Foreign Relations of the United States, 1917–1972, Volume VII, Public Diplomacy, 1964–1968

62. Memorandum From the Deputy Director, Policy and Plans, United States Information Agency (Anderson) to the Director (Marks)¹

Washington, September 30, 1965

SUBJECT

• Leading Cultural Figures as Cultural Officers

For many years the Agency has hired top cultural figures for selected cultural attaché and Cultural Affairs Officer (CAO) positions. Currently we have such people in London (Cleanth Brooks),² Paris (Prof. Lawrence Wylie),³ Delhi (Robert R.R. Brooks),⁴ and Tokyo (Charles B. Fahs).⁵ Several career CAOs are also well-known authors or cultural figures: John Brown in Mexico and John T. Reid in Buenos Aires.

Last year we agreed to increase our efforts to obtain such people (see attached letter to Mr. McPherson).⁶

While we are eager to take as many top cultural and educational figures as we have places for, there are several problems:

1. Most such people are not willing or able to take a two-year assignment.

2. Our salaries, even at the FSR–1 and 2 levels, are not equal to theirs.

3. Except for a few language and area specialists, most such people do not have a working command of a foreign language.

4. It is an expensive process for us—(a) they command a high salary, and (b) we must really create a new position for them, since someone else is necessary to administer the complex of cultural programs.

Bob Lincoln reports, “When you bring in for two years a professor or scholar as CAO, you’ve got to back him up with a rugged staff that can handle all of the normal bureaucratic stuff from CU and elsewhere. You cannot expect your scholar to do it—you don’t want him to. Thus, you really have to add a new position to your ceiling at that post.”

Our feeling is that the results which the Secretary desires can be effected best through the American Specialist program, sending such people for a year as a “scholar-in-residence” and attaching them to a university or a binational or cultural center.

The following people are the kind of top cultural figures who might be able to do the job either as a cultural attaché or as a “scholar-in-residence”; they must be checked for suitability and personality as well as security before the Agency endorses them.

John H. Updike, short story writer and novelist

John Cheever, short story writer

William Snodgrass, Pulitzer prize poet; Professor of English, University of Buffalo

Langston Hughes, poet, essayist and short story writer

Saul Bellow, novelist

Lionel Trilling, literary critic; Professor of English at Columbia University

Bell Wiley, Professor of History, Emory University, Atlanta

Philip Roth, author, writer-in-residence, Princeton 1962–63

Ralph Ellison, author of “The Invisible Man”; writer-in-residence, Rutgers

Wallace Stegner, Professor of English and Director of Writer’s Workshop, Stanford

Wilbur Schramm, Director, Institute of Communications Research, Stanford

Lewis Leary, Professor of English, Columbia U.

Paul (Hamilton) Engle, Director of Writer’s Workshop, University of Iowa

Area Assistant Directors have suggested the following posts and names:

IAF: Tokyo and Manila

George E. Taylor, Professor of Far Eastern Affairs, U. of Washington, Specializes on the Philippines

IAN: Athens, Cairo, Delhi, Tel Aviv

John Badeau, ex-Ambassador to UAR, Professor of Religion and Philosophy, American University

Morroe Berger, Professor of Near Eastern Affairs (UAR), Princeton

Manfred Halperin, Professor of Near Eastern Affairs, Princeton

George Lenczowski, Professor of Near Eastern Affairs (Iran), U. of California (Berkeley)

IAL: Rio de Janeiro (Further suggestions to come)

Dr. Charles Wagley, Brazilian expert, Professor of Latin American Affairs, Columbia University

Dr. Fred P. Ellison, Professor of Latin American Studies, U. of Texas, Brazilian expert

IAE: London, Rome, Paris, Bonn, Madrid

Robert Penn Warren, author

Robert Newmann, Professor of International Relations (Atlantic Affairs), UCLA

Eugene Rostow, Dean of Yale Law School (retiring)

Daniel Boorstin, Professor of History, U. of Chicago

IAA: Lagos, Tunis, Yaounde, Dakar

David E. Apter, African Affairs, University of California (Berkeley)

Vernon McKay, formerly with State; Professor of African Studies, Johns Hopkins

Robert Rotberg, Professor of History, Harvard

I also attach a draft letter designed for educational organizations and foundations in the effort to have them help recruit.⁷

Burnett Anderson⁸

1. Source: National Archives, RG 306, DIRCTR Subj Files, 1963–69, Bx 6–29 63–69: Acc: #72A5121, Entry UD WW 257, Box 28, Policy and Plans—General—1965. No classification marking.
2. Cleanth Brooks, American literary critic and professor at Yale University.
3. Laurence Wylie, American anthropologist and professor at Harvard University.
4. Robert R.R. Brooks, American economist, and dean and professor at Williams College.
5. Charles B. Fahs, American political scientist, Director of the Rockefeller Foundation, and Director of International Studies, Miami University.
6. Attached but not printed is a January 13 letter from Wilson to McPherson.
7. Attached but not printed is a September 30 draft letter from Marks.
8. Anderson signed “Burnett” above this typed signature.