Memorandum of Conversation with Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Paul Hoffman and Other Representatives of the Ford Foundation, Donald Kennedy, and George C. McGhee

DÉPARTMENT OF STATE < 3/5 344 ARCHIVES "NATIONAL RECORDS AND Memorandum of Conversation SERVICA** 853 DATE: 7/16/51 199 SUBJECT: Discussion with Mr. Ho ffman with respect to the Ford Foundation. PARTICIPANTS: The Secretary Mr. Paul Hoffman ) Mr. Chester Davies ) Ford Foundation Mr. John Howard Assistant Secretary George McGhee - NEA COPIES TO: Mr. Donald Kennedy - SOA NEA Embassy New Delhi OFD Embassy Karachi TCA EUR OIR u. s. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 16-61120-1 Mr. Hoffman said perhaps it would be helpful to give some background information. The Ford Foundation expected to have approximately $25 million to spend each year for the next two years, of which they thought perhaps a third might be devoted to countries other than the United States. At the moment he thought that their efforts might take two directions: developing projects which would contribute quickly to the maintenance of peace and supporting projects which would assist in meeting crises. As an illustration from the domestic field, he thought that universal military training would create a crisis in domestic education and the Foundation was considering making a complete study of our educational system. In the foreign field it had been decided to give $3 million to the Free University of Berlin. Mr. Hoffman understood that the Secretary had already heard of this. There were a few other, but relatively minor, projects under consideration for Germany. The Foundation was, however, very interested in the Near East and in particular in India and Pakistan. In connection with the Near East they thought that the Near East Foundation deserved support. For India they had no specific program in mind as yet. When he saw the Prime Minister he would say so and add that he hoped to usefully employ some of the Foundation's free dollars in India. Mr. Hoffman said he was mainly interested in action in the economic field for it was his belief that only by increasing the ability of the people to produce could real progress be made. For this reason he was not particularly favorable to the Foundation's spending a lot of DECLASSIFIED E.O. 10501 STRICTED