Institute of Pacific Relations
Encyclopedia
The Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) was an international NGO established in 1925 to provide a forum for discussion of problems and relations between nations of the Pacific Rim. The International Secretariat, the center of most IPR activity over the years, consisted of professional staff members who recommended policy to the Pacific Council and administered the international program. The various national councils were responsible for national, regional and local programming. Most participants were elite members of the business and academic communities in their respective countries. Funding came largely from businesses and philanthropies, especially the Rockefeller Foundation. IPR international headquarters were in Honolulu until the early 1930s when they were moved to New York and the American Council emerged as the dominant national council.
IPR was founded in the spirit of Wilsonianism, an awareness of the United States' new role as a world power after World War I
, and a belief that liberal democracy should be promoted throughout the world. To promote greater knowledge of issues, the IPR supported conferences, research projects and publications, and after 1932 published a quarterly journal Pacific Affairs
. After World War II, Cold War charges that the IPR was infiltrated with Communists led to Congressional hearings and loss of tax exempt status. Many IPR members had liberal left orientations typical of internationalists of the 1930s, some ten IPR associates were shown to have been Communists, others were sympathetic to the Soviet Union, and the anti-imperialist tone of the leadership aroused resentment from some of the colonial powers, but the more dramatic charges, such as that the IPR was responsible for the fall of China, have not been generally accepted.
with the YMCA in India, then worked with the Y in France during World War I. After the war he joined The Inquiry
, a liberal Protestant commission with a flavor both genteel and militant which organized conferences and publications on labor, race relations, business ethics, and international peace. Among Carter's constituents were John D. Rockefeller, III, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
, daughter of the Rhode Island U.S. Senator, and Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur
, President of Stanford University. Wilbur argued that a new organization devoted to Pacific affairs would fill a gap not addressed by East Coast foreign policy groups. Meanwhile, in Hawai’i, another group was organizing under the leadership of local business interests.
Not everyone approved. Time magazine called Carter, Wilbur, and The Inquiry a “strange and motley crew,” a “little band of élite and erudite adventurers.” Some in the American State Department and Navy opposed discussion of Pacific affairs, fearing that it might interfere with strategic planning at a time when Chinese and Japanese nationalism were on the rise. Carter countered with support from the Rockefeller Foundation
and the Carnegie Foundation
. Using networks of the International YMCA, independent National Councils were organized in other countries, with an International Secretariat in Honolulu.
The first conference was held in Honolulu in the summer of 1925, followed by another in Honolulu (1927), then conferences in Kyoto (1929), Hangzhou and Shanghai (1931), Banff, Canada (1933), Yosemite, USA (1936), and Virginia Beach, USA (1939). Each conference published its background papers and roundtable discussions in a volume in the series Problems of the Pacific.
Edward Carter took responsibility for the American Council. When he became Secretary General in 1933 he lobbied successfully to have the International Headquarters move to New York. Since 1928 his chief assistant had been Frederick V. Field, who worked with him until 1940. (Field was later attacked for his Communist allegiances: see below.) The American Council moved energetically on several fronts. One of Carter's concerns was that public opinion needed to be informed and school curriculum deepened. Another area was to commission or subsidize scholarship on all aspects of Asia. Over the next decades, the IPR imprint appeared on hundreds of books, including most of the important scholarship on China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Notable was the Chinese Dynastic History Project, headed by the German refugee scholar Karl Wittfogel, which set out to translate and annotate the official histories compiled by each Chinese dynasty for its predecessor. In 1932, the IPR determined to expand its Bulletin into a full-fledged journal, Pacific Affairs
. At the recommendation of longtime treaty port journalist H.G.E. Woodhead, Carter recruited Owen Lattimore
, a multi-sided scholar of Central Asia who, however, did not have a Ph.D.
The IPR aimed to include all of the countries of the Pacific, including colonies, such as the Philippines and Korea (the Dutch government forbade participation from the Dutch East Indies), and the Soviet Union. As friction between Japan and China became more intense, the IPR became more overtly political. In 1931, the Japanese invasion forced the conference to move from Hangzhou to Shanghai. In 1932, the Japanese delegation withdrew and succeeding conferences were held without Japanese representation. Since the USSR was a longtime rival of Japan and a revolutionary Marxist power, Soviet participation raised many questions and problems. Marxist analysis, such as that brought by Wittfogel, was considered by some to add a powerful tool for understanding Chinese history, but Stalin’s interest was scarcely limited to discussions and theories. Carter's sympathy for the Soviet Union led him to defend Stalin's purges and trials, although IPR publications contained both favorable and critical treatments of Soviet policies.
The IPR sponsored other important scholarly excursions into Asian history and society. R.H. Tawney’s long memo for the 1931 Conference was published as his Land and Labor in China (1931). A Marxist analysis of geography by Chi Chao-ting. And the collaboration between Lattimore and Wittfogel which used an eclectic array of approaches including Arnold Toynbee
, Ellsworth Huntington
, and Karl Marx
to develop a social history of China.
of India asserting that the conflict in Asia was a race war, and other members of the conference from Asia warned that too harsh a treatment of Japan would lead to anti-Western feeling throughout the Far East. At the roundtables there was criticism and doubt that British would follow the Atlantic Charter
. The British pointed out that high-flown ideas were being pushed on them while American willingness to apply the same ideals within its own borders was questionable. Those in the International Secretariat, were suspicious and critical of the British, noting that the delegation from India was more British than the British. Americans repeatedly insisted that they were not fighting in order to reconstitute the British Empire; British replied that they would “not be hustled out of evolution into revolution” and that the US might “do well to look into her own Negro problem.” On the positive side, the conferences helped to focus on the political and social developments within Japan after the war, especially the question of whether to abolish the imperial throne. Edward Carter summarized Anglo-American differences and fears: “continuing imperialism as a threat to world peace," on the one hand, and of "anti-colonialism as a recipe for chaos” on the other, and of "imperial tariff protections as a barrier to world trade and of American economic might as a potential bludgeon.” Some have suggested that Carter left the Secretary General position in late 1945 because of pressure from the European council leaders due to his increasingly outspoken anti-colonialism.
At home, the American Secretariat came under criticism.
The IPR came under further suspicion by government authorities as a result of the Venona intercepts and its close association with Amerasia
. Amerasia came under investigation when a classified government OSS
report appeared as an article in the magazine.
IPR was closely allied with Amerasia
. The two organizations shared the same building, and many members of the Editorial Board of Amerasia were officers or employees of IPR. An FBI review of Amerasia and IPR publications found that approximately 115 people contributed articles to both.
Among IPR staffers identified later as Communists or collaborators with Soviet intelligence agents were Kathleen Barnes, Hilda Austern, Elsie Fairfax-Cholmely, Chi Chao-ting, Guenter Stein, Harriet Levine, Talitha Gerlach, Chen Han-seng
(a member of the Sorge
spy ring), Michael Greenberg (named as a source in 1945 by defecting Soviet courier Elizabeth Bentley
), and T.A. Bisson (Venona
's "Arthur"), as well as Kate Mitchell and Andrew Roth
, both of whom were arrested in the 1945 Amerasia
case.
After the success of the Chinese Communist Revolution, criticism of the IPR increased. Its detractors accused it of having helped to "lose China" to Communism.
In the early fifties, the IPR came under a lengthy investigation by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee
. Critics charged that IPR scholars had been naïve in their statements regarding Communism, Chinese Communism and Stalinist
Russia.
Senator Joseph McCarthy
of Wisconsin repeatedly criticized IPR and its former chairman Philip Jessup
. McCarthy observed that Frederick V. Field, T.A. Bisson, and Owen Lattimore were active in IPR and claimed that they had worked to turn American China policy in favor of the Communist Party of China
.
In 1952, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS), chaired by Senator Pat McCarran
, spent over a year reviewing some 20,000 documents from the files of IPR and questioning IPR personnel. The committee found it suspicious that Marxists
had published articles in the IPR journal and that Communists had attended an IPR conference in 1942. In its final report the SISS stated:
Elizabeth Bentley
testified that NKVD
spy chief Jacob Golos
warned her to stay away from the IPR because it was "as red as a rose, and you shouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole." Likewise, Louis Budenz, former editor of the Daily Worker
, testified that Alexander Trachtenberg
of the Communist Party-affiliated International Publishers
told him that party leaders thought the IPR was "too much a concentration point for Communists; the control could be maintained without such a galaxy of Communists in it."
The IPR lost its tax-exempt status as an educational body in 1955, when the Internal Revenue Service
alleged that the Institute had engaged in the dissemination of controversial and partisan propaganda, and had attempted to influence the policies or opinions of the government. Under the leadership of William L. Holland
, the IPR pursued a long legal action to regain tax-exempt status lasted until 1959. The final court judgment rejected all allegations by the Internal Revenue Service.
By the mid-1950s, the IPR was facing other challenges – notably the development of well-funded centers for Asian Studies at major American Universities such as Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Michigan and Columbia. The rise of these centers created an opinion that the IPR was no longer necessary. The large foundations which had previously supported the IPR shifted their financial resources to the University centers.
At the end of the IRS case, a degree of financial support that the Institute had attracted due to free speech issues and the IRS case was lost to other causes. The IPR also had been gradually losing academic contributors due in part to the rise of the Association for Asian Studies
.
The Institute dissolved in 1960. Publication of the journal Pacific Affairs was transferred to University of British Columbia
, in Vancouver, Canada.
IPR was founded in the spirit of Wilsonianism, an awareness of the United States' new role as a world power after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, and a belief that liberal democracy should be promoted throughout the world. To promote greater knowledge of issues, the IPR supported conferences, research projects and publications, and after 1932 published a quarterly journal Pacific Affairs
Pacific Affairs
Pacific Affairs ' is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes academic research on contemporary political, economic, and social issues in Asia and the Pacific. The journal was founded in 1926 as the newsletter for the entirety of the Institute of Pacific Relations . In May 1928, PA adopted...
. After World War II, Cold War charges that the IPR was infiltrated with Communists led to Congressional hearings and loss of tax exempt status. Many IPR members had liberal left orientations typical of internationalists of the 1930s, some ten IPR associates were shown to have been Communists, others were sympathetic to the Soviet Union, and the anti-imperialist tone of the leadership aroused resentment from some of the colonial powers, but the more dramatic charges, such as that the IPR was responsible for the fall of China, have not been generally accepted.
Founding and Early Years, 1925-1939
The IPR was the result of two sets of organizers, one in New York, another in Hawai'i. The New York based effort was organized by Edward C. Carter, Carter, after graduating from Harvard in 1906, joined the Student Volunteer MovementStudent Volunteer Movement
The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions was an organization founded in 1886 that sought to recruit college and university students in the United States for missionary service abroad. It also sought to publicize and encourage the missionary enterprise in general...
with the YMCA in India, then worked with the Y in France during World War I. After the war he joined The Inquiry
The Inquiry
The Inquiry was a study group established in September 1917 by Woodrow Wilson to prepare materials for the peace negotiations following World War I. The group, composed of around 150 academics, was directed by presidential adviser Edward House and supervised directly by philosopher Sidney Mezes...
, a liberal Protestant commission with a flavor both genteel and militant which organized conferences and publications on labor, race relations, business ethics, and international peace. Among Carter's constituents were John D. Rockefeller, III, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, , was a prominent socialite and philanthropist and the second-generation matriarch of the renowned Rockefeller family...
, daughter of the Rhode Island U.S. Senator, and Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur
Ray Lyman Wilbur
Ray Lyman Wilbur was an American medical doctor who served as the third president of Stanford University and the 31st United States Secretary of the Interior.-Early life:...
, President of Stanford University. Wilbur argued that a new organization devoted to Pacific affairs would fill a gap not addressed by East Coast foreign policy groups. Meanwhile, in Hawai’i, another group was organizing under the leadership of local business interests.
Not everyone approved. Time magazine called Carter, Wilbur, and The Inquiry a “strange and motley crew,” a “little band of élite and erudite adventurers.” Some in the American State Department and Navy opposed discussion of Pacific affairs, fearing that it might interfere with strategic planning at a time when Chinese and Japanese nationalism were on the rise. Carter countered with support from the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
and the Carnegie Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Carnegie Corporation of New York, which was established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 "to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding," is one of the oldest, largest and most influential of American foundations...
. Using networks of the International YMCA, independent National Councils were organized in other countries, with an International Secretariat in Honolulu.
The first conference was held in Honolulu in the summer of 1925, followed by another in Honolulu (1927), then conferences in Kyoto (1929), Hangzhou and Shanghai (1931), Banff, Canada (1933), Yosemite, USA (1936), and Virginia Beach, USA (1939). Each conference published its background papers and roundtable discussions in a volume in the series Problems of the Pacific.
Edward Carter took responsibility for the American Council. When he became Secretary General in 1933 he lobbied successfully to have the International Headquarters move to New York. Since 1928 his chief assistant had been Frederick V. Field, who worked with him until 1940. (Field was later attacked for his Communist allegiances: see below.) The American Council moved energetically on several fronts. One of Carter's concerns was that public opinion needed to be informed and school curriculum deepened. Another area was to commission or subsidize scholarship on all aspects of Asia. Over the next decades, the IPR imprint appeared on hundreds of books, including most of the important scholarship on China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Notable was the Chinese Dynastic History Project, headed by the German refugee scholar Karl Wittfogel, which set out to translate and annotate the official histories compiled by each Chinese dynasty for its predecessor. In 1932, the IPR determined to expand its Bulletin into a full-fledged journal, Pacific Affairs
Pacific Affairs
Pacific Affairs ' is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes academic research on contemporary political, economic, and social issues in Asia and the Pacific. The journal was founded in 1926 as the newsletter for the entirety of the Institute of Pacific Relations . In May 1928, PA adopted...
. At the recommendation of longtime treaty port journalist H.G.E. Woodhead, Carter recruited Owen Lattimore
Owen Lattimore
Owen Lattimore was an American author, educator, and influential scholar of Central Asia, especially Mongolia. In the 1930s he was editor of Pacific Affairs, a journal published by the Institute of Pacific Relations, and then taught at Johns Hopkins University from 1938 to 1963...
, a multi-sided scholar of Central Asia who, however, did not have a Ph.D.
The IPR aimed to include all of the countries of the Pacific, including colonies, such as the Philippines and Korea (the Dutch government forbade participation from the Dutch East Indies), and the Soviet Union. As friction between Japan and China became more intense, the IPR became more overtly political. In 1931, the Japanese invasion forced the conference to move from Hangzhou to Shanghai. In 1932, the Japanese delegation withdrew and succeeding conferences were held without Japanese representation. Since the USSR was a longtime rival of Japan and a revolutionary Marxist power, Soviet participation raised many questions and problems. Marxist analysis, such as that brought by Wittfogel, was considered by some to add a powerful tool for understanding Chinese history, but Stalin’s interest was scarcely limited to discussions and theories. Carter's sympathy for the Soviet Union led him to defend Stalin's purges and trials, although IPR publications contained both favorable and critical treatments of Soviet policies.
The IPR sponsored other important scholarly excursions into Asian history and society. R.H. Tawney’s long memo for the 1931 Conference was published as his Land and Labor in China (1931). A Marxist analysis of geography by Chi Chao-ting. And the collaboration between Lattimore and Wittfogel which used an eclectic array of approaches including Arnold Toynbee
Arnold Toynbee
Arnold Toynbee was a British economic historian also noted for his social commitment and desire to improve the living conditions of the working classes.-Biography:...
, Ellsworth Huntington
Ellsworth Huntington
Ellsworth Huntington was a professor of geography at Yale University during the early 20th century, known for his studies on climatic determinism, economic growth and economic geography...
, and Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
to develop a social history of China.
The War Years
During the war the IPR organized two conferences, one at Mont Tremblant, Quebec, in December 1942 and the second in Hot Springs, Virginia in January 1945. One scholar noted that the non-official nature of these meetings meant that officials and influential leaders could join in the fray in an ostensibly private capacity, which “gave the I.P.R. a status well beyond its actual size.” Colonial issues, economic issues and post-war planning were the major areas of controversy. The Americans demanded that European colonial markets be opened to American goods by the removal of preference tariffs while the British expressed concerns that that American economic might could be used as a "potential bludgeon". Another example was Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi PanditVijaya Lakshmi Pandit
Vijaya Lakshmi Nehru Pandit was an Indian diplomat and politician, the sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, the aunt of Indira Gandhi and the great-aunt of Rajiv Gandhi, all of whom served as Prime Minister of India.In 1921 she married Ranjit Sitaram Pandit, who died on 14 January 1944...
of India asserting that the conflict in Asia was a race war, and other members of the conference from Asia warned that too harsh a treatment of Japan would lead to anti-Western feeling throughout the Far East. At the roundtables there was criticism and doubt that British would follow the Atlantic Charter
Atlantic Charter
The Atlantic Charter was a pivotal policy statement first issued in August 1941 that early in World War II defined the Allied goals for the post-war world. It was drafted by Britain and the United States, and later agreed to by all the Allies...
. The British pointed out that high-flown ideas were being pushed on them while American willingness to apply the same ideals within its own borders was questionable. Those in the International Secretariat, were suspicious and critical of the British, noting that the delegation from India was more British than the British. Americans repeatedly insisted that they were not fighting in order to reconstitute the British Empire; British replied that they would “not be hustled out of evolution into revolution” and that the US might “do well to look into her own Negro problem.” On the positive side, the conferences helped to focus on the political and social developments within Japan after the war, especially the question of whether to abolish the imperial throne. Edward Carter summarized Anglo-American differences and fears: “continuing imperialism as a threat to world peace," on the one hand, and of "anti-colonialism as a recipe for chaos” on the other, and of "imperial tariff protections as a barrier to world trade and of American economic might as a potential bludgeon.” Some have suggested that Carter left the Secretary General position in late 1945 because of pressure from the European council leaders due to his increasingly outspoken anti-colonialism.
At home, the American Secretariat came under criticism.
Attack Over Communist Influences and Demise
Toward the end of the war, the Institute came under criticism for alleged communist sympathies. The first major criticism of the Institute was a wartime study by dissident IPR member Alfred Kohlberg, an American who had owned a textile firm in prewar China. After finding what he believed were Communist sympathies in IPR, in particular Frederick Field, Kohlberg first wrote to other members of the Board, published an 80-page report, then launched a publicity campaign against the Institute.The IPR came under further suspicion by government authorities as a result of the Venona intercepts and its close association with Amerasia
Amerasia
Amerasia was a journal of Far Eastern affairs best known for the 1940s "Amerasia Affair" in which several of its staff and their contacts were suspected of espionage and charged with unauthorized possession of government documents.-Publication:...
. Amerasia came under investigation when a classified government OSS
OSS
-Science and technology:* Open-source software* Open Sound System, a standard interface for making and capturing sound in Unix operating systems* Open Search Server, search engine software...
report appeared as an article in the magazine.
IPR was closely allied with Amerasia
Amerasia
Amerasia was a journal of Far Eastern affairs best known for the 1940s "Amerasia Affair" in which several of its staff and their contacts were suspected of espionage and charged with unauthorized possession of government documents.-Publication:...
. The two organizations shared the same building, and many members of the Editorial Board of Amerasia were officers or employees of IPR. An FBI review of Amerasia and IPR publications found that approximately 115 people contributed articles to both.
Among IPR staffers identified later as Communists or collaborators with Soviet intelligence agents were Kathleen Barnes, Hilda Austern, Elsie Fairfax-Cholmely, Chi Chao-ting, Guenter Stein, Harriet Levine, Talitha Gerlach, Chen Han-seng
Chen Han-seng
Chen Han-seng was a Chinese sociologist and considered a pioneer of modern Chinese social science, and also a member of legendary Soviet master-spy Richard Sorge's Tokyo ring;He was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu...
(a member of the Sorge
Richard Sorge
Richard Sorge was a German communist and spy who worked for the Soviet Union. He has gained great fame among espionage enthusiasts for his intelligence gathering during World War II. He worked as a journalist in both Germany and Japan, where he was imprisoned for spying and eventually hanged....
spy ring), Michael Greenberg (named as a source in 1945 by defecting Soviet courier Elizabeth Bentley
Elizabeth Bentley
Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American spy for the Soviet Union from 1938 until 1945. In 1945 she defected from the Communist Party and Soviet intelligence and became an informer for the U.S. She exposed two networks of spies, ultimately naming over 80 Americans who had engaged in espionage for...
), and T.A. Bisson (Venona
Venona project
The VENONA project was a long-running secret collaboration of the United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies involving cryptanalysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union, the majority during World War II...
's "Arthur"), as well as Kate Mitchell and Andrew Roth
Andrew Roth
Andrew Roth was a biographer and journalist known for his compilation of Parliamentary Profiles, a directory of British Members of Parliament, which is available online in The Guardian...
, both of whom were arrested in the 1945 Amerasia
Amerasia
Amerasia was a journal of Far Eastern affairs best known for the 1940s "Amerasia Affair" in which several of its staff and their contacts were suspected of espionage and charged with unauthorized possession of government documents.-Publication:...
case.
After the success of the Chinese Communist Revolution, criticism of the IPR increased. Its detractors accused it of having helped to "lose China" to Communism.
In the early fifties, the IPR came under a lengthy investigation by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee
United States Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security
The Special Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, 1951-77, more commonly known as the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and sometimes the McCarran Committee, was authorized under S...
. Critics charged that IPR scholars had been naïve in their statements regarding Communism, Chinese Communism and Stalinist
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
Russia.
Senator Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...
of Wisconsin repeatedly criticized IPR and its former chairman Philip Jessup
Philip Jessup
Philip Caryl Jessup was a diplomat, scholar, and jurist from New York City.- Early life and education :Philip C. Jessup, the grandson of Henry Harris Jessup, received his undergraduate degree from Hamilton College in 1919. He then went on to earn a law degree from Yale Law School in 1924 and a Ph.D...
. McCarthy observed that Frederick V. Field, T.A. Bisson, and Owen Lattimore were active in IPR and claimed that they had worked to turn American China policy in favor of the Communist Party of China
Communist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
.
In 1952, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS), chaired by Senator Pat McCarran
Pat McCarran
Patrick Anthony McCarran was a Democratic United States Senator from Nevada from 1933 until 1954, and was noted for his strong anti-Communist stance.-Early life and career:...
, spent over a year reviewing some 20,000 documents from the files of IPR and questioning IPR personnel. The committee found it suspicious that Marxists
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
had published articles in the IPR journal and that Communists had attended an IPR conference in 1942. In its final report the SISS stated:
Elizabeth Bentley
Elizabeth Bentley
Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American spy for the Soviet Union from 1938 until 1945. In 1945 she defected from the Communist Party and Soviet intelligence and became an informer for the U.S. She exposed two networks of spies, ultimately naming over 80 Americans who had engaged in espionage for...
testified that NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
spy chief Jacob Golos
Jacob Golos
Jacob Golos, , was a Ukrainian-born Bolshevik revolutionary of ethnic Jewish heritage who became a secret police operative on behalf of the USSR in the United States...
warned her to stay away from the IPR because it was "as red as a rose, and you shouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole." Likewise, Louis Budenz, former editor of the Daily Worker
Daily Worker
The Daily Worker was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, some attempts were made to make it appear that the paper reflected a...
, testified that Alexander Trachtenberg
Alexander Trachtenberg
Alexander "Alex" Trachtenberg was an American publisher of radical political books and pamphlets and activist in the Socialist Party of America and later the Communist Party USA...
of the Communist Party-affiliated International Publishers
International Publishers
International Publishers is a book publishing company based in New York City specializing in Marxist works of economics, political science, and history. The company was established in 1924 by A.A. Heller and Alexander Trachtenberg, using funds earned through a lucrative trade concession granted...
told him that party leaders thought the IPR was "too much a concentration point for Communists; the control could be maintained without such a galaxy of Communists in it."
The IPR lost its tax-exempt status as an educational body in 1955, when the Internal Revenue Service
Internal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...
alleged that the Institute had engaged in the dissemination of controversial and partisan propaganda, and had attempted to influence the policies or opinions of the government. Under the leadership of William L. Holland
William L. Holland
William Lancelot Holland worked with the Institute of Pacific Relations from 1928 until 1960 as Research Secretary; American IPR Executive Secretary and editor of its periodical, Far Eastern Survey; IPR Secretary-General and editor of its journal, Pacific Affairs...
, the IPR pursued a long legal action to regain tax-exempt status lasted until 1959. The final court judgment rejected all allegations by the Internal Revenue Service.
By the mid-1950s, the IPR was facing other challenges – notably the development of well-funded centers for Asian Studies at major American Universities such as Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Michigan and Columbia. The rise of these centers created an opinion that the IPR was no longer necessary. The large foundations which had previously supported the IPR shifted their financial resources to the University centers.
At the end of the IRS case, a degree of financial support that the Institute had attracted due to free speech issues and the IRS case was lost to other causes. The IPR also had been gradually losing academic contributors due in part to the rise of the Association for Asian Studies
Association for Asian Studies
The Association for Asian Studies is a U.S. society focused on facilitating contact and information exchange among scholars of Asian fields. It is the self-proclaimed largest society of its kind. The Association consists of eminent Asianists, and is a non-profit organization...
.
The Institute dissolved in 1960. Publication of the journal Pacific Affairs was transferred to University of British Columbia
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...
, in Vancouver, Canada.
External links
- Pacific Affairs Journal (official site)