International and Language Education for a Global Future: Fifty Years of U.S. Title VI and Fulbright-Hays Programs

7. Title VI and Foundation Support for Area Studies: Its History and Impacts

Areview of Title VI support for area studies from the inception of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) program in 1958 to the present has drawn my attention to three facts. The first is the enduring importance of Title VI programs as the mainstay of area and international studies in the United States. Second, area is not rigidly defined in Title VI legislation or for purposes of administration. Third, the continued existence of Title VI programs allows their partners in universities and private foundations to take area studies in new directions, secure in the knowledge that a solid infrastructure for the teaching of world languages and area studies already exists and is likely to continue to do so. Further, new initiatives often depend on the insights and scholarship of area studies specialists, many of whom received their advanced degrees from Title VI institutions. The need for a federal program such as Title VI was noted in a 1950 Social Science Research Council (SSRC) postconference report, which commented, “The American educational structure is still almost as centered on Western Europe as it was when Cathay seemed almost as far away as the moon.” The report cited one commentator’s view that “the individual institution cannot do enough to give our education a world perspective. . . . ‘Only a great Federal program can do it’” (cited in Wallerstein 1977: 206). Title VI programs continue to perform that vital function. C H A P T E R 7 Title VI and Foundation Support for Area Studies: Its History and Impacts Anne H. Betteridge 139 Indeed, Title VI programs make possible moves in important new intellectual directions, as other chapters in this volume reveal; these moves, in turn, strengthen the Title VI programs. Such innovative moves often have been encouraged by private foundations. The foundations and Title VI programs enjoy a synergistic relationship of great importance to the development of highly skilled scholars and practitioners and to progress in developing knowledge about a world in which intricate connections of many sorts affect cultural, economic, and political developments . In this chapter, I draw particular attention to the implicit, if not always stated, relationship between Title VI programs—in particular, the National Resource Centers (NRCs)—and private foundations. The importance of global interconnections and the need for U.S. citizens to have “professional or technical training with knowledge of the languages, economies, politics, history, geography, people, customs, and religions of foreign countries” was highlighted in a 1943 SSRC Committee report on World Regions. The report observed that “our citizens must know other lands and appreciate their people, cultures, and institutions” and that “[r]esearch, graduate teaching, undergraduate instruction, and elementary education in world regions will be desirable as far as one can see into the future.” The report concluded that “[c]oncentrations on regions may conceivably open the road to . . . a weakening of the rigid compartments that separate the disciplines” (Wallerstein 1977, pp. 196–197). At that time, a good deal of excitement surrounded area studies and their potential. Kenneth Prewitt built on this, writing at a time when area studies was firmly established, that “area studies holds area constant and invites the participation of multiple disciplines, in contrast to traditional comparative studies which held discipline constant and involved multiple areas. Area studies, consequently, has been the most successful, large-scale interdisciplinary project ever in the humanities and the social sciences” (Prewitt 2001: 78). Formulations of Areas and Funding of Area Studies Although the specificity of particular areas may appear to be constant in area studies because of continuity in terminology, the exact meaning of an area is not entirely fixed. Consequently, what might appear as a rigid system of classification is flexible in its implementation. For example, does Middle East extend west across North Africa and as far east as Afghanistan and Pakistan?1 Many Middle East centers regard that full range of territory as well within their geographical purview. What of language affinities? If languages closely related to Persian and Turkish are spoken in Central Asia, might that not be a reason to broach the study of Central Asia within Middle Eastern studies? And if Islam is culturally salient in the Middle East 140 A N N E H . B E T T E R I D G E and originated there, might not Islamic studies more broadly be a subject centers for Middle Eastern studies could reasonably claim, at...