting, where the foundation staff was joined by a host of outside experts, a rather sharp debate emerged about a major facet of Hayner’s study that had focused upon “truth commissions” as a key instrument of “transitional justice.” According to a major participant at the April meeting, Alex Wilde, then a vice-president of the foundation, this altogether positive view of truth commissions was challenged by advocates of the need for justice and court decisions for both victims and society as a whole. Justice, the advocates argued, could be obtained through legal proceedings in courts, not at disclosures made at the hearings of truth commissions.48 Yet even this viewpoint, articulated at the time by Aryeh Neier, former head of Human Rights Watch and later president of Open Society, was not advocated in a hostile fashion. On the contrary, the theme of justice was posed in a manner that did not reject the truth commission priority thesis. As reported by Wilde, the difference in

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viewpoints was seen by the participants as one of emphasis. Truth commissions would but complement judicial courts, not replace them. Justice could and would still be pursued and, indeed, Alex Boraine, the former deputy chief of the South African truth commission who chaired the April 6 meeting, made it clear that “the truth commission” would be but “a part of transitional justice.”49 In fact, truth commissions stood at the very heart of the Hayner research. A veritable catalogue of involvement by the foundation in such commissions was specifically detailed by Hayner.50 Especially significant examples can be noted here. The foundation awarded New York University Law School a grant of one hundred thousand dollars to administer a project that would evaluate and record lessons learned by the separate South African and Guatemalan truth commissions. Project officials at the law school were to commission staff members at various levels of the two truth mechanisms to prepare studies focusing on lessons learned from each. The separate essays were to be assembled and kept in one place to provide an invaluable source work on the subject. Truth commissions were always of special interest to the foundation, even if it did not always provide direct financial support of them. In South Africa, the truth commission was not directly supported, but an NGO in Johannesburg, the Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, which was “centrally involved” in the establishment of the “commission” and which monitored its proceedings, was provided foundation funding. Also supported by the foundation was the center’s Transition and Reconciliation Unit, which was engaged in the evaluation of the social and political impact of the truth commission and in monitoring the implementation of the commission’s recommendations. Also supported by the foundation was the Institute for Democracy, created in 1988 to assist in the publication of major excerpts of the truth commission’s report. The result was a widespread reproduction of extraordinary proportions. In one case, it took the form of a thirty-page supplement inserted into six hundred thousand copies of the major independent newspapers of South Africa. An additional four hundred thousand copies were printed and distributed in South African schools and institutions. Not surprisingly, the foundation remained keenly interested in the accumulation of archived documentation for scholarly research purposes. Funding of the archival accumulation in Argentina and Chile was high on the priority objectives of the regional offices of the foundation. At the core of such assistance was the belief that preserving memory was essential for the ending of social conflicts and the preservation of society itself. Thus, the foundation office in Moscow, several years after the USSR had disintegrated in 1991, was determined to provide support for both the Memorial Society and the Perm Gulag Museum to permanently memorialize the horrors of Stalinism. This was initiated in 1998, and during the following years, the foundation regional office in Moscow awarded a grant of sixty thousand

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dollars to the Memorial Museum of the History of Political Repression. Similar support was extended to the Guatemalan Truth Commission and to the human rights office of the Archbishop of Guatemala for sponsorship of a historical-memory project. A major documentary grant of six hundred thousand dollars was awarded by the foundation to a London film production company to produce “The Terror and the Truth,” which was about the experience of seven countries seeking truth, justice, and reconciliation after a transition from repressive rule. The documentary was released in 1997. With respect specifically to Chile, the foundation granted the University of Notre Dame in Indiana sixty-five thousand dollars to translate into English the entire two volumes of the Chilean truth commission report. Earlier, in 1990, the foundation awarded one hundred fifty thousand dollars to the Vicariate of the Archbishop in Santiago so that it could organize its archives to serve as a key source for the Chilean truth commission. The archives proved to be invaluable. The Argentine truth commission was also seen as crucial, and the foundation granted, in the late eighties, one hundred fifty thousand dollars to the recently established Argentina Forensic Anthropology Team in order for the group to identify the remains of persons noted in documents of the Argentine truth commission. The highly skilled and technically-trained Argentine team would later be used to help identify victims of human crimes in other places around the world. Even as the foundation had taken cognizance, in a significant way, of the field of transitional justice, the problems related to judicial or legal approaches to past abuses were deepening, and therefore warranting greater public attention. The very challenges posed by documentation from the international tribunals dealing with the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda stimulated a growing interest among human rights NGOs and legal specialists. The interest extended to the application of the so-called principle of “universal jurisdiction,” which posited the right of any staffer to arrest and try practitioners of genocide and crimes against humanity. The foundation had awarded a number of grants to NGOs that had been involved with assisting the work of the international tribunals dealing with the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. It now turned to make possible the creation of an international criminal court. Grants were given to several major NGOs that were involved in lobbying for such a court for the future. Among these NGOs that the foundation would assist heavily were the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, Parliamentarians for Global Action, the International Monitor Institute, and the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice. Though a burst of activism among human rights groups for the judicial aims had become apparent, it was accompanied by a striking “lack of coordination” among those seeking to cope with the exciting cutting-edge work on transitional justice. An equivalent lack of coordination applied to the area of nonjudicial mechanisms or quasi-judicial mechanisms responding to past abuses. The host of new initiatives, whether truth commissions,

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reparation programs, reconciliation efforts, or plans to preserve and honor painful historical memory, had no locus. Rather, the various initiatives were scattered among different countries and institutions around the world. A central point for assembling information and expertise was distressingly lacking. If, nonetheless, policy considerations on the subject had begun, they were entirely rooted in an ad hoc and uncoordinated thinking and planning. Still, the foundation remained keenly interested in the rendering of justice and, in that connection, had become strongly interested in the establishment of an international criminal court to deal not with the past incidents already being handled by regional tribunals, like the ones dealing with Bosnia and Rwanda, but rather with future episodes of genocide and crimes against humanity. The overthrow of repressive regimes in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and South Africa had opened the question of holding accountable the former perpetrators of violence against human rights. Regional tribunals were, in fact, created by the UN in 1993 and 1994 for those who had engaged in genocide against Bosnian Muslims and Rwandan Tutsis. The international community had come to accept that impunity for violators of international law was no longer tolerable and that government officials could not be immune from punishment if the former repression included genocide and crimes against humanity. While other regions or countries were soon to wrestle with horrendous crimes in local areas—like Sierra Leone, Liberia, Indonesia, and East Timor—the new focus was upon the future. How would the international system deal with future crimes of genocide and gross abuses of persons and communities? The experiences of the last decade of the twentieth century, with the most horrendous examples of genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, recalled earlier episodes of the trauma of carnage and destruction during prior twentiethcentury decades. An analyst of the history of genocide concluded, “Humanity’s record in preventing genocide has been nothing short of abysmal.”51 Two scholars, writing in 1988, calculated that the number of people killed in genocidal episodes since 1945 ranged from seven to sixteen million, which was about equal to the number who perished in all international and civil wars during the same period.52 The concept of an international criminal court was by no means altogether new. It had been projected by the UN General Assembly when it adopted, in December 1948, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The most vigorous opponent of the idea at the time was the Soviet Union, but with its dissolution in 1991, the idea soon took on viability. In 1994, the International Law Commission, a UN agency, presented to the General Assembly a new draft statute for an international criminal court. The Assembly, in turn, created a Preparatory Committee to act on the proposal. The 1994 recommendation of the International Law Commission triggered little public response, even if several government representatives displayed considerable interest. During the discussion of the proposed draft statute for a permanent criminal court, a number of UN government delegates

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expressed disappointment at the small number of NGOs who were present. Their absence seemed to reflect public indifference, and, in fact, the chairman of the UN’s Legal (Sixth) Committee commented that a greater display of NGO support could result in much greater progress.53 On February 10, 1995, William Pace, the representative of the World Federalist Movement, held the first meeting of a small Coalition for an International Criminal Court. While Pace was the leading organizer of the meeting, he had the cooperation, in this initiative, of Amnesty International and the Italian NGO, No Peace Without Justice.54 Also, among the dozen or so delegates in attendance, virtually every major human rights group was present. Though starting out most modestly, the coalition, as the small group formally designated itself, quickly would embrace over three hundred participating NGOs and started publishing a valuable newsletter, The International Criminal Court Monitor. A powerful steering committee was chosen that comprised leading American NGOs like Human Rights Watch, as well as Amnesty International, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, the International Commission of Jurists, the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice, Parliamentarians for Global Action, and several other Europeanbased NGOs. That a huge lobbying role involving virtually all human rights and law groups was essential in order to influence the vast number of UN member states was apparent from the very beginning. Then why was Pace of the World Federalist Movement selected to be what was called the coalition’s “Convener?” His office was among the smallest NGO offices in the United States—it contained only a couple of persons in the limited New York headquarters of some two or three rooms.55 Pace later explained that the largest NGO, Amnesty International, “doesn’t do networking.” If that excluded this NGO as convener, others were excluded for a more practicable reason of “turf” conflicts. With such a monumental operation, it was necessary to avoid “turf” battles among larger NGOs, like Human Rights Watch and the Lawyers Committee. Envy of the World Federalist leadership would be regarded as unseemly; indeed, its leadership was welcomed by those seeking to avoid entanglements over strategy. And, moreover, the coalition’s steering committee could act to harmonize overall planning. An initial determination was for different NGOs to meet with every formal regional and national delegation at the UN. Assignments were precise and extended to lobbying in individual capitals. Thus, Human Rights Watch was asked to lobby in Brussels, where the European Parliament and the European Union were the designated targets. Amnesty International was called upon to lobby in Rome and to collaborate with the Italian NGO, No Peace Without Justice. Obviously, for such a giant undertaking, sizable funding was needed, especially to permit NGOs to travel to a host of capitals for lobbying purposes. At the beginning, in 1995, the coalition expenses were between ten thousand dollars and fifty thousand dollars. But these figures would quadruple and then quintuple in 1996.56 In 1997, the budget of the coalition jumped to five hundred thousand dollars and six hundred thousand dollars.

266 Taking on the World's Repressive Regimes/William Korey

What made the budgetary breakthrough possible in 1996, as Pace acknowledged, was the Ford Foundation. A foundation archival file noted that the new foundation president, Susan Berresford, received from staffer Shepard Forman, on April 4, 1996, a request of one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars for the World Federalist Movement, the Convener of the coalition.57 It was apparent that the foundation saw in the coalition initiative an extraordinary opportunity. The “key goal” of the grant was “to build more membership in the Coalition and greater support for the ICC [International Criminal Court] within the European Union and other regional groups.”58 It was a most significant indication of the foundation’s new purpose. The involvement of the foundation proved to be critical and ultimately decisive for the coalition’s plans. Not only was direct funding made to the coalition’s Convener, but several of the major NGOs on the steering committee who were in the forefront of the international lobbying were also themselves recipients of sizable foundation grants. In fact, certain foundation grantees played a role in involving the foundation itself. Indeed, as the coalition’s Convener noted, it was the “support” of such NGOs as Human Rights Watch that resulted in the Ford Foundation grant being made in the first place.59 That the lobbying work of the coalition would exert an extraordinary impact upon UN delegations would soon become evident. Pace, speaking before an audience of NGOs in Montevideo, Uruguay, related that he was told by an “important delegation representative” that the coalition was “the largest and most powerful delegation in the negotiations” for the international criminal court. Even if the statement could hardly be validated, Pace still added, “we are a major player in the process.” According to a top-level authority on the lobbying for the international court, Benjamin Ferencz, who had been a leading prosecutor at Nuremberg, the work of the NGOs turned out to be “vital and decisive.”60 The climactic event came on July 17, 1998, at a UN conference of diplomatic plenipotentiaries held in Rome.61 By an overwhelming vote of 127 to seven, the delegates formally adopted the statute creating an International Criminal Court. The United States, because of Pentagon opposition, voted with the tiny number to reject the statute as drafted. Still, Ferencz called the decision a “historic and remarkable achievement.” Recalling that it took Washington forty years to ratify the Genocide Convention, he expressed the hope that eventually the United States would join the contracting parties to the treaty and, indeed, President Clinton formally signed the treaty on December 31, 2000. The succeeding Bush administration, however, totally denounced the statute and engaged in a sustained effort to prevent countries from ratifying it. According to Hayner, it was Berresford and Romero who played the principal leading roles in creating the International Center for Transitional Justice.62 But in the view of Romero, it was Berresford who, from the very beginning of her presidency, had moved the foundation toward the new approach and the creation of a richly endowed NGO.63 He commented, “[the] center [for transitional justice] is a very good example to use for how

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the Foundation’s work after 1995 changed.”64 This fundamental change was signaled, he said, in a sizable paper on global issues written by Berresford at the very beginning of her tenure. According to Romero, prior to Berresford assuming the leadership role, there was not a “global vision” in the foundation’s approach to transitional society problems. Instead, international affairs were either structured on a national problem basis or on a specific discipline basis like international law or international economics. “She took a synergy [approach] that was not there and put it together,” he said. Berresford’s determination to move quickly on the center’s creation was shown immediately. After the April 6 meeting, she asked Alex Boraine, the meeting’s chairman, at a breakfast just for the two of them, to prepare a memorandum as to how the proposed center would generate funding and what its budget should be. And she wanted the memorandum done immediately. Boraine, in an interview several years ago, would recall that only a couple of days later, he asked Hayner and Paul van Zyl, who had served on the South African truth commission, to assist him in preparing the document.65 The memorandum was completed very quickly by the three of them. Even the budget did not present an obstacle, since he had earlier, in his private discussion with Berresford, suggested a grant of fifteen million dollars over a five-year period. Boraine recalled that this figure did not “frighten” her. Why the extraordinarily large grant to an NGO would not be intimidating was suggested in an interview with Berresford in 2004. She told the interviewer that, given the new and changed integrated and global structure of the foundation, she wanted the staff to think big. Berresford remembered asking her staff sometime in the late nineties, “What are the things you’d like to put 50 or 60 million dollars into, not just 100 thousand dollars?”66 Shaping the underpinning of the new NGO’s financial structure was not only a Ford Foundation function. The final grant figures to the proposed center revealed that approximately 20 percent of the total funds were to come from several major other foundation sources. Boraine, in his interview, revealed that this, too, was a product largely of Berresford’s initiative and drive. How precisely this was accomplished was not clear, although Boraine declared in the same interview that he was “quite certain” that Berresford’s personal role was significant. But Berresford’s involvement went far beyond merely bringing the center into existence and providing it with a considerable financial base. It was she who chose its leader and used some persuasive verbal pressure to realize this objective. According to Boraine, after she had gotten him, in cooperation with Zyl and Hayner, to outline the plan for the center’s operation, she then insisted upon him taking the position of its president. Boraine did not want the job, which would be located in New York, far from his family in Cape Town, South Africa. And family considerations were uppermost in his mind. Berresford would not take “no” for an answer, Boraine recalled. Indeed, she made it clear to him that his acceptance of her offer was essential if the grant project and its budget, which he and his colleagues had drafted, were to be approved. “She is very persuasive,” Boraine told the interviewer.

268 Taking on the World's Repressive Regimes/William Korey

Clearly, the International Center for Transitional Justice was very much the product of the Ford Foundation’s planning, and especially Berresford’s inspiration and determination. Yet the choice of Boraine to head up the new NGO was nothing short of brilliant in assessing how the NGO could get off the ground. He had been a top leader of an institution that was seen as a model for a crucial element of the center’s future activities—South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. While the commission was headed by the very prominent church official, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, it was the deputy-chairman, Alex Boraine, who was the key operator of the commission. In that position, he would acquire a body of knowledge and experience that enabled him to launch the valuable center. The South African truth commission had as its fundamental building block the principle of granting amnesty to all who were involved in a leadership or operational role in the apartheid system, provided that they came forward with full confessions about the misdeeds that they had committed. “Amnesty was the price we had to pay for peace,” Boraine had noted in emphasizing both the “truth” and “reconciliation” aspects of the commission.67 As its vice-chairman, he had accumulated a rich body of documentation of the massive abusive brutalities of the apartheid system from the more than seven thousand confessions that the commission had heard, as well as from the testimony of twenty thousand victims. The vast and unique documentation could hardly be garnered anywhere else. In the course of its first few years, the center proved to be enormously productive. If, at the beginning, its staff had taken on responsibilities in a dozen or so countries, the foundation’s grant recommendation in 2004 for the year beginning in September referred to twenty-three countries in which the center “would continue or begin work” during the subsequent twelve months.68 But the document was equally revealing in noting that the center, since its establishment, had “carried out work in more than thirty-two countries” and had become “a leading resource on transitional justice almost everywhere else.” Commensurate with the embrace of a significant number of separate countries on virtually every continent, the center was reputed to have more than doubled its previous staff size, now standing at twenty-nine. The 2004 grant took account of the center’s priorities, which were similar to those of the foundation. A major priority was “to empower local actors to make informed transitional justice policy decisions” by providing them with appropriate information, analysis, and legal and technical assistance. But the grant also noted that the center was taking on new initiatives. It was “vetting issues for prosecutions” to be carried out by international or hybrid tribunals, and it would focus more on gender issues and on matters of reconciliation.69 Of special pertinence were new responsibilities assumed by the center as the basic source of information and advice to all professionals in the transitional justice field. Through special arrangements with the United Nations, “separate seminars” would be conducted by the center with the UN Security Council,

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the UN Department of Political Affairs, and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees. The seminars would supplement other training programs of the center noted by the foundation, including seminars for special groups interested in truth commissions and for various NGO networks. Clearly, with the obvious encouragement and support of the foundation, the center was seen as the major global educator on the myriad aspects of transitional justice. The foundation’s report was quite explicit with respect to how it perceived the center to be closely and continuously linked to the foundation’s purposes and activities. It noted that the grant creating the new institution “would form” part of the foundation’s initiative “to strengthen existing or create new effective mechanisms for justice and accountability for human rights violations.”70 The sharply emphasized educational function of the center, as perceived by the foundation in its grant, was followed two years later with the appointment of the center’s new president to succeed Alex Boraine. He was Juan Mendez, who, appropriately enough, had most recently served as professor of law and director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights at the University of Notre Dame. Its global role was reinforced through Mendez’s appointment by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as his “special adviser” on genocide, a function of major significance to the center itself. In 2006, the Ford Foundation extended to the center a second fifteen million dollars for another five years. Both grants significantly exceeded the awards given to any other NGO in the foundation’s history. But, howsoever involved the center was and would be in the pressing problems of the international community, its grants represented but a fraction of foundation commitments in the human rights field. The promise of over a half century to promote “human welfare,” deepened by a promise in the seventies to advance human rights, have yet to be entirely fulfilled. They remain principal purposes of the foundation for the future.

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Chapter 1 1. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 5th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973). The 6th edition in 1985 had Kenneth W. Thompson as coauthor to Morgenthau. His name appears after the book’s title as one who revised the volume. 2. Hans J. Morgenthau. Revised by Kenneth W. Thompson, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), 274–78. 3. Ibid., 276. 4. See Jack Donnelly, Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy: Forty Years of Thinking (mimeograph provided by author, Chapel Hill, NC, 1987), 3. It was an article by the author of this book that ended the silence of Foreign Affairs on Human Rights. See William Korey, “Human Rights Treaties: Why is the U.S. Stalling?” Foreign Affairs 45, no. 3 (April 1967): 414–24. 5. See William Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 151–80. 6. William Greenleaf, The Ford Foundation: The Formative Years (mimeograph, Fort Collins, CO, July 15, 1958), Preface, p. 2. A copy was found in the Ford Foundation Archives. This manuscript, a solid one, was based upon archival sources. Why it remained unpublished is not known. This chapter is largely based upon the Greenleaf manuscript. It should be emphasized that each chapter of the Greenleaf manuscript has its own pagination. 7. The citation is from Andrew Carnegie’s article, “The Gospel of Wealth,” cited in Dwight Macdonald, The Ford Foundation: The Men and the Millions (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1989), 46; originally published, Reynal, 1955. 8. Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hitler (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2001), 144. 9. Ibid., 284. 10. Ibid., 306. 11. Douglas Brinkley, Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company and a Century of Progress, 1903–2003 (New York: Viking Press, 2003), 383. 12. Ibid., 427. 13. Waldemar A. Nielsen, The Big Foundations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 78.

272 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50.

51.

N ot e s Greenleaf, The Formative Years, chap. 1, p. 1. Ibid., 7–8. Ibid., 13. Ibid., 23. Ibid., 28. Ibid., 28n59. Ibid., 33. Greenleaf, The Formative Years, chap. 1, p. 32n60. Macdonald, The Ford Foundation, 138–39. Greenleaf, The Formative Years, 33n61. Ibid., chap. 2, p. 1n1. Ibid., 2. Macdonald, The Ford Foundation, 173. Ibid., 24–25n52. Ibid., 33. Ibid., vii. This appeared in an essay at the beginning of Macdonald’s study of the Ford Foundation. Ibid., 3. Macdonald’s book was based upon three long articles he wrote for The New Yorker, where he served as a frequent columnist. Francis X. Sutton, “Introduction to the Transaction Edition,” in Macdonald, The Ford Foundation, xi. Ibid. Greenleaf, The Formative Years, chap. 2, p. 37n76. Ibid., 40. Ibid., 43. Macdonald, The Ford Foundation, 61. Greenleaf, The Formative Years, 46n97. Ibid., chap. 3, p. 1. Ibid., 23. Kathleen D. McCarthy, “From Cold War to Cultural Development: The International Cultural Activities of the Ford Foundation, 1950–1980,” Daedalus 116, no. 1 (Winter 1987): 93–94. Ibid., 100. Ibid., 107–9. Details of the origins of the Congress are found in Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe (New York: Free Press, 1989), 2. Ibid., 45. Ibid., 94. Ibid., 224–25. For a detailed examination of the International Association, see Volker R. Berghahn, American Intelligentsia and the Cold War in Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). Greenleaf, The Formative Years, chap. 3, p. 27n48. Ibid., 35n63. The Ford Foundation Archives carry an abundance of documentation on the hearings, including statements by Reece, summaries of testimony, the final report of the Reece Committee (December 1954), and surveys of press coverage. Macdonald, The Ford Foundation, 171.

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52. Ibid., 49. 53. Raphael Lemkin to Don Price of the Ford Foundation, December 1, 1957, Ford Foundation Archives, Document Number 36302. The rare letter was found in the Ford Foundation Archives in 2005 and sent to the author. Lemkin’s letter was received on December 3, 1957. 54. Don Price to Raphael Lemkin, December 5, 1957, Ford Foundation Archives. This letter was found in the archives attached to the Lemkin letter. 55. Letter to Professor Leo Kuper from William P. Gormley of Foundations Comptorller Office, September 10, 1981. It was found in the Ford Foundation Archives. Attached to the copy in the archives was an interoffice memorandum by Shepard Forman to Francis Sutton endorsing the grant, August 4, 1981. 56. The document was found in the file of Shepard Forman. 57. Rosalyn Higgins, Human Rights: Needs and Priorities (mimeograph, Ford Foundation Archives, September 1973), 1. Higgins is today the president of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid., 13. 60. Ibid., 15.

Chapter 2 1. Scott Busby, Making Human Rights Real: A History of the Ford Foundation’s Human Rights Program in Latin America and the Caribbean (mimeograph, Ford Foundation Archives, December 1989), 8. The study was prepared for the Ford Foundation. 2. Ibid. 3. Jeffrey Puryear, “Higher Education, Development Assistance and Repressive Regimes” (February 1963). A note in the Ford Foundation archives attatched to the Puryear essay reveals that the article was adapted from an article in Studies in Comparative Development 17, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 7; Jay Weinstein, ed., Studies in Comparative Development (Atlanta: Georgia Institute of Technology, 1982), 3–35. Puryear was a leading figure in the Ford Foundation’s Santiago office. 4. Busby, Making Human Rights Real, 9n15. 5. Puryear, “Higher Education,” 20. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid.., 21. 8. Ibid., 22. 9. See Jeffrey M. Puryear, Thinking Politics: Intellectuals and Democracy in Chile, 1973–1988 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 42–52. 10. Puryear, “Higher Education,” 27. 11. Puryear, Thinking Politics, 52. 12. Kalman H. Silvert to William D. Carmichael, unpublished memorandum, March 26, 1974. 13. Ibid. 14. Busby, Making Human Rights Real, 6. 15. Kalman H. Silvert to David E. Bell, unpublished memorandum, October 8, 1971. David Bell was vice-president of the International Division for the Foundation.

274 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25.

26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31.

32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

N ot e s Puryear, “Higher Education,” 22. Ibid. Ibid. See David Forsythe, Human Rights in World Politics (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 92. Larry Rohter, “Visit to U.S. Isn’t a First for Chile’s First Female President,” New York Times, June 8, 2006. Richard R. Fagen to William Fulbright. Attached to Richard R. Fagen’s letter to William Carmichael October 8, 1973, Ford Foundation Archives. The report to Senator Fulbright and the covering note to Carmichael were found in the Ford Foundation’s McGeorge Bundy file. Carmichael was a vice-president of the foundation. Ibid. William Carmichael to McGeorge Bundy, unpublished memorandum, October 13, 1973. The memorandum is in the Bundy file. Actually, the memo appears on the letterhead of Carmichael, as if it were a personal note. Ibid. Peter Bell to McGeorge Bundy, unpublished memorandum, March 28, 1974. Copies of the memo, which was found in the Bundy file, had been sent to David Bell. Bell was a vice-president of the Ford Foundation, as was William Carmichael. Ibid. Ibid. Peter Bell to McGeorge Bundy, unpublished memorandum, April 9, 1974. Copies of the second memo were also sent to David Bell and William Carmichael. The second memo was available in the Bundy file. Jeffrey Puryear, unpublished memorandum, March 17, 1982. This memo identified its subject matter as “Missing,” referring to the movie “Missing.” It was found in the files of Shepard Forman, a high foundation official. “Representative,” in essence, meant the head of the local regional office or bureau. New York Times, April 23, 2002, Metro Section, p. 2. The article is particularly long and carries a picture of Joyce Horman. The impressive documentary is described by Alex Wilde, the Ford Foundation’s vice-president for communications, in a recent foundation journal. See Alex Wilde, “In Chile, a New Generations Revisits Haunted Space,” Ford Foundation Report 34, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 40–41. Peter Bell to William Carmichael, unpublished memorandum, April 1, 1974. The interoffice memo in the Ford Foundation Archives is numbered Document 008957. Richard Dye to McGeorge Bundy, unpublished memorandum, September 11, 1974. The memo was transmitted via David Bell and William Carmichael. Francis Sutton, interview by the author, May 22, 2002. Puryear, “Higher Education,” 16. Ibid., 16. Ibid., 17. Ibid., 15. David Heaps to David Bell, unpublished memorandum, July 17, 1974. Copies were also addressed to Francis Sutton and Crauford Goodwin. Goodwin, like Sutton, was a high official of the Ford Foundation.

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40. It would be cited by David Heaps in his revolutionary Draft Report on Human Rights (mimeograph, Ford Foundation Archives, August 1975), 9. The document number is 005643. 41. Busby, Making Human Rights Real, 14. 42. David Heaps to David Bell, unpublished memorandum, July 17, 1974. The subject title is “1980 Budget: Alternative Programme Interest.” 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. James Gardner to David Heaps, unpublished memorandum, October 7, 1974; and James Gardner to Robert Edwards, memorandum, October 8, 1974, February 7, 1975. Both memorandums are in Gardner Papers, Ford Foundation Archives. Also, see Busby, Making Human Rights Real, 12n11. 46. James Gardner to Peter Bell, William Carmichael, Robert Edwards, David Heaps, Kalman Silvert, and Francis Sutton, unpublished memorandum, February 7, 1975. The subject of the memo was, “Law, Development and Human Rights: The Trubek Proposal.” 47. The Bell memo has not been located but is cited in David Heaps, Draft Report on Human Rights. 48. David Bell’s memorandum of covering his report on a trip to Latin America, May 29, 1975, is entitled “Visit to Latin America” (April 5–26, 1975). It is cited in Heaps’s Draft Report. 49. New York Times, “David Heaps, 84, Human Rights Advocate,” June 17, 2000. 50. Ibid. 51. Heaps, Draft Report, 2. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid., 7–11. 54. Ibid., 12–14. 55. Ibid., 15. 56. Ibid., 15–47. These sections discuss the treatment of NGOs. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid., 15. 59. Ibid., 16. 60. Ibid., 18. 61. Ibid., 51. 62. Ibid., 47–54. 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid., 55. The rationale was contained in the following way: the scholars and intellectuals were “a primary Foundation constituency; and policies contrived to their detriment should evoke Foundation concern for reasons of principle and of relevance to the international community.” 65. Ibid., 66. 66. Ibid.

Chapter 3 1. William Carmichael, “The Role of the Ford Foundation,” in NGOs and Human Rights: Promise and Performance, by Claude Welch, Jr. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). Carmichael’s essay refers to a staff conference in

276

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

N ot e s late 1974, but it is apparent, on the basis of internal evidence, that he was thinking about a staff conference in September 1975. Ibid. David Bell, Comments (Ford Foundation Archives, August 20, 1975). Ibid. Ibid. David Heaps to Francis Sutton and Crawfurd Goodwin, with copies sent to James Gardner and Sanford Jaffe. The document number is 000066. Ibid. Ibid. Francis X Sutton, Human Rights and Intellectual Freedom: Information Paper (Ford Foundation, November 1975).The document number as noted in the Archives was 002256. The name was written in ink with quotation marks around it. Scott Busby, Making Human Rights Real: A History of the Ford Foundation’s Human Rights Program in Latin America and the Caribbean (mimeograph, Ford Foundation Archives, December 1989), 12. The author states that Sutton, in “a subsequent interview,” “confirmed that he and Heaps were the primary authors of the piece” (12n23). Francis Sutton, phone interview by the author, May 22, 2002. Sutton emphasized that he had served as the policy draftsman for all kinds of papers at the foundation. The author wrote about the significance of the Helsinki Final Act in two articles for The New Republic, one of which was unsigned and assumed an editorial character. Details of the Helsinki Accords are to be found in William Korey, The Promises We Keep: Human Rights, the Helsinki Process and American Foreign Policy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993). See Korey, The Promises We Keep, 1–19. Sutton, Human Rights, 2. For a description of the Vicariate and how it functioned, see the Ford Foundation Archives Grant File Doc. 0840-0621 B, August 11, 1988, pp. 1–2. Ibid., 4. Ibid. Richard Dye to William Carmichael, unpublished memorandum, June 25, 1976, Ford Foundation Archives, Document Number 009373. Copies were also sent to McGeorge Bundy, David Bell, Jeffrey Puryear, and Ford Foundation Latin American officers outside of Santiago. Ibid. Soedjatmoko, Transcript of Remarks by Dr. Soedjatmoko to OLAC Staff (transcript, Ford Foundation Archives, June 23, 1976). This document is attached to the Doc. No. 009372. Ibid., 3. Ibid. Ibid., 6. Ibid. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 8. Ibid.

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29. Richard Dye to William Carmichael, “Refugee Situation in Argentina,” July 26, 1976, Ford Foundation Archives, Document Number 009373. Copies were sent to foundation human rights staffers Bruce Bushey in Rio de Janeiro and K. Manitzas in Lima, Peru. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 2. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Nita Rous Manitzas, Evaluation of the Southern Cone DAP (mimeograph, Ford Foundation Archives, February 1980). The trip to the Southern Cone was taken by Manitzas in January 1980. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., 2. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., 8. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid., 8. 43. For good discussions of the transition, see Carmichael, “The Role of the Ford Foundation,” 250–52; and Busby, Making Human Rights Real, 22–23. 44. Carmichael, “The Role of the Ford Foundation,” 252. 45. Franklin Thomas, “Presidential Review,” Annual Report 1980 (New York: Ford Foundation, 1980), VIII–IX. 46. Ibid. 47. Busby, Making Human Rights Real, 23. 48. Ibid. 49. Carmichael, “The Role of the Ford Foundation,” 252. He had <~?~retired> by the end of the twentieth century. 50. Ibid., 259n10. 51. Busby, Making Human Rights Real, 28. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid., 30. 54. Brazil Program Review 1985, mimeograph, 14–15. 55. Margaret Crahan, Human Rights in Latin America (mimeograph, Ford Foundation Archives, 1982). This report covers a field trip taken during November 26–December 11, 1982. In the Ford Foundation Archives, it is identified as Document Number 008234.William Saint’s unpublished memorandum was sent to his foundation colleagues in New York, April 8, 1983. A foundation official who dealt with Saint was in the Lima, Peru office. 56. Crahan, Human Rights in Latin America, 45. 57. Ibid., 23. Amazingly, she predicted that Peru may “shortly enter a period of substantial violations of the physical integrity of persons” as well as of human rights in general. 58. Ibid., 26–45. 59. Ibid., 38. 60. Margo Picken, The Ford Foundation’s International Human Rights Program: A History and An Agenda (mimeograph, Ford Foundation, January 21, 1995). The Document Number is 012632. Picken had been the Ford Foundation’s

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Human Rights Program Officer at the time. Earlier, she had represented Amnesty International at the UN. 61. Ibid., 4.

Chapter 4 1. Margo Picken, The Ford Foundation’s International Human Rights Program: A History and an Agenda (mimeograph, Ford Foundation, January 21, 1995), Ford Foundation Archives, Dec. No. 012632. 2. The citation is from the foundation’s annual Presidential Review of 1980, pp. 5–6. 3. Ford Foundation Archives, Document File Number 830-0934, October 16, 1997, p. 1. 4. Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Human Rights in the World Community: A Call for World Leadership (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974), 93rd Cong., 1st sess. The actual hearings were published separately as: Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements, International Protection of Human Rights: The Work of International Organizations and the Role of U.S. Foreign Policy, 93rd Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974). 5. Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights in the World Community, 9. 6. Ibid., 50. 7. A deep concern of Congress was the U.S. supporting role of the military coup in Chile. Later documentation would reveal the extent of the support. Larry Rohter, “New Evidence Surfaces in ’73 Killing of American in Chile,” New York Times, March 12, 2004, p. 3. Also see Rohter, “Word for Word: Kissinger on Pinochet; The Human Rights Crowd Gives Real Politik the Jitters,” New York Times, week in review, December 28, 2003, p. 3. Neil A. Lewis, “Delight over Coup Is Evident in Transcripts: Discussion between Kissinger and Nixon abut Events in Chile,” New York Times, May 28, 2004. 8. Sandy Vogelgesang, American Dream, Global Nightmare: The Dilemma of U.S. Human Rights Policy (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1980), 110–57. 9. Ibid., 147. 10. Bruce Bushey to Francis Sutton, unpublished memorandum, July 28, 1980. The source is to be found in the Ford Foundation Archives, and the Document File Number is 08050827. 11. Joseph Eldridge, interview by the author, July 10, 1996. At that time, Eldridge was serving as the director of the Washington office of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. 12. David Forsythe, Human Rights in World Politics (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 141, 145. 13. Bruce Bushey to Francis Sutton, unpublished memorandum, July 28, 1980, p. 1. 14. Ibid., 3. 15. Ibid., 2.

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16. Ford Foundation Archives, Document File Number 83-934, September 15, 1983. The “Responsible Program Officers” were listed as Jeffrey Puryear and Shepard Forman, the top foundation human rights specialists on Latin America. 17. Ibid., 23. 18. Ibid., 25. 19. Ibid., 6 20. Ibid., 8. 21. Ibid., 9–10. 22. Anthony Romero and Alexander Wilde to Susan Berresford, recommendation, October 16, 1997, 4. See Ford Foundation Archives Document File Number 830-0934. 23. Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981). Timerman was accompanied to the hearings by PatriciaDerian, President Jimmy Carter’s human rights adviser. The author of this manuscript had played a role in the release of Timerman. 24. Aryeh Neier, interview by the author and Catherine Fitzpatrick, June 3, 2003. Catherine Fitzpatrick was then assisting the author in the preparation of material for this chapter. 25. Aryeh Neier, Taking Liberties (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2003), 152–56. 26. Ibid., 153. 27. Ibid., 156. 28. Picken, The Ford Foundation, 10. 29. Ibid. 30. Shepard Forman to Franklin Thomas, unpublished memorandum, September 11, 1981. The memorandum is to be found in the Ford Foundation Archives, and the Document File Number is 79-807. 31. William Saint to Jeffrey Puryear, unpublished memorandum, November 9, 1981. The Saint memorandum can be found in the Ford Foundation Archives, Grant File Document 82-576. 32. Identified in the Ford Foundation Archives as “Request No. DCP 34US1AP86. No specific date was given on the document. 33. Margaret Crahan, Human Rights in Latin America (Ford Foundation, December 1982) Ford Foundation Archives, Doc. No. 008234. 34. Lima Program Review FY 1985, 19. 35. Scott Busby, Making Human Rights Real: A History of the Ford Foundation’s Human Rights Program in Latin America and the Caribbean (mimeograph, Ford Foundation Archives, December 1989), 40. 36. William Carmichael to Franklin Thomas, grant recommendation, August 28, 1986, p. 1. For reasons not clear, this Grant File Document in the Ford Foundation Archives was attached to the Grant File Document 846-0651, which came two years later in 1988. 37. Ibid., 2. 38. Ibid., 8–9. 39. Ibid., 8. 40. Alex Wilde, “Preface” Preserving Historical Memory: Documents and Human Rights Archives in the Southern Cone (paper presented at conference in Santiago, Chile, August 1999). Wilde had served with WOLA before beginning his career with the foundation.

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Chapter 5 1. The Final Act comprised three Baskets. Basket 1 dealt with security and Basket 2 dealt with trade and scientific exchange. 2. For a detailed discussion, see William Korey, The Promises We Keep: Human Rights, the Helsinki Process and American Foreign Policy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 45–61. 3. Ibid., 46–47. 4. Ibid. 5. For a discussion about the role of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group, see William Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Curious Grapevine (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 232–33. 6. Ibid., 233–34. 7. Ibid., 234. 8. December 10, 1948, was the date of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since then, commemoration of the day has become an annual event. 9. Bruce Bushey to Joshua Nelson, August 4, 1977. Joshua Nelson was a highlevel staffer at the Twentieth Century Fund. This letter is located in the McGeorge Bundy File, and the Document Number is 77-407. 10. Bayard Rustin, Roger Baldwin, and John Richardson, June 3, 1977. The letter was addressed to the many NGO groups with interest in human rights. It was signed by Roger Baldwin, the Honorary President of the International League for Human Rights, and John Richardson, the President of Freedom House. A copy of the letter was found in the McGeorge Bundy file. 11. A summary of the proceedings of August 8 was found in the McGeorge Bundy file. Its File Document Number is 77-407. It was probably prepared by a foundation staffer after the conference. Speculation on who exactly prepared the document centered on Felice Gaer, a foundation staffer especially involved with the Helsinki process. 12. Felice Gaer to Bruce Bushey, unpublished memorandum, March 14, 1977. The memo was found in the McGeorge Bundy file, and its document number is 77-407. 13. Gaer repeatedly misspelled Gershman’s name as “Gerschman.” 14. Felice Gaer, interview by the author, February 5, 2003. 15. Felice Gaer to Francis Sutton, unpublished memorandum, September 24, 1979. Bruce Bushey was sent a copy of the memo. It is in the Bundy file, and the Document Number is 79-307. 16. See Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration, 238, 563n32–35. 17. Ibid, 341–42. 18. Felice Gaer to Francis Sutton, unpublished memorandum, September 24, 1979. This memo is located in the Bundy File and is Document Number 79-307. 19. Alfred Friendly, Jr. to Arthur J. Goldberg, April 25, 1978. The letter was prepared on U.S. Helsinki Commission stationery. 20. Fund for Free Expression, “Report for a Planning Grant to Establish a U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee to be administered by the Fund for Free Expression, Inc.,” May 23, 1978. The two major functions of U.S. Helsinki Watch, as envisaged in the April 5, 1977, meeting and later discussion, were spelled out in this

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21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35.

36. 37.

38.

39.

281

formal “request” by the Fund for Free Expression to the Ford Foundation for a planning grant. The document is eight pages long. Francis Sutton to Bruce Bushey, unpublished memorandum, May 10, 1978. This memo was found in the Bundy file. Bruce Bushey to Francis Sutton, unpublished memorandum, May 5, 1978. This memo was found in the Bundy file. Francis Sutton to Bruce Bushey, unpublished memorandum. This memo was found in the Bundy file. “Request for a Planning Grant to Establish a U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee” to be administered by Fund for Free Expression was found in the Bundy file. The Jeri Laber letter was signed by her as “Executive Director” of Bernstein’s International Freedom to Public Committee. The letter was found in the Bundy File, No. 78-517. The formal letter of the Ford Foundation was dated July 6, 1978. The report, found in the Bundy file, is undated. Obviously, it was written after January 31, 1979. Bruce Bushey to Felice Gaer, unpublished memorandum, July 28, 1978. The interoffice memo was found in the Bundy file, Document Number 785-517. Ibid., 5. Jeri Laber, The Courage of Strangers: Coming of Age with the Human Rights Movement (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2002), 100. Fund for Free Expression, “Report,” 7. Felice Gaer to McGeorge Bundy, unpublished memorandum, December 13, 1978. This memo was in the Bundy file numbered 785-517. In the memo, Gaer reported that Fishlow “seemed much relieved” by her remarks. Fund for Free Expression, “Report,” 4. A copy of the Fishlow letter is available in the Bundy file. Bruce Bushey to Francis Sutton, unpublished memorandum, July 24, 1980. The interoffice memorandum was identified as a “Final Evaluation” of the grant to the Fund for Free Expression. It was found in the Bundy File, Document Number 78-517. The reference to Fishlow’s specialty in dealing with “minority problems” refers to his involvement with Latinos in his North California ACLU position. Bruce Bushey and Felice Gaer to McGeorge Bundy, unpublished memorandum, “Status of U.S. Helsinki Watch Group Planning.” Copies were designated, too, for David Bell and Francis Sutton. The document was in the Bundy File, Document Number 785-517. Jeri Laber, unpublished memorandum, November 6, 1978. The memo was not sent to anyone; it was designed for her files. A copy was found in the Bundy File. Jeri Laber memo, dated October 10, 1978, designed for her files. Also referred to in the memo was a meeting with the author of this study, whose advice to her was similar to that provided by Sidney Liskofsky. The memo was found in the Bundy File. Bruce Bushey and Felice Gaer to McGeorge Bundy, unpublished memorandum, “U.S. Citizens’ Helsinki Monitoring Committee,” November 3, 1978. A copy was sent to Francis Sutton. The memo was found in the Bundy File. Felice Gaer to McGeorge Bundy, unpublished memorandum, “Additional Members: Helsinki Watch,” November 23, 1978. The memo contained an attached list and was found in the Bundy File.

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40. Annual Program Review (New York: Ford Foundation, 1979), 33–34. 41. Ibid., 55–56. 42. Francis Sutton to Bruce Bushey and Felice Gaer, unpublished memorandum, April 10, 1980. 43. Le Monde, November 12, 1980. A summary of the article is in William Korey, The Promises We Keep, chap. 7, 123–24. 44. Freedom House hosted a sizable number of Soviet dissenters and had arranged to bring Andrei Amalrik, a prominent Soviet dissident and novelist, to Madrid, but he was killed in an automobile accident while on his way. See Freedom at Issue (January–February, 1981), 39. 45. For details on the repression, see Peter Reddaway, Soviet Policies on Dissent and Emigration: The Radical Change of Course Since 1979 (mimeograph, Washington, D.C., August 28, 1984). Also see Korey, The Promises We Keep, 115–18. 46. Jeri Laber, interview by the author, April 14, 1994. 47. The information is drawn from a diary by Laber provided to the author. 48. Jeri Laber, “Moscow vs. Rights,” Op-Ed, New York Times, July 31, 1980. 49. Jeri Laber, “The Moscow Book Fair: But Where Are the Writers?” Op-Ed, Washington Post, May 6, 1981. 50. Jeri Laber, “The Dreams That Died,” Village Voice, December 23–29, 1981. 51. Jeri Laber, interview by the author, April 14, 1994. 52. Lotte Leicht, interview by the author, April 14, 1994. 53. Program of Events, CSCE Seminar of Experts on Democratic Institutions (Oslo: CSCE, November 4–5, 1991), 4. 54. Laber, The Courage of Strangers Coming of Age with the Human Rights Movement (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2002), 350. 55. Ibid., 351. 56. Henry A. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 759. 57. Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration, 348.

Chapter 6 1. Margo Picken, unpublished memorandum, February 1, 1995. This memo is to be found in the Grant File, Document Number 0915-0486, p. 1. 2. Ibid. 3. Francis Sutton to William Korey, June 4, 2002. 4. Ford Foundation Archives Grant File Document Number 09150486, February 1, 1991, 1–3. 5. Francis Sutton to William Korey, June 4, 2002. 6. The Michnik letter was attached to the formal Picken request for a Ford Foundation grant. Michnik was identified as an “alumnus” of FEIE by Felice Gaer, a Ford Foundation staffer, in an academic paper at a Columbia University conference in January 1981. 7. Francis Sutton to William Korey, June 4, 2002. 8. Francis Sutton to Margo Picken, December 20, 1994. This letter can be found as an attachment to Picken’s close-out interoffice memorandum of February 1, 1995. The File Number is 91-486. 9. Ibid., 2. That page reveals that David Heaps also wrote a letter of evaluation that was sent to the director of the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna. However,

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10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42.

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no copy of that letter was found in the foundation files, even if Picken referred to it. Picken was in charge of human rights in the Ford Foundation at the time. Margo Picken to Susan Berresford, “Recommendation,” February 1, 1991, p. 3. This document was a recommendation for a grant for the Beylin study. It is Grant File Number 0915-048. Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe (New York: The Free Press, 1989), 1–2. Ibid. Ibid., 214. Ibid.Coleman, 264. Volker R. Berghahn, American Intelligentsia and the Cold War in Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 269. Ibid., 275. Marek Beylin, Fondation Pour Une Entr’aide Intellectuelle Europenne [Foundation for European Intellectual Cooperation] (Mimeograph, Ford Foundation Archives, 1995), 19. Document number PA 09150486. Ibid. Ibid., 20. Ibid., 21. This quote is from a memo by Heaps. Ibid., 24. Ibid., 37–38. Ibid., 39. Ibid., 42. Ibid., 43. Ibid., 44. Ibid. The specific time was not spelled out. Ibid. Ibid., 46. Margo Picken to Susan Berresford, unpublished memorandum, “Recommendations for Delegated Authority Grant,” February 1, 1991, p. 3. Details of this funding and other information is to be found in this memo. Marek Beylin, Fondation Pour Une Entr’aide Intellectuelle Europennee. Ibid., 11. Ibid. Ibid. The three men were prominent European intellectuals. Kolakowski was a Polish philosopher and Aron was an outstanding French scholar and essayist. Ibid., 13. Ibid., 54. Ibid., 59. Ibid., 64. Felice Gaer, “Western Private Organizations and East European Dissent” (essay, Columbia University Conference, New York, NY, January 29–30, 1981), 7. The essay was prepared for a Columbia University Conference on dissent in Eastern Europe. Gaer is identified as being with the Ford Foundation. Ibid., 71. Ibid. Ibid., 75.

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43. Ibid., 78. Among such knowledgeable institutions was the U.S.-created National Endowment for Democracy. 44. Beylin, Fondation, 91–92. 45. Ibid., 92. Indeed, he assured the reader that his description was “not exaggerated.” 46. Ibid., 93. 47. Ibid., 94. 48. Ibid., 96. 49. Ibid., 97. 50. Ibid., 98. 51. Ibid., 99. 52. Ibid., 100. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid., 101. 55. Ibid., 101. 56. Ibid., 102. 57. Ibid., 103–4.

Chapter 7 1. See Ford Foundation, “Program Actions Index,” Archives File Number PA 53202, October 1986, section 4, 977. The Index is to be found in the archives of the foundation. 2. Ford Foundation, Annual Report for 1954 (New York: Ford Foundation, 1954), 29. 3. Melvin J. Fox to John B. Howard, Report on a Visit to South Africa, unpublished memorandum, January 4, 1960, p. 19. Examples are provided in this report by a foundation staffer, Melvin J. Fox, following a two-and-one-half week visit to South Africa in December 1959. The report, a memo to John B. Howard, was sent on January 4, 1960 and contained thirty-nine pages. 4. Paul J. Kaiser, “Economic Sanctions and South Africa” (master’s thesis, New York University, April 1987), 22. The author, in preparation for the study, had access to the foundation’s archives. A copy of the paper was found in the archives (Document Number 011137). 5. Ibid. 6. Fox, Report on a Visit to South Africa, 20. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., 22. 9. Ibid., 23–24. 10. Ibid., 25. 11. Ibid., 26. 12. Ibid., 27. 13. Ibid., 17. 14. Ibid., 27–39. 15. David Smock, Report on My Trip to Southern Africa (mimeograph, Ford Foundation Archives, March 10, 1969). The document is in the Ford Foundation Archives and carries the Document Number 008908. It is addressed to Wayne Fredericks.

N ot e s 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

285

Ibid., 10–16. Ibid, 2. Ibid., 4. Details here are from Ford Foundation Archives Grant File PA 73-400, which was identified as Request No. ID-1529 and is dated October 25, 1972, pp. 3–4. Kai Bird, The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 391–94. Ibid, 392. Ibid., 393 Ford Foundation Archives, Grant File PA 73-400, 4. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 1. The grant was designed to cover the cost of one staff lawyer working full time for the committee. Wayne Fredericks, Southern Africa (mimeograph, Ford Foundation Archives, February 1972). This document contains twenty-four pages and two appendices totaling ten pages. Ibid., 4–5. Ibid., 10. Neville Curtis, “South Africa: The Politics of Fragmentation,” Foreign Affairs 50, no. 20 (January 1972): 283–96. Fredericks, Southern Africa, 16. Fredericks, Southern Africa, 11. Fredericks, “Southern Africa Actions, 1968–71,” in Southern Africa, 2. Ibid., 17. Fredericks, “The Ford Foundation and Southern Africa,” in Southern Africa, 11–24. This section, which appears as a seemingly separate part of the Fredericks report, makes repeated references to the decisions of the Ford Foundation’s Middle East and Africa Division. This section includes a subsection entitled, “Assessment of Risk Relating to a Southern Africa Program” (18–20). Fredericks, “Appendix,” in Southern Africa. The separate appendix numbers six pages. Significantly, the excerpted sections are identified as having been “presented to Foundation Officers and Trustees.” Ibid., 6. Ibid. Memorandum from Sheila Avrin McLean to Robert Edwards, unpublished, “The Republic of South Africa,” December 27, 1976. The report is identified in the Ford Foundation Archives as Document Number 009377, p. 1. Ibid., 1. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 8. Ibid., 9–10. Ibid., 11. Ibid., 13. Ibid., 18.

Chapter 8 1. David Heaps to David Bell and Robert Edwards, unpublished memorandum, “South and Southern Africa Refugee Situation—Available and Potential Sources

286

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31.

N ot e s of Assistance,” March 1, 1977. Copies were also sent to McLean and Smock. The document number in the Ford Foundation Archives is 009378. It contains thirty-four pages. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 33. Ibid. Ibid., 25. Ibid., 34. Robert Edwards to David Bell, unpublished memorandum, “Southern Africa: Program Directions,” June 6, 1977. The memo was identified as a “revised” draft but the initial draft was not found. In the Ford Foundation Archives, the Document Number is 007409. It runs twenty-nine pages. Ibid., 10. Ibid., 15. Edwards left the impression that the series was already completed and published. See South Africa: Time Running Out: The Report of the Study Commission on U.S. Policy toward Southern Africa, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), xi-xii. The foreword was written by Franklin A. Thomas, and ran three pages. It contains some details of the origins of the Commission. Robert Edwards, unpublished memorandum, 17–18. Ibid., 14. Ibid., 22. Ibid., 28. Sheila Avrin McLean to David Bell and William Carmichael, unpublished memorandum, January 10, 1978, pp. 4–7. Copies were sent to Bell and Carmichael although this memo was prepared for “The Files.” The Document Number in the Archives is 011769. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 9–19. Ibid., 27. Ibid., 28. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 34. Ibid., 36. Ibid., 41–42. David Bell to McGeorge Bundy, July 13, 1973. This memorandum is to be found in the Ford Foundation Archives under Grant File Document Number PA 73-40A. The request number was ID 1719. Ibid., 3. The specified grant runs nine pages. Ibid. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 9. Emphasis added. David Bell to McGeorge Bundy, unpublished memorandum, February 10, 1975. No Grant Number appeared on the front page of the memo, but the Request Number was given as ID-2200. The responsible program officer was identified as William Herman. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 10.

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32. David Bell to McGeorge Bundy, unpublished memorandum, January 25, 1977. The Document Number of the memo in the Foundation Archives was 73-40C and the Request Number was ID 2667. The document runs thirteen pages.Grants, at times, covered earlier expenditures of grantees. 33. Related to the last was the Parliamentary Internal Security Commission Act of 1976. 34. Ibid., 11. 35. Ibid., 12. 36. David Bell to McGeorge Bundy, unpublished memorandum, April 9, 1979, pp. 1–2. William Carmichael and Sheila McLean were identified now as the responsible program officers. The Foundation Archives Document Number was PA 73-40D and the Request Number was ID-3124. 37. Ibid., 4. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., 5. 40. Ibid., 7.

Chapter 9 1. David Bell to Franklin Thomas, unpublished memorandum, August 29, 1980. Ford Foundation Archives, Grant File Doc. No. 15. See PA 73-40E in the grant file of the archives. The Request Number is ID-339. The responsible program officer is identified as Richard A. Horovitz. 2. Ibid., 3n1. The grant was for eighty-five thousand dollars for two years beginning on August 15, 1980. October 1, 1980, was the date it was officially begun, but the funds were released earlier. See Ford Foundation Archives Doc. No. 790-024C. The Request No. was ID-3360. 3. Ibid. The grant was spelled out in Ford Foundation Archives File Doc. No. PA790-024C. 4. Ford Foundation Archives File Doc. No. 795-0055, p. 3. 5. Ibid., 7. 6. For details, see John Kifner, “From Brooklyn Restoration to Ford Foundation,” New York Times, January 30, 1979. Thomas’s appointment was announced on January 29, one day earlier than the date this article was published. 7. Alexander Heard to the Ford Foundation staff, unpublished memorandum, January 29, 1979, Ford Foundation Archives. 8. Roger Wilkins, “At Ford Fund: Euphoria over a New Chief,” New York Times, January 30, 1977. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. Significantly, the New York Times assigned Roger Wilkins, the nephew of NAACP Executive Director Roy Wilkins, to write the story of the appointment. 11. Kifner, “From Brooklyn Restoration.” 12. Franklin Thomas, interview by the author, May 11, 2003, p. 1. 13. Ibid., 5. 14. Study Commission on U.S. Policy toward Southern Africa, South Africa: Time Running Out (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).

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15. Pauline Baker, U.S. Study Commission on Southern Africa: An Evaluation for the Rockefeller Foundation (mimeograph, Ford Foundation Archives, February 1985), 7. 16. Baker, U.S. Study Commission, 5. 17. Ibid. 18. Franklin Thomas, Foreword, to South Africa: Time Running Out, xi. 19. Study Commission on U.S. Policy toward Southern Africa, Time Running Out, vii–x.The names of the commissioners and staff as well as contributors preceded the “Foreword.” 20. Baker, U.S. Study Commission, 8. 21. Ibid., 6. 22. Ibid., 5. 23. Franklin Thomas, June 4, 1978. 24. Sam Bryan, ed., “Focus on South Africa: Times Running Out,” Intercom, no. 105 (November 1983): 2. 25. Baker, U.S. Study Commission, 6. 26. Ibid., 9. 27. Ibid., 10. 28. Ibid., 13. 29. See South Africa: Time Running Out; The Study Commission Report on U.S. Policy Toward Southern Africa (Berkeley: University of California, 1985), 340–456. The pages embrace chapters 17–19. Also, see Baker, U.S. Study Commission, 14–15. 30. Franklin Thomas, interview by the author with the assistance of Catherine Fitzpatrick, 9. 31. Ibid. 32. Baker, U.S. Study Commission, 9–10. 33. Ibid., 13. 34. Ibid., 15–16. The letter was dated June 3, 1981, and was signed by Jeffrey B. Gayner. 35. Baker, U.S. Study Commission, 16. 36. Ibid. 37. Study Commission on U.S. Policy toward Southern Africa, Time Running Out, 441–42. 38. Baker, U.S. Study Commission, 29–30. 39. Ibid., 3, 7. 40. Gay McDougall, interview by the author, January 9, 2004, p. 7. 41. Ibid., 7. 42. Ibid., 8. 43. Ibid., 4, 6, 8. 44. Baker, U.S. Study Commission, 3. 45. Ibid., 27. 46. Ibid., 28. 47. Craig Richardson, How Institutions Voted in Shareholder Resolutions in the 1983 Proxy Season (Washington, DC, September 1983), 17. 48. Baker, U.S. Study Commission, 26–27. 49. Ibid., 28. 50. Ibid., 41.

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51. These works comprise the South Africa UPDATE Series. Pauline Baker, The United States and South Africa: The Reagan Years (New York: Ford Foundation, 1989). The other volumes, each a valuable addition, were Tom Lodge and Bill Masson, All Here and Now: Black Politics in South Africa in the 1980s (New York: Ford Foundation, 1991); John Dugard, ed., The Last Years of Apartheid: Civil Liberties in South Africa (New York: Ford Foundation, 1992); Robert S. Jastar, et al., Changing Fortunes: War, Diplomacy, and Economics in Southern Africa (New York: Ford Foundation, 1992); and Robert Schire, Adapt or Die: The End of White Politics in South Africa (New York: Ford Foundation, 1992). One of four authors in the fourth volume was Moeletsi Mbeki, who is the brother of the current president of the South Africa Republic, Thabo Mbeki, a point emphasized by Franklin Thomas. 52. Franklin Thomas, interview by the author, 3. 53. Ibid., 5. 54. Ibid. 55. Gay McDougall, interview by the author, 6. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid., 8. 58. Ibid., 3. 59. Ibid., 3. 60. Ibid., 5. 61. Ibid., 10. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., 5. 64. Ibid., 12. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid., 6. 67. Ibid., 11. 68. Ibid., 13. 69. David Bell to Franklin Thomas, unpublished memorandum, July 1, 1982. The Document Number in the Ford Foundation Archives was DAP 87-840. The grant was for seventy-five thousand dollars, covering two years beginning on October 1, 1982. The Request Number was DCP-77. The designated responsible program officer was Richard Horovitz. 70. Ibid., 9 71. William Carmichael and Susan Berresford to Franklin Thomas, unpublished memorandum, August 30, 1984, p. 5. These developments and features are presented in the Ford Foundation Archives Grant File with the Document Number 82-840, which took the form of this memorandum. The grant provided the Southern Africa Project with a total amount of $210,390 for a two-year period, beginning October 1, 1984. The responsible program officers were identified as David Brown Wright and Stephen Marks. The Request Number was DCP-441. 72. Ibid., 7. 73. Ibid., 8–9. 74. Ibid., 4n1–2. 75. Ibid., 8. 76. Ibid., 12.

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77. Details are provided in the Southern Africa Project Annual Report, South Africa 1986: A Permanent State of Emergency (Washington, DC, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, 1986). 78. Ibid., 12–14. 79. Ibid., 19–27. 80. Ibid., 28–30. 81. Ibid., 30. 82. Les De Villiers, In Sight of Surrender: The U.S. Sanctions Campaign Against South Africa, 1946-1993 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), 125. De Villiers had been a high South African government official. 83. Ibid. 84. Time Magazine, June 14, 1993. 85. Ibid. 86. For details see, Tim Wells, “Witnessing Freedom,” The Washington Lawyer (September–October 1994), 22–32, 57–58. 87. Ibid.

Chapter 10 1. Susan M. Hartmann, The Other Feminist Activists in the Liberal Establishment (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 132. 2. Ford Foundation, Created Equal: The Foundation’s First Steps (New York: Ford Foundation, Office of Reports, 1986), 14. The study served as a report to the foundation’s board of trustees. 3. Franklin Thomas, Preface to Created Equal. 4. Hartmann, The Other Feminist Activists in the Liberal Establishment, 169. 5. Elinor G. Barber to David Bell, unpublished memorandum, September 30, 1974. Ford Foundation Archives, Document Number 007004. 6. Hartmann, The Other Feminist Activists, 137. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., 135. 9. Ibid., 138–39. 10. Ibid., 142. 11. Ibid., 151–52. 12. Ibid., 132. 13. Ibid., 133. 14. Ibid., 170. 15. Ibid., 171. 16. Ford Foundation, Created Equal: A Report on Ford Foundation Women’s Programs (New York: Ford Foundation, 1986), 7. 17. International Programs Related to the Status, Role and Opportunities of Women, 25. See Ford Foundation Archive Document 002066, “Information Paper,” for “Internal Use Only.” 18. Ibid., 19–20. 19. Ibid., 25. 20. Adrienne Germaine to David Bell, interoffice memorandum, “World Conference of the International Women’s Year, held in Mexico City, June 19–July 2, 1975,” August 6, 1975. The Archives Document is also numbered

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21 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

291

002066. However, its interoffice character distinguishes it from the foundation “Internal” Memorandum of November, 1975. Ibid. Ibid., 3. Ibid., 8. See William Korey, Russian Anti-Semitism, Pamyat and the Demonology of Zionism (Berne: Harwood Academic Press, 1995), 5. “Information Paper,” Foundation Archive Document 002066, 12. Ibid., 1. Ibid., 8. Ibid., 12. Ibid., 17. Ibid., 31. Ford Foundation, Created Equal, 7. Ibid., 27. Hartmann, The Other Feminist Activists, 172. Ibid. Ibid., 173. Created Equal, 27. Hartmann, The Other Feminist Activists, 173. Ford Foundation, Created Equal, 29. Ibid., 31. Ibid., 34. Florence Howe, ed., The Politics of Women’s Studies: Testimony from 30 Founding Mothers (New York: Feminist Press, 2000), 357. Ibid., 358. Ibid. Beverley Guy-Sheftall, Women’s Studies, A Perspective, with Susan Heath (New York: Ford Foundation, 1995), 20–21. Ibid., 20. Ibid., 21. It cited a report in the Columbia University Teachers College Record (93:7) written by Mariam Chamberlain and Alison Bernstein, both of whom had long experience with the foundation. Guy-Sheftall, Women’s Studies, 21. Ibid., 42n84. Ibid. The source was a scholarly study by Chamberlain and Bernstein. Ibid. Ibid., 21. Ibid., 6. For a detailed report, see Devaki Jain and Pam Rajput, eds., Narratives from the Women’s Studies Family: Recreating Knowledge (New Delhi: Sage, 2003). Ibid., 101. Ibid., 109. Ibid., 230. Ibid., 245. This particular section of the volume was written by Varma. Ibid., 348. Ibid., 325. Ibid., 327. The author of this section, V. S. Elizabeth, was personally very much involved with the centre.

292 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

N ot e s Ibid., 41. Ibid., 43. Ibid., 46. Ibid., 49. Ibid., 55. Ibid., 60. Ibid., 61.

Chapter 11 1. Charlotte Bunch, “Growth of Women’s Movements in the U.S. and Third World,” in The Changing Context for Movements, to Improve Women’s Lives: Proceedings of the Ford Foundation’s Women’s Program Forum (NewYork: Ford Foundation, September 29, 1986), 18. 2. Ibid., 123. 3. Judith Evans, George Lamb, Nirmula Murthy, and Frederic Shorter, Women and Children in Poverty: Reproduction Health and Child Survival (New York: Ford Foundation, 1987). 4. Ibid., 7, 12, 18. 5. Ibid., 18. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., 36. 8. Ibid., 5. 9. Ibid., 39. 10. Ibid., 45. 11. Ibid., 46. 12. International Conference on Human Rights (Tehran, 1968). This work was a summary of the proceedings of a UN-sponsored human rights conference. 13. Reproductive Health: A Strategy for the 1990s (New York: Ford Foundation, 1991). 14. See Franklin Thomas, Preface to Reproductive Health: A Strategy for the 1990s (New York: Ford Foundation, 1991), v–vi. 15. Ibid., 11–13. 16. Ibid., 4. Incidentally, as the study notes, “the Ford Foundation played a leading role in promoting research and attracting other donors to the field [of contraception].” 17. Ibid., 6. 18. Ibid., 9. 19. Ibid., 16. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., 17. 22. Ibid., 29. 23. Ibid., 31. 24. Ibid., 32. 25. For an overview from the Ford Foundation’s perspective, see the following Ford Foundation unpublished interoffice memorandum: September 12, 1996, “Women’s Program Forum Report on Foundation Activities in Connection

N ot e s

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50.

293

with the United Nations’ Fourth Conference on Women and NGO Forum on Women.” Ford Foundation Archive Document 93-10. Ibid., 2. See William Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Curious Grapevine (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 278–302, 387–92. Bunch, “Growth of Women’s Movements.” Alan Divack, phone conversation with the author, September 2, 2005. Divack was then the foundation’s chief archivist. Charlotte Bunch, “The Intolerable Status Quo: Violence Against Women and Girls,” in The Progress of Nations (New York: UNICEF, July 1997), 41–49. Felice D. Gaer, “And Never the Twain Shall Meet? The Struggle to Establish Women’s Rights and International Human Rights at the United Nations” (draft, October 4, 1997), 1. The draft was intended for publication later in a book. Gaer made it available to the author. Ibid., 66–67. Ibid., 75. Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights, NGO Newsletter, no. 4 (July 1993). Bunch, “The Intolerable Status Quo,” 45. Gaer, “And Never the Twain,” 84–85. Ibid., 84 Bunch, “The Intolerable Status Quo,” 45. Ibid. Felice Gaer, letter written to the author, August 1, 1997. Ibid. Comments on the EC Draft Document for the High level Preparatory Meeting for the Fourth World Conference on Women (Washington, DC: Blaustein Institute and the International League for Human Rights, September 8, 1994). The comments were an outgrowth of the conference in Washington, DC, on September 8, 1994, that was sponsored by the Blaustein Institute and the International League for Human Rights. Browning and Anne Goldstein were key figures in preparing the comments. The document was published by the sponsoring organizations. See Gaer, “And Never the Twain,” 93, 112. Ibid., 112. Felice Gaer to Warren Christopher, January 9, 1995. A copy of the fax was made available to the author by Felice Gaer. Prior to writing the letter and on the same issue, Gaer had prepared a questionnaire to be used by women’s NGOs in challenging government delegates at the preparatory regional meeting in Vienna in October. It was sharp and pointed. A copy was made available to the author. It was summarized in William Korey, NGOs and the Universal Relevance of Human Rights. Felice Gaer and Rhonda Copelon to Ayala Lasso, July 16, 1995. A copy of the fax was given to the author. Felice Gaer and Rhonda Copelon to Ayala Lasso, August 18, 1995. The letter was made available to the author by Gaer. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Remarks for the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, China, September 5, 1995, 4–5. Gaer, “And Never the Twain,” 61.

294

N ot e s

51. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Living History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 306. 52. Felice Gaer to the author, August 1, 1997. 53. Rebecca Nichols, Women’s Program Forum Report, 8. See Ford Foundation Archive Document 1995, pp. 93–10. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid., 6. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid., 1. 59. Lisa Stearns, “FAP Close-Out Memo,” March 27, 1996, p. 2. The speculative analysis is to be found in this paper, which was prepared by the Ford Foundation’s China Office. The author, Lisa Stearns, was the consultant to the FAP (Foundation Approved Project) for the World Conference on Women. The document can be found in the Ford Foundation Archives with the Document Number 0939-0007. 60. Foundation Archives Document 93-10, p. 4. 61. FAP Close-Out Memo. Foundation Archive Document 0939-0007, 34. 62. United Nations, Fourth World Conference on Women, A/Conf.177/20, October 17, 1995, Annex I, Beijing Declaration, 5–8. This document is located in the Ford Foundation Archives, Document Number 015606. 63. Susan Berresford, interview by the author, October 19, 2004, p. 7. It was conducted by the author in the office of the foundation’s president. 64. Ibid., 9. 65. Ibid., 5. 66. Lisa Stearns, “FAP Close-Out Memo,” 51. 67. Ibid., 1. 68. Ibid., 2. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid., 8–9. 71. Ibid., 10. 72. Ibid., 13. 73. Ibid., 19. 74. Ibid., 27–28. 75. Ibid., 27–32.

Chapter 12 1. Ford Foundation Annual Report, New York, 2004, p. 152. 2. “Top Funders,” Foundation Center, http://foundationcenter.org/funders/ topfunders/topassets.html (accessed May 9, 2006). 3. Foundation Center, International Grantmaking III (2004), 63. 4. Information on the grant was provided by Jim Moske of the Ford Foundation’s research unit. 5. David Matas, “Civil Society Smashes Up” (mimeograph, Durban, South Africa, September 2001), http://www.caretowear/smashesup.html, 23 6. UN Press Release, SG/SM/6504, March 25, 1998, p. 4. 7. Ibid.

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8. Phoebe Eng, unpublished memorandum, “Closing Memorandum: UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Religious Intolerance (the WCAR),” October 16, 2001. The memo in the file is identified with Document Number 015571. Designed for the Ford Foundation files, it described itself as “a general summary” of the “Foundation preparations.” 9. Ibid. 10. Memorandum of Alan Jenkins to Anthony Romero, in Ford Foundation Grant Report, June 18, 2001. The Request Number for the grant was 0007133. While the approval date for the grant was June 18, 2001, funding had clearly begun the previous October. 11. Eng, unpublished memorandum, 1. 12. David Matas, “Civil Society Smashes Up,” 17. 13. Ibid. 14. Harris Schoenberg, “Demonization in Durban: The World Conference Against Racism,” in American Jewish Yearbook 2002 (New York: American Jewish Committee, 2002), 97. For specific details, see the Internet reports put out by ICARE, a Dutch NGO, headed by Ronald Eissens. ICARE, http//www.icare.to/ wear/ (accessed October 8, 2001) 2–3. 15. Catherine Fitzpatrick, “Durban/Dur-dom,” unpublished memorandum, 21. This document was later sent out on the Internet. The author used the draft copy before it was sent out. Fitzpatrick shared it with the author. A noted Russian translator and scholar on Soviet Affairs, Fitzpatrick is currently an advocacy director for Physicians for Human Rights. 16. Gay McDougall, “World Conference against Racism, Through a Wider Lens, Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 26 (Summer–Fall 2002). 17. Schoenberg, “Demonization in Durban,” 86n2, 103. 18. Ibid., 15. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid., 16. 21. Tom Lantos, “The Durban Debacle: An Insider’s View of the UN World Conference Against Racism,” The Fletcher Forum on World Affairs 26 (Winter–Spring 2002), 46. 22. See Edwin Black, “Anti-Israel Activist at Durban Funded by Ford Foundation,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily Bulletin (October 17, 2003). 23. Susan Berresford, interview by the author, October 19, 2004, 16. 24. Ibid. 25. JTA Daily Bulletin, October 17, 2003. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid.Black, JTA, October 16, 2003. 28. Edwin Black, article in Forward, October 17, 2003. 29. Nacha Cattan, “Probe Demanded by Ford Foundation Funding,” Forward, October 24, 2003. 30. Ibid. 31. Joe Bekofsky, JTA Daily Bulletin, November 4, 2003. 32. Edwin Black, “Ford Takes Steps to Reverse Funding for Anti-Israel Groups,” JTA Daily Bulletin, December 18, 2003. 33. “Doing the Right Thing,” Jewish Week, November 21, 2003. This organ is the largest community organ in the United States. 34. Larry Cox, interview by the author, May 2, 2005, 17–20.

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35. See Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the EU 2002–2003 (Brussels: European Union, 2004). This excellent, massive 343–page document was published by the European Union in 2004. Also, see JBI, After the Promise: Keeping OSCE Commitments to Combat Anti-Semitism (New York: Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, April 2004). This document contains fifty-three pages. 36. ADL Press Release, “Harnessing Technology to Combat Bias and Build Respect,” available at http://www.aol.org/presroele/education.01/490300.htm (accessed April 24, 2001). 37. The Ford Foundation Archives Document File Number is 10100657. The Request Number is given as 0005759. Formally, the “grantee” is identified as the Tides Center of San Francisco, California, which was used by the Ford Foundation. Larry Cox of the foundation was identified as the “responsible program officer.” Cox, in the spring of 2006, became head of Amnesty International, USA. 38. See Tamar Lewin, “For Nations Traumatized by the Past, New Remedies,” New York Times, July 26, 2001; and Lynda Richardson, “Helping Countries and People to Heal,” New York Times, November 23, 2001. 39. Priscilla B. Hayner, The Foundation: Transitional Justice Meeting, April 6, 2000 (mimeograph, discussion paper). See Ford Foundation Archives Document File Number 014016. 40. Priscilla B. Hayner, Advancing the Field of Transitional Justice: Assessments and Recommendations Report to the Ford Foundation (October 11, 1999), 13. The paper was for “Internal Distribution Only.” 41. Richardson, “Helping Countries and People.” 42. Ibid. 43. Tina Rosenberg, “The Year in Ideas,” New York Times Magazine, December 9, 2001. 44. See Tamar Lewin, “For Nations Traumatized,” New York Times, July 29, 2001. 45. Alan Jenkins to Susan Berresford, grant recommendation, October 29, 2003. See Ford Foundation Archives Document Number 1020-0974-1. 46. Ibid. 47. Hayner, The Foundation: Transitional Justice Meeting, April 6, 2000. 48. Alex Wilde, interview by the author, January 12, 2005. 49. Alex Boraine, interview by the author, October 22, 2004. 50. Hayner, The Foundation: Transitional Justice Meeting, 6–8. 51. Samuel Totten, “Non-Governmental Organizations Working on the Issue of Genocide,” in The Widening Circle of Genocide, by Israel Charney, vol. 3, chap. 14, Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review (New Brunswick: Transaction Press, 1994), 5. 52. Barbara Harff and Ted Robert Gurr, “Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Patricides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945,” International Studies Quarterly, 1988, no. 32:359–71. 53. See Ford Foundation Archives Grant File Number PA 0960-0574, April 5, 1996, p. 5. 54. William Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Curious Grapevine (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 527–31. 55. The author visited the World Federalist headquarters when he interviewed William Pace.

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56. Ibid., 530. 57. Shepard Forman to Susan Berresford, April 4, 1996, 1. See Ford Foundation Archives Grant File Number PA 0960-0574. The grant was to run for one year. The foundation’s program officer for the grant was Larry Cox. 58. Ibid., 6. 59. Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration, 530. 60. Benjamin Ferencz, interview by the author, December 11, 1997. 61. Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration, 532. 62. Priscilla Hayner, interview by the author, March 29, 2002. 63. Anthony Romero, interview by the author and Catherine Fitzpatrick, May 12, 2003. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. Susan Berresford, interview by the author, October 19, 2004. 67. Lauren Foster, “Can the Truth Heal a Nation’s Wounds?” Financial Times (London), June 16–17, 2001. 68. Alan Jenkins to Susan Berresford, October 29, 2003, memorandum, Ford Foundation Archives Grant File Number 1020-0074-2 (Request Number is 0019566). The “responsible program officer” in the grant is identified as Larry Cox. The grant was to be three million dollars, from September 15, 2004, for twelve months. 69. Ibid., 2. 70. Ibid., 3.

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Articles Black, Edwin. “Anti-Israel Activist at Durban Funded Ford Foundation.” Jewish Telegraphic Agency. October 17, 2003. Cattan, Nacha. “Probe Demanded by Ford Foundation Funding.” Jewish Telegraphic Agency. October 24, 2003. Curtis, Neville. “South Africa: The Politics of Fragmentation.” Foreign Affairs 50, no. 20 (January 1972). “Doing the Right Thing.” Jewish Week, November 21, 2003. Foster, Lauren. “Can the Truth Heal a Nation’s Wounds?” Financial Times, June 16–17, 2001. Gaer, Felice. “And Never the Twain Shall Meet? The Struggle to Establish Women’s Rights and International Human Rights at the United Nations.” October 4, 1997. ———. “Western Private Organizations in Eastern European on Dissent.” Conference at Columbia University, New York, January 29–30, 1981. Mimeograph. Harff, Barbara and Ted Gurr. “Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Patricides, Identification and Measurement of Cases Since 1945.” International Studies Quarterly, no. 32 (1988): 359–71.

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Interoffice Memorandums (Ford Foundation Archives) Barber, Elinor G. Memorandum to David E. Bell. September 30, 1974. Doc. No. 00704. Bell, David E. Memorandum to Franklin Thomas. 1984. Doc. No. 087-840. Carmichael, William and Susan Berresford. Memorandum to Franklin Thomas. August 30, 1984. Grant File Doc. No. 82-840. Germaine, Adrienne. Memorandum to David E. Bell. August 6, 1975. Doc. No. 002066. Picken, Margo. Letter to Francis Sutton. February 1, 1995. Doc. File No. 91-986. ———. Recommendation to Susan Berresford for delegated authority grant. February 1991. Grant File No. 0915-048. Sutton, Francis X. Letter to Margo Picken. February 1, 1995. Grant File No. 0915048.

Interviews Susan Berresford William Carmichael Larry Cox

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Alan Divack Shepard Forman Jeri Laber Gay McDougall Aryeh Neier Anthony Romero Francis X. Sutton Franklin Thomas

Media Articles The New York Times The Washington Post The Village Voice Freedom at Issue Time Magazine New York Review of Books Le Monde

Unpublished Manuscripts (Ford Foundation Archives) Baker, Pauline. U.S. Study Commission on Southern Africa: An Evaluation for the Rockefeller Foundation. Mimeograph. February 1985. Beylin, Marek. Fondation Pour Une Entr’aide Intellectuelle Europennee [Foundation for European Intellectual Cooperation]. Mimeograph. 1995. Busby, Scott. Making Human Rights Real: A History of the Ford Foundation’s Human Rights Program in Latin America and the Caribbean. Mimeograph. December 1989. Greenleaf, William. The Ford Foundation: The Formative Years. Mimeograph. Fort Collins, CO, 1958. Heaps, David. Draft Report on Human Rights. Mimeograph. August 1975. Doc. No. 005643. Higgins, Rosalyn. Human Rights: Needs and Priorities. Mimeograph. 1973. Sutton, Francis X. Human Rights and Intellectual Freedom: Information Paper. November 1975. Doc. No. 002256.

Miscellaneous Clinton, Hilary Rodham. Remarks for the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. Beijing, September 5, 1995. “Comments on the EC Draft Document for the High Level Preparatory Meeting for the Fourth World Conference on Women.” Washington, DC: Blaustein Institute and the International League for Human Rights, September 8, 1994. Donnelly, Jack. Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy: Forty Years of Thinking. Chapel Hill, NC, Fall 1987. Mimeograph.

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Index

“1980 Budget,” 36, 37 “A Call for U.S. Leadership,” 70 abortion, 233 ADL’s “A World of Difference,” 258 African-American Institute, 166, 177 African Training and Research Centre for Women, 213 Afrikaans language issue, 169 All-Chinese Women’s Federation, 246 Allende, Salvador, 26, 30, 31, 54 Allport, Gordon, 142 Almeyda, Clodomiro, 31, 32 American Bar Association, 148, 171, 182, 239 America’s Watch, 77–85, 115, 116 Amnesty International, 2, 39, 41, 42, 44, 49, 50, 71, 74, 90, 94, 106, 157, 161, 163, 177, 200, 251, 265 Annan, Kofi, 250, 269 annual program review, 109 anti-Semitism: at Durban NGO Forum, 251; in Western Europe, 257, 258 apartheid, 23, 86, 139, 140, 142, 145, 147–56, 158, 162–65, 167, 169–73, 175, 176, 178, 182, 183, 185, 189–94, 197, 199, 200–203, 205, 206, 210, 215, 218, 250, 252, 254, 255, 268 Arab Lawyers’ Union, 251 archival documentation in Chile and Argentina, 262 Argentina, 2, 3, 26, 27, 29, 55, 57–61, 63–66, 74–76, 79, 85, 152, 173, 234, 262, 263 Argentina Forensic Anthropology Team, 263

Argentine anti-Semitism, 56 Argentine Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, 56 Arnold, Millard, 186 Asia and Africa Regional Offices, 230 Asian NGO Forum, 237 Astor, David, 123 Aylwin, Patricio, 86 Baker, Pauline, 191, 193–97 Baldwin, Neil, 5 Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, 229 banning process in South Africa, 168 Bantustans, 150, 151 Barber, Elinor, 212 Bedford-Stuyvesant, 187, 188, 189 Beijing Declaration, 244, 246 Beijing Limitations on NGOs, 240 Beijing NGO Forum, 242 Beijing Office Impact on Chinese Women, 246 Beijing World Conference on Women’s Rights, 234 Beirut University (Lebanon), 213 Belgrade Review Meeting (CSCE), 92, 93 Bell, David, 32, 35, 36, 39, 47, 52, 148, 149, 164, 169, 179, 185, 212, 214, 215 Bell, Peter, 26, 30–35 Bennett, Harry, 5, 6 Bernstein, Robert 77, 97 Berresford, Susan, 74, 79, 120, 211, 219, 238, 245; on Durban, 253–59, 261, 266–68

308

Index

Beylin, Marek, 120, 127 Biko, Steve, 169, 170, 186 “black consciousness” movement, 151, 170 Black, Edwin, 254 black industrial workers, 172 black lawyers in South Africa, 186, 200 Black Sash, 174, 202 Bonner, Elena, 99 Boraine, Alex, 262, 267–69 Botswana, 152, 155, 156, 161, 162, 165, 167, 168, 173 Brandt, Willy, 32 Brazil, 2, 27, 38, 63, 74, 76, 79, 213, 224, 225 Brookings Institution, 166 Browning, Lea, 239 Bruno Kreisky Prize, 128, 129 Buergenthal, Tom, 81 Bullock, Alan, 124 Bunch, Charlotte, 235, 236, 238 Bundy, McGeorge, 18, 31, 32, 35, 60, 79, 81, 96–101,104–9, 126, 146–48, 154, 179, 185, 188, 210, 211, 212, 218, 221 Bushey, Bruce, 73, 74, 93, 95, 100, 102, 103, 105–9 Cardinal Raul Silva Henriquez, 54 Carlson, Joel, 148, 199 Carmichael, William, 26, 30, 47, 55, 61, 64, 67, 74, 81, 169, 196 Carter, Jimmy, 92, 96, 161, 187, 188 Castro, Fidel, 257 Center for Legal and Social Services, 66 Center for Women’s Development Studies (India), 224 Center for Women’s Global Leadership, 237 Centre for Women and Law, The (India), 224 Chamberlain, Mariam K., 221 “Charter 77,” 92, 97, 111, 113, 115, 135 Chaskelson, Arthur, 171 Chekhov Publishing House, 16 child survival, 229, 230 Chile, 2, 22, 23, 25–39, 48, 52, 54, 55, 57, 59–65, 67, 69, 71, 72, 74, 76,

84, 85, 86, 89, 93, 134, 152, 173, 206, 262, 263 Chilean Human Rights Commission, 55, 64, 65, 84 Chilean intellectuals, 27, 28 Chilean Truth Commission, 263 China (Beijing) Office of Ford Foundation, 246, 247 “Circuit-Riding” Foundation staff members, 226 Civic Forum, 92 Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 241 CNN, 197, 198 Coalition for an International Criminal Court, 263, 265 Coleman, Peter, 121 Committee of Workers; Defense (KOR), 91 Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, 206 Compton, Karl T., 7 Conference of African Organizations, 151 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), 89 Conference Planning Group, 242 confronting America’s legal community, 175, 176 Congress for Cultural Freedom, 17, 49, 121–24, 127, 129 Congressional Record, 199 Continuation Committee of South Africa, 141 contraception, 229 contract system for labor, 150 Cooney, Thomas, 188 Coordinating Committee on Women, 212, 214, 218, 219 Copelon, Rhonda, 240 Copenhagen NGO Forum on Women, 222 Costa-Gavras, Constantine, 32, 33 Council of Foreign Relations, 72, 166 Cox, Eugene, 19 Cox, Larry, 257 Cracow Conference (1991), 137 Crahan, Margaret, 63–67, 85 Curtis, Neville, 151 Czechoslovak Helsinki Committee, 92

Index Daedalus, 166 Dearborn Independent, 5 deaths in detention in South Africa, 202 “Declaration of Mexico,” 214 Der Monat, 17, 122 Dhaka regional office, 213 Dienstbier, Jiri, 92 distributing lists of South African detainees, 199 Donnelly, Jack, 2 Du Toit, André, 169 Dugard, John, 157, 171 Durban and anti-Semitism, 249 Durban Jewish Club, 252 Durban World Conference Against Racism, 249 Durban’s NGO Forum, 250, 256; draft declaration of, 252 Dutch Reformed Churches, 141 Dye, Richard, 55–59 East European Fund, 12, 15, 16, 17 East Germany, 4, 89, 134, 135 Economic Commission of Europe, 239 Edwards, Robert, 37, 162, 163–68, 171, 179 Eldridge, Joseph, 72 Emmanuel, Pierre, 124, 127, 129 Encounter, 17, 122 Ennals, Martin, 163 Erasmus Prize, 129 “Estadio Nacional,” 34 Fagen, Richard, 30, 31 Falk, Pamela, 82 Farer, Tom, 81 Fascell, Dante, 96, 98 Federal Missionary Council, 141 Federal Theological Seminary, 174 FEIE and Iberian fascist dictators, 129 Feminist Press, 222 Ferencz, Benjamin, 266 Fishlow, David, 103 Fitzpatrick, Catherine, 115, 252 Ford, Edsal, 5 Ford Foundation: Annual Report, 20, 21, 47, 61, 69, 78, 203; board of trustees, 7, 8, 10, 20, 47, 50, 51, 54, 61, 107, 147, 153, 187, 188, 189, 190, 210, 211, 212, 219,

309

223, 231; Brussels Conference on Anti-Semitism, 258; “Closing Memorandum” on Durban (Phoebe Eng), 253, 254; Faculty Fellowship Program on Women, 221; human rights grants, 249; International Division, 214; International Division Conference on Women, 216; investment portfolio, 249; involvement with Durban, 250; Middle East and Africa Division, 148, 154, 163, 166, 167, 168, 175; origin, 4; regional office of Nairobi, 152; wealth, 7 Ford, Henry, 4–6 Ford, Henry, II, 5, 7–11, 19, 20, 147 Foreign Affairs, 2, 12, 151, 193 Foreign Policy Association, 197 Forman, Shepard, 77, 79, 117, 119 “Forum 85,” 226 Forward, 254–56 Foundation for European Intellectual Cooperation (FEIE), 119, 120, 124–37 Fox, Melvin, 141–44 Foxman, Abraham, 255 Fraser, Donald, 70 Fredericks, Wayne, 149, 154 Free University of Berlin, 15 Frei, Eduardo, 26 Friedberg, Maurice, 110 Friendly, Alfred, Jr., 98 Fulbright, William, 30 Fund for Free Expression, 77, 83, 98, 99, 101–4, 108 Gaer, Felice, 95, 98, 102, 104, 131, 239, 240, 241 Gaither, H. Rowan, 8, 9, 10, 13, 19, 20, 140 Gardner, James, 37 genocide and crimes against humanity, 264 Genocide Convention, 21, 266 Germaine, Adrienne, 214, 215 Gershman, Carl, 95 Global Tribunal on Violations of Women’s Human Rights, 238

310

Index

Goldberg, Ambassador Arthur, 109, 110, 113 Gonzalez, Alejandro, 54 Grameen Bank and small loans to women, 224 Grant, Stephanie, 106 grants for domestic workers, 221 grants on rural women to third world universities, 220 Greece, 29 Greenleaf, William, 16 Guatemala Truth Commission, 262, 263 Gulf & Western, 171 Guy-Sheftall, Beverley, 223 Hakim, Peter, 33 Harkin, Tom, 71, 72 Hathaway, David, 30 Havel, Vaclav, 92, 115, 116 Hayner, Priscilla, 260, 261, 262, 266, 267 Heald, Henry, 20 Heaps, David, 35–45, 47–53, 61, 93, 111, 123, 124, 126, 161–63, 167, 172, 173, 177 Heard, Alexander, 188, 190 “Helsinki and Human Rights,” 94, 99 Helsinki Final Act, 23, 53, 89, 90–93, 95, 896, 102, 107, 109, 111, 114, 115, 119, 123, 130, 135, 218 Heritage Foundation, 193, 194 Heuvel, William vanden, 102 Hicks, Peggy, 261 Higgins, Roslyn, 22 historical memory, 264 Hoffman, Paul, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20 Homeland University faculties, 159, 174 Horman, Charles, 30–33 Horman, Joyce, 33 House Un-American Activities Committee, 18 Huairou site obstacles, 243 human rights, 1 human rights in Latin America, 61 Human Rights Watch, 93, 103, 116, 117, 174, 249, 261, 265, 266 “human welfare” goal, 9, 269 Hutchins, Robert Maynard, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19

impact of “Basket 3,” 53, 90, 92, 115, 116 improvement in women’s economic opportunities, 233 Independent Electoral Commission, 206 India universities on women’s rights, 223 inquest into death of Biko, 170 Institute for Democracy, 262 Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna), 120 Inter-American Association for Democracy and Freedom, 78 Internal Security Act of 1982, 201 International Association for Cultural Freedom, 18, 43, 48, 122, 127 International Center for Transitional Justice, 259, 266, 268 International Commission of Jurists, 1, 39, 42, 51, 70, 163, 265 International Committee of Red Cross, 36, 41, 42, 162, 163, 167, 172, 180 International Court of Justice, 81, 150 International Criminal Court Monitor, 265 International Division, Population Office, 209, 214 International Helsinki Federation, 91, 114 International Law Commission, 264 International League for Human Rights, 44, 47, 94, 252 international tribunals, 264 International University Exchange Fund, 162 “inviolability of borders,” 89 Jarrar, Allam, 255 Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 92, 134 Jarvis, Lovell, 33 Jelenski, Konstantin, 121–25, 127, 129, 130, 131, 134 Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), 254–56 Jewish Week, 256 (Johannesburg) Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 262 Jordon, Vernon, 147, 188 Kaiser, Paul J., 140 Kampelman, Max, 110 Kebir, Sandra, 229 Kennan, George, 12, 13, 17

Index Kennedy, John F., 146 Kennedy, Robert, 187 Kentridge, Felicia, 172 Kentridge, Sydney, 171 Keyes, Alan L., 215 Kissinger, Henry, 30, 31, 33, 38 Kline, Edward, 99 Koestler, Arthur, 121 Kolakowski, Leszek, 129, 137 Kultura, 122, 129 Kuper, Leo, 21 Labedz, Leopold, 122 Laber, Jeri, 99, 102, 103, 105, 110, 112, 113, 114 Laborey, Annette, 120, 126, 127, 130, 133, 134, 135, 137 Lagergren Nina, 112 Lantos, Tom, 253, 255 Latin American Social Science Council (CLASCO), 56 LAW, 254–56, 262 Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights under Law, 139, 146, 147, 152, 153, 156, 167, 171, 174, 185, 193, 198, 206; cases before American courts, 178; “clearing house,” 178; cooperation with other NGOs, 177; critical subgroup of, 186; detainees under repressive acts of state, 172, 173; funding of, 179 “legal clinics,” 171 Legal Resources Centre, 185 Lemkin, Raphael, 21 Lesotho, 156, 165, 173 Lillich, Richard, 100 Lima Foundation, 62 Lima regional office, 82, 83 limiting population growth, 232 Liskofsky, Sidney, 106 Macdonald, Dwight, 9, 10, 13, 15, 20 Madrid follow-up meeting, 92, 108, 111 major foundation grant recipients, 249 Management Assistance Group, 116 Mandela, Nelson, 4, 139, 189, 205–7 Manitzas, Nita Rous, 59, 60 massive NGO participation at Beijing, 243 Matas, David, 251

311

McCarthy, Kathleen, 16 McCarthyism, 18 McDermott, Niall, 43, 163 McDougall, Gay, 193, 195–97, 200, 205, 206, 252 McLean, Sheila Avrin, 154, 161, 162, 169, 210 McNamara, Robert, 32 Memorial Museum of the History of Repression (Russia), 263 Mendez, Juan, 82, 269 Mexico City Office of Ford Foundation, 62, 63 Mignone, Emilio, 66 Miller, Arthur, 18, 103 Minority Rights Group, 21, 43 Mohapi, Mohle, 186 money transfers into South Africa, 199 Morgenthau, Hans, 2 Moscow Helsinki Watch Group, 97, 100, 113, 116 Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, 66, 76 Munoz-Najar, Antonio, 82 Muofhe death case, 201 Myers, Desaix, III, 170 Nadler, Jerrold, 255, 256 Nairobi Conference, 229 Nairobi NGO Forum on Women, 222 Namibia, 150, 151, 176–78, 180, 181, 204 Natal University Institute of Social Research, 142 National Conference on Human Rights, 93, 94 National Conference on Women’s Studies (Bombay), 223 National Nutrition Research Institute, 144 National Organization for Women (NOW), 212 NATO, 112, 115 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 15 Neier, Aryeh, 77–85, 103–5, 109, 115, 261 “Never Again,” 1, 3 New York City Council, 197 New York Review of Books, 113, 194 New York Times, 17, 30, 33, 40, 113, 115, 176, 178, 188, 193, 249,

312

Index

New York Times—continued. 259, 261; Book Review, 193; discriminatory ads, 176 New York Times Magazine, 261 New York University Law School, 262 NGOs in Eastern Europe, 123 Nichols, Rebecca, 242 Nkrumah, Kwame, 29 “No Peace Without Justice,” 265

“Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” 5, 251 publications of South African Truth Commission, 262 Puryear, Jeffrey, 26, 33, 64, 67, 81, 82, 85

O’Brien, Conor Cruise, 194 Oppenheimer, Harry, 158 origin and background of Durban Conference, 250 Orlov, Yuri, 90, 115, 116 Ovambos, 150

Reagan, Ronald, 77, 78, 194, 205 Reece, Carroll, 19 rent boycotts in Soweto, 204 reproduction health, 231 Ridgway, Roz, 110 Robinson, Mary, 253 Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, 183 Rockefeller Foundation, 10, 13, 166, 189–91, 193, 194, 197 Romero, Anthony, 259, 261, 266 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1 Roth, Kenneth, 117 rural women foundation grant programs, 219 Rustin, Bayard, 93–95

Pace, William, 265 Palestine NGO Network (PNGO), 255 Paris conference about Solidarity, 137 Parliamentarians for Global Action, 263 “pass laws,” 144, 145, 151, 157, 171 Peng, Li, 243 Pentagon opposition to ICC statute, 266 Phelps-Stokes Fund, 166 Picken, Margo, 67, 69, 119, 120 Pinochet, Augusto, 3, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 34, 54, 55, 60, 67, 84, 85, 86, 89, 161 Plesu, Andreas, 135 Polaroid, 170 Polish dissidents’ “manifesto,” 91 Polish Helsinki Committee, 92 political prisoners, 36, 37, 40, 42, 49, 50, 52, 66, 148, 157, 170, 205 Pollack, Louis, 171, 182 Popper, David, 29, 33, 38 population explosion, 231–32 post-Nairobi programs, 226 “Prague Spring, The,” 135 preparatory UN women’s conferences, 234 Presidential Review in annual report, 61 Price, Don, 21 “Principle VII,” 53, 89, 92 pro bono contributions by U.S. law firms, 176 Progressive Reform Party, 170 “protection” for Helsinki groups in East Europe, 100

Qing, Wu, 248 Quoboza, Percy, 168

Saint, William, 67, 82 Sakharov, Andrei, 36, 41, 96, 99, 113, 116 Salzberg, John, 70, 72 Sampson, Anthony, 193 Sanctions Monitoring Group, 205 Saturday Evening Post, 17 Schell, Orville, 78, 80, 103 Schlemmer, Lawrence, 169, 173 Schwarzenberg, Karl, 115 Scranton, William, 110 Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), 230 Sharpeville, 150, 151 Shcharansky, Anatoly, 90, 112 significance of foundation concerning women’s rights, 230 Silvert, Kalman, 29, 32 Sklar, Mort, 95, 100 Smock, David, 126, 144 Soedjatmoko, 50, 55, 57, 58 solidarity, 91, 92, 97, 111, 114, 115, 120, 132, 134, 136, 137, 157, 187 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 90, 132

Index sources of funding of Southern Africa Project, 201 South Africa and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 140, 237, 250 South Africa: Time Running Out, 166, 189 South Africa UPDATE Series, 197 South African Airways, 176, 178, 205, 206 South African Black Trade Unions, 185 South African Council of Churches, 156, 172, 185 South African Institute on Race Relations, 140, 141, 180, 181, 221 South Africa’s “Homeland” policy, 155 South Africa’s Internal Security Law, 156, 159 South Africa’s National Institute for Personnel Research, 144 South Africa’s Terrorism Act, 146, 148 South West Africa, 146, 150 Southern Africa Project, 139, 156, 167, 171, 174, 177–83, 185, 186, 189, 193, 195–98, 200, 202, 203, 204 Southern African Refugees, 173 Southern Africa’s project on detention, Namibia, and press freedom, 205 Southern Africa’s project on lobbying congress, 205 Southern Africa’s project’s 1987 Annual Report, 203 Southern Cone, 27, 35, 36, 56, 57, 59, 62, 63, 67, 74, 87 Soweto, 151, 154–56, 163, 164, 168, 169, 179, 20 Soweto pupils’ strike, 169 Spangenberg, Gail, 211 Special Sub-Committee of Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights, 176 Staff Working Paper on Women (1972), 216 Stalin, Josef, 2 “state of emergency” of 1986, 199 statute for international criminal court, 266 Stearns, Lisa, 243 Stoltenberg, Thorwald, 114 Stone, Shepard, 18, 124

313

Study Commission on U.S. Policy toward Southern Africa, The, 166, 193, 195, 196 Study Committee of Foundation, 9–12 “Sullivan Principles,” 192 Sutton, Francis X., 13, 14, 31, 35, 49, 51, 52, 53, 73, 98, 100, 101, 105, 108–11, 119, 120, 123, 126, 127, 129, 131 Sviridoff, Mitchell, 209 Task Force on Women, 212, 219 Teheran Conference on Human Rights (1968), 231 “Terror and the Truth” (documentary), 263 terrorism and the suppression of communist acts, 159 Teruggi, Frank, 30 third world countries’ priority, 11 Thomas, Franklin, 60, 68, 69, 80, 81, 185, 196, 197, 202, 209, 219, 231, 245 Timerman, Jacobo, 77 transitional justice, 259, 261 Trubek Proposal, 38 Truth Commission, 262 Tulley, Mary Jean, 212 Tutu, Desmond, 268 UN Ad Hoc Working Group of Experts on Southern Africa, 202 UN Commission on Human Rights, 1, 22, 39, 96, 186, 202, 239, 240, 244 UN Conference on Racism (Durban), 13, 215, 249 UN Conference on Women in Nairobi (1985), 226 UN Decade for Women, 221 UN General Assembly, 215, 236, 250, 264 UN General Assembly Fourth Committee on Trusteeships, 205 UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Ayala Lasso, 240 UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 15, 16, 56, 58, 59, 162, 180, 235, 269

314

Index

UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 257 UN Trust Fund, 182, 202 UN Watch, 254 UN World Conference on Women’s Rights in Mexico City, 213, 226 UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women, 234 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 22, 41, 44, 47, 50, 53, 101, 140, 237, 250 University of Dar es Salaam, 213 University of Natal Law School, 152 University of Notre Dame, 263, 269 University of Witwatersrand Centre for Applied Legal Studies, 185 University of Witwatersrand Law School, 171 Uruguay, 2, 27, 29, 55, 59, 60, 76, 222, 266 U.S. Agency for International Development, 194, 231 U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 96, 98 U.S. corporate practices in South Africa, 168 U.S. Helsinki Watch, 43, 77, 79, 93, 98, 99, 101–9, 111–16, 119, 174, 252, 260 U.S. role in Latin America, 73 U.S.–South Africa Leadership Exchange, 142, 145 Van Zyl, Paul, 261, 267 Varma, Rameshwari, 223 “Velvet Revolution,” 92, 135 Verwoerd, Hendrik, 142 Vicariate (Santiago, Chile), 86 Vicariate of the Archbishop of Santiago, 263 Vienna NGO Forum, 237 Vienna UN Human Rights Conference, 235 Violence Against Women, 237

Walesa, Lech, 91 Wall Street Journal, 85 Ward, Champion, 123 Washington, DC, City Council, 197 Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 85 Washington Working Group on the Human Rights of Women, 239 Wheeler, John, 142 Wiesel, Elie, 249 Wilde, Alex, 256, 261, 279 Wilkins, Roger, 188 Wilson, Francis, 173 Wreden, Nicholas, 16 Writers and Publishers for European Cooperation, 122 Women and Development Unit (at University of West Indies), 224, 225 “Women in the World,” 219, 226 women issues in third world, 220 women studies programs at universities, 221, 222 Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice, 263 women’s earning capacity, 230 women’s health education, 233 women’s health issues in third world, 225 women’s NGOs activism at Beijing, 240 Women’s Program Forum, 229, 241–45 Women’s Program Group, 219, 226 women’s study programs in Africa, 225 Woods, Donald, 168 World, The, 168 World Council of Churches, 140, 163, 177, 201 World Federalist Movement, 266 Wortman, Stanley, 191 Xiaojiang, Li, 248 Young, Andrew, 158 Zimmermann, Warren, 111 Zionism, 215, 250, 251, 257 “Zionism equals racism,” 250