TLS, three pages, 8 x 10.5, Rockefeller Brothers Fund letterhead, September 5, 1956. Letter to political scientist W. W. Kulski, in part: "Harlan Cleveland tells me that he has spoken to you about the Special Studies Project of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. I thought it might be helpful if I told you a little bit about the project. The project grew out of our belief that many of our difficulties, both domestic and foreign, are due not so much to an absence of good ideas, but to our inability to find concepts and attitudes to deal with a situation changing more rapidly and in directions different from what our national experience led us to expect. This problem seems to us compounded by the fact that most of the leadership groups throughout our society are taught to administer rather than to conceptualize, to specialize rather than think in general terms. As a result, problems are often conceived in terms which tend to emphasize the peculiarities of each situation and which inhibit an understanding of the relationship between the political, economic, psychological and military components of policy.
It therefore seemed to us important to launch a series of studies designed not to write specific policy recommendations but to develop the conceptual framework on which the consideration of policy might be based, to sketch longer term trends and to outline alternative means of coping with them. Another purpose of the studies would be to encourage a more sustained consideration of the problems on which, trite as it may sound, our national survival may well depend.
To achieve these objectives, we are planning the formation of a number of panels composed of individuals recognized as leaders in their fields and respected for their lack of partisanship. Each of these panels would consider a specific problem area of U.S. policy with the expectation that at a later stage of the study the conclusions of the panel might be considered by an overall group which would seek to relate these problems to each other and to a basic U.S. posture."
He goes on to express interest in Dr. Kulski's outline for a paper that "would trace the Soviet policies towards the underdeveloped countries through a series of quotations," that might form the intellectual framework of one such discussion, and proposes a payment of $350 for Kulski's work. In fine condition.
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