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Current Research at ISERP

Visual Oral History of the Council on Foreign Relations

by Mary Marshall Clark (Oral History) and Peter Bearman (Sociology)

The Columbia University Oral History Research Office (OHRO), in partnership with the Columbia University Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), will undertake an institutional oral history of the Council on Foreign Relations. OHRO and ISERP will create an oral and visual documentation of the CouncilÂ's history from the perspectives of its current and former leaders. Interviews will be conducted with up to thirty people, and a minimum of twenty people will be videotaped.

ISERP will oversee the research components of the project, employing its expertise in national public policy analysis and research on globalization and its central place in the social science disciplines. OHRO will provide the organizational structure of the project, including all processing of tapes and transcripts.

The purpose of this institutional history is to allow those who have been most deeply involved in the work of the Council over the last quarter-century or more to speak to the content and context of their work. Specifically, interviewees will be invited to explore the conditions under which decisions were made and the strategies employed to overcome obstacles (both internal and external) to implement desired changes in policy.

Additionally, the project will explore the internal aspects of the CouncilÂ's growth as an institution, tracing the growth of membership, programs, building projects and funding. Such exploration will provide a unique resource both for the Council and for those interested in the evolution of the Council historically and politically.

The significance of the project is extremely high, given the range and diversity of the expertise of Council leaders and the history of the CouncilÂ's role in shaping national policy. The collection will complement existing interviews in the Oral History Research Office archive, from interviews taken on the history of the World Bank, to institutions concerned with global philanthropy from the Carnegie Corporation to OHROÂ's current work in documenting the activities of the Atlantic Philanthropies. Additionally, as a comprehensive history of the Council has not yet been written, and as the Council will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 16 years, the project will contribute substantially to a larger historical project in the making.

The research aims of the project will also allow ISERP and OHRO to observe changes in national and global policy, from the perspective of national and world leaders, over the last four to five decades. Oral history, as a discipline that documents and explores change over time, will record the history of conflict as well as the ways in which consensus is reached, thus providing a rich historical record reflecting broader historical and social processes. The project will then place the CouncilÂ's history in a larger context, increasing its value internally and externally.