An Education for Empire: The Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations in the Construction of Knowledge

By: Andrew Gavin Marshall

Originally Posted at: The People’s Book Project

Note: The following is an excerpt from an upcoming book by Andrew Gavin Marshall on the historical, social, political, and economic examination of the institutions and ideas of power in our world, a product of The People’s Book Project. This excerpt is from a chapter on the birth of the American Empire. This is not a finished product, but rather a sample of some of the information contained within the book.

As the United States came to be the dominant hegemonic power in the world following World War II, the education of its political and technocratic elite had to change in accord with seeking to address this new global role. In this context – of America seeking to control the “Grand Area” – America’s premier educational centers implemented programs and institutions of what was known as “Area Studies,” bringing together intellectuals and scholars from a variety of disciplines in order to focus on specific areas of the world: Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Also pivotal was the formation of the study of International Relations (IR).

The Rockefeller Foundation played a central role in the transformation of America from an ‘isolationist’ society to a ‘globalist’ society. It’s early financing of the Council on Foreign Relations (from 1921 onwards) was one of the most important facets to this transformation, and with that, the War and Pace Studies group between the CFR and the U.S. State Department (completely funded by the Rockefeller Foundation) as well as other CFR projects during World War II. However, there were a number of other projects and initiatives undertaken by the Foundation in the formative period of the 1930s and into the 1940s. As Professor of Government at the University of Manchester, Inderjeet Parmar, wrote in the journal, Minerva, “the Foundation used its considerable financial resources in a conscious and systematic attempt to assist policymakers and academics to build a new globalist consensus.”[1]

Between 1927 and 1945, the Rockefeller Foundation had provided the Council on Foreign Relations with over $443,000 specifically for “study group” research which “resulted in authoritative publications” which could be and often were used in policy implementation.[2] This was largely a result of the close relationship that existed between the Council and the U.S. State Department. William P. Bundy commented on this relationship, saying that it was closer than “any private organization [had enjoyed] at any time in American history.”[3] William Bundy was no outside observer, either. In the 1950s, he was an analyst for the CIA, and was an advisor to President Kennedy, and was Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs during the administration of Lyndon Johnson, making him a key foreign policy adviser on matters related to the Vietnam War. In 1970, David Rockefeller became President of the Council on Foreign Relations and asked William Bundy (a long-time member of the CFR) to run the CFR’s prestigious and influential journal, Foreign Affairs as Editor, a job he held from 1972 until 1984. His brother, McGeorge Bundy, was National Security Adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and was President of the Ford Foundation from 1966 to 1979.

Continue reading this excerpt of Andrew Gavin Marshall’s upcoming book……

Short URL: http://www.americanpendulum.com/?p=8138