American Council of Learned Societies

Steven C. Wheatley
Director, ACLS American Studies Program
and Vietnam Fulbright Program,
with contributions from other members of the ACLS staff

The founding purpose of the ACLS was to represent American scholarship in international fora. After World War I, an invitation to join the Union Académique Internationale (UAI) was presented to historian J. Franklin Jameson of the Library of Congress. While most members of the UAI were academies composed of selected individuals, Jameson felt that such organization was “incompatible with our democratic ethos.” He proposed instead that the United States be represented by a federation of learned societies. The ACLS was thus first organized in 1919 and formally incorporated in 1924.>

Soon thereafter, the ACLS began to promote the development in the United States of China studies, Japan studies, and Slavic studies on the assumption that sophisticated humanistic scholarship required such knowledge. During World War II and in the decades that followed, the Council became active in other area studies and in the advancement of academic exchanges.

I. Goals

Risking oversimplification, we can identify several crucial goals of ACLS international activities:

Supporting the International Academic Cause

The Council’s international work is, at base, a recognition of the ideal that knowledge and scholarship are not bounded by political and cultural borders and are inherently transnational. We have proceeded from the assumption that the internationalization of the scope of scholarship is valuable in itself: we cannot understand our own culture except in relation to others. Furthermore, we believe that the growth and strengthening of the global academy can only accelerate the advancement of knowledge in all fields. The international presence of the ACLS gives voice to principles of academic freedom, the integrity of scholarship, and the open community of knowledge.

Adherence to this principle also carries the positive obligation to advocate for international scholarship and to promote more international perspectives among American scholars by drawing attention to scholarly issues related to foreign cultures and societies and by creating opportunities for American scholars to collaborate with scholars from abroad. We also try to support the vitality of scholarly institutions abroad, and we encourage U.S. private foundations to support their work.

Providing Opportunities for American Scholars

“Provide opportunities” most easily and quickly translates into providing funds. As a mediating re-grant agency, we have taken on this role in a number of fields, the most obvious example being the work of the ACLS/SSRC joint area committees. Scholarship in area studies often requires special support to maintain and extend complex skills, to travel to distant collections and research sites, and to consult with colleagues in other countries. Support is equally essential, but less easily obtained, for international activity which runs across a range of disciplines. The Travel Grant program and the German-American Commission on Collaborative Research are Council programs in the latter category. The intermittent success we have had in funding these broad programs underlines this difficulty.

Within the American academic community, the Council seeks support for lines of research otherwise neglected or marginalized in academia. Current examples are the field development work of the joint committees and the International Predissertation Fellowship Program.

Apart from funding, the Council’s role has been to provide scholars with institutional and juridical space in which to conduct their work. Money alone was not sufficient to effect research in and exchanges with the USSR and China. Mechanisms such as the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) and the Committee for Scholarly Communication with China (CSCC) were necessary to negotiate with Stalinist bureaucracies research possibilities for American scholars. We hope that the Vietnam Fulbright Program will provide similar opportunities. Similarly, the U. S.-Canada-Mexico dialogue and the Hong Kong American Studies Center look toward developing infrastructures for intensified international collaboration. The ACLS works with the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) to assure facilities and research access for American scholars at different locations around the world.

Insulating Scholarship from Politics

We need to advance academic principles by practical work as well as by advocacy. Our strategic position as a mediating agency is again important in this connection. The design of establishing ACLS and three colleague agencies as the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils to be the governing authority for the domestic administration of the senior Fulbright program separates academic peer review and grant administration from direct government administration by the United States Information Agency. On an international scale, programs such as IBEX, the CSCC, and the Vietnam Fulbright Program allow for academic exchange and research contact in advance of diplomatic relations or in the face of political hostility between states.

Serving Our Constituent Societies

International activity requires resources and contacts that some of our individual societies may not have. The Council is thus in a position to provide societies with an international reach. Current examples include the journals exchange project and the Travel Grant program.

II. Activities

Since 1919, the Council has worked toward these goals along several broad lines of activity:

Representation

As the recognized representative of scholarship in general and humanistic scholarship in particular, the Council represents that constituency in international organizations and in American groups dedicated to international activities. The Union Académique Internationale is the oldest example of this representative function; the most recent would be the Council’s participation in the establishment of the German-American Academic Council. Other examples include the Council’s participation in the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils, the tripartite sponsorship of the CSCC, and observer status at the European Science Foundation.

Academic Exchange

Academic exchange is one of the basic building blocks of international academic activity. Most public funds for international scholarly work are dedicated to academic exchange, a plastic term covering extended overseas visits for training, research, and teaching, whether through one-way travel or a two-way exchange of scholars between countries. The Council’s goal in this arena has been to see that academic exchange is indeed academic, that the decisions are made on the basis of carefully organized peer review, and that exchanges are administered with an eye to the scholarly possibilities inherent in the task. Our signal work in this arena is the sponsorship of the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES). Other exchange programs include those administered by the CSCC, the exchanges administered in New York (the American Studies Program, the Vietnam Fulbright Program, the German-American Commission on Collaborative Research), and those administered cooperatively with SSRC (the Abe Fellowship Program, the International Predissertation Fellowship Program).

Research Planning

The joint committees and several other projects, such as our work on constitutionalism, provide uniquely valuable opportunities for outstanding multidisciplinary and international groups of scholars to collaborate over time to address important scholarly issues. Essentially, these activities try to identify intellectual, organizational and logistical problems facing scholars in their fields and to attempt to solve those problems. The projects also try to identify new or otherwise important intellectual problems and encourage scholars to pursue them. The joint committees spend considerable time trying to review and evaluate the state of their fields. On this basis, they try, on the one hand, to identify research priorities worthy of support and, on the other hand, to organize projects concerned with matters such as the availability of research material, translations, language training, publications, and teaching.

Scholarly Communication

The Council also works to develop and extend means of scholarly communication to underserved areas of the world. Examples of this activity are the Sub-Saharan journals donation project, the Hanoi American Studies Reading Room, and the Manual for International Book and Journal Donations.

III. Strengths

What specific strengths does the Council bring to its international activities?

Accountability

The ACLS is accountable in two senses: accountable to the wider academic community for the programmatic content of its work and administratively accountable so that funders have confidence in the effective management of programs.

Prestige

The reputation of the Council as a whole, our contacts developed from past programs, and our ability to assemble leading scholars (as in the constitutionalism projects) all contribute to our standing in this field.

Interdisciplinarity

The Council’s position as the broadest interdisciplinary organization in American scholarship makes it a natural setting for much international academic work. At the end of the twentieth century, much scholarly research is transcending the disciplinary boundaries developed at the century’s beginning. This is especially the case in foreign studies, as almost all international scholarly work is minimally interdisciplinary in that it often requires command of at least one, possibly quite arcane, foreign language as well as an understanding of linguistically contained cultural frameworks. At the same time, international work depends on contacts with foreign scholarly milieus organized along different disciplinary lines than those reflected in American scholarship. Therefore, the necessity of frankly interdisciplinary research organizations is more and more apparent. Once thought exotic, the work done by joint committees and similar groups is now the life’s blood of many fields.

Flexibility

While ACLS represents a sizable national constituency, its administration is relatively small. This size is, in most cases, an asset. We are able to respond to opportunities and manage programs with a minimum of bureaucracy and with a consistent focus on maintaining high academic quality. We are also able to work effectively with other organizations (as we do in most of our international programs). Indeed, this cooperation is essential if we are to remain small and flexible.

IV. Problems

Lopsided Geography

Most of the Council’s current international programs deal with Europe or East Asia. Other areas of the world have been represented only occasionally, such as in the comparative constitutionalism project and the journals distribution project. The preferences and enthusiasms of funders and limits on staff time are the primary causes of this situation. This fact also reflects the cumulative effect of work in these areas where contacts and reputation tend to develop further programs and opportunities. Finally, the division of the joint committees between ACLS and SSRC has some bearing on the development of programs outside the work of the committees, strictly considered.

Competition with Other Organizations

While cooperation with other organizations is one of the key elements of ACLS international activity, competition for funds is also an unfortunate fact. In a general sense, all non-profit organizations compete against each other in the philanthropic marketplace. Competition in the international arena, however, is more schematized and apparent. Since funders often define their interests geographically as well as programmatically, the number of potential donors for any given activity is small. At the same time, the possible donee organizations with the interest and capacity to administer international programs in any one area are few and mutually known. Finally, the practice of putting out most international programs for competitive bid is increasing in the federal government.

While this competitive process may be on the whole salutary, it does pose difficulties for an organization committed to cooperation with other agencies. A colleague agency in one area may become a competitor in another. This disjunction is of course manageable (even logical) in the abstract, but can lead to conflict and misunderstanding at personal and practical levels.

Foreign Entanglements

In its international work, ACLS receives support from foreign governments and cooperates with foreign governments, some of whom are not always in public favor. While the staff is rigorous in seeing that the principles articulated above are the sole focus of its cooperation, there is a potential for misunderstanding here as well.