http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf3s2006vg Online items available Guide to the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions Collection Processing Information: Arrangement and description by Deborah Kennedy, David C. Tambo, Yolanda Blue, Louisa Dennis, and Elizabeth Witherell; also student assistants Elizabeth Aburto, Julie Baron, Marisela Bautista, Liz Bittner, Michelle Bowden, Chris Caldow, Jacqueline Chau, Alison Church, Hubert Dubrulle, Sivakumar Elambooranan, Richard Frausto, Michael Fry, Joseline Garde, Joseph Gardner, Tim Hagen, Arlene Hebron, Kara Heerman, M. Pilar Herraiz, Ain Hunter, Sandra Jacobs, Derek Jaeger, Gisele Jones, Julie Kravets, Annie Leatt, Kurt Morrill, Chris Shea, Robert Simons, Kay Wamser, Leon Zimlich, and other Library and Special Collections staff and student assistants; machine-readable finding aid created by Xiuzhi Zhou. Latest revision D. Tambo. Department of Special Collections Davidson Library University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 Phone: (805) 893-3062 Fax: (805) 893-5749 Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/speccoll.html © 2000 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Guide to the Center for the Study Mss 18 1 of Democratic Institutions Collection Guide to the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI) Collection, 1950-1991 [bulk dates 1961-1987] Collection number: Mss 18 Department of Special Collections Davidson Library University of California, Santa Barbara Contact Information: Department of Special Collections Davidson Library University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 Phone: (805) 893-3062 Fax: (805) 893-5749 Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/speccoll.html Processing Information: Arrangement and description by Deborah Kennedy, David C. Tambo, Yolanda Blue, Louisa Dennis, and Elizabeth Witherell; also student assistants Elizabeth Aburto, Julie Baron, Marisela Bautista, Liz Bittner, Michelle Bowden, Chris Caldow, Jacqueline Chau, Alison Church, Hubert Dubrulle, Sivakumar Elambooranan, Richard Frausto, Michael Fry, Joseline Garde, Joseph Gardner, Tim Hagen, Arlene Hebron, Kara Heerman, M. Pilar Herraiz, Ain Hunter, Sandra Jacobs, Derek Jaeger, Gisele Jones, Julie Kravets, Annie Leatt, Kurt Morrill, Chris Shea, Robert Simons, Kay Wamser, Leon Zimlich, and other Library and Special Collections staff and student assistants. Latest revision D. Tambo. Date Completed: 12/29/99 Latest Revision: Mar. 10, 2011 Encoded by: Xiuzhi Zhou © 2000 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Descriptive Summary Title: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions Collection Dates: 1950-1991 Bulk Dates: 1961-1987 Collection number: Mss 18 Creator: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions Collection Size: ca. 650 linear feet (942 boxes; 191 reels of microfilm; ca. 3,500 audiotapes, 127 reels of film, and 57 videotapes [various formats].Online items available. Repository: University of California, Santa Barbara. Library. Dept. of Special Collections Santa Barbara, CA 93106 Abstract: Records of the internationally renowned Santa Barbara-based think tank, emphasizing issues such as education, freedom of the press, international relations, public policy, religion, and science and technology in modern society. Included are materials relating to CSDI leaders such as Robert Hutchins, Harry Ashmore, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, W. H. Ferry, Frank Kelly, Stanley K. Sheinbaum, and Harvey Wheeler. Also includes papers, talks, correspondence, and other materials relating to hundreds of other well known figures such as Mortimer Adler, Alexander Comfort, William O. Douglas, Mircea Eliade, J. William Fulbright, Hubert H. Humphrey, Clark Kerr, Eugene McCarthy, Gunnar Myrdal, Reinhold Niebuhr, Linus Pauling, James A. Pike, B. F. Skinner, Adlai Stevenson, Arnold Toynbee, UN Secretary-General U Thant, and Earl Warren. Guide to the Center for the Study Mss 18 2 of Democratic Institutions Collection Physical Location: Boxes 1-241, 255-269, 271, 273-880 (SRLF); Boxes 242-254, 881-942 (Annex 2); Boxes 270 and 272 transferred to Princeton University. Language: English. Access Restrictions COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE. Advance notice required for access. Publication Rights Copyright has not been assigned to the Department of Special Collections, UCSB. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Department of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which also must be obtained. Preferred Citation [Identification of item], Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions Collection. Mss 18. Department of Special Collections, Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara. Acquisition Information Bulk of the collection donated by the Center after it ceased operations at UCSB in 1987. Subsequent donations by Harry S. Ashmore and Otis L. Graham, Jr. , which are found in their respective sections of the Administrators' Files, 1995. Funding The UCSB University Libraries wishes to express its gratitude to the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and to the California State Historical Records Advisory Board, not only for much needed funding support to process the collection, but also for numerous helpful suggestions which assisted in the planning and completion of this project. History of the Center The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions grew out of the 'Basic Issues' program of the Fund for the Republic. The Fund emerged from a desire to combat the rampant abuses of American civil liberties that characterized the McCarthy era. With a fifteen million dollar grant from the Ford Foundation, the Fund set in 1954 to provide support to church, educational, and social service organizations in their efforts to protect the rights enumerated in the first ten Amendments to the Constitution. In 1957, unsatisfied with administering a grant making institution, Robert Maynard Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago, assembled a group of, in his words, "great minds" to study "the current status" of corporations, trade unions, the common defense, religion, the mass media, political parties, pressure groups, and professional associations. With a core group of twelve consultants drawn from a variety of disciplines and careers, Hutchins attempted to foster interdisciplinary discussion on these 'basic issues.' Between 1957 and 1959 the core group was joined by more than 300 scholars and experts. Over a million copies of the Funds' fifty-four pamphlets, occasional papers, transcripts, and reports to the Fund were distributed from the Basic Issues program. As the consultants were unable to devote themselves entirely to these discussions, however, the level of these exchanges failed to meet Hutchins' expectations. He persuaded the Funds' Board of Directors to devote their remaining resources to the establishment of what he called a "center of operations that would allow us to enlarge the residential group and to extend the time that non-residential members might visit headquarters and take part in the Program." Thus, in 1959, the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions was born. Early in the Center's existence, it entered into an agreement with the Encyclopaedia Britannica to undertake an ambitious project to revise the structure of the encyclopaedia. The project, scheduled for completion in time for the Britannica's 200th anniversary in 1968, called for the production of fifteen overarching 'Roof Articles' that would address the Political Order, the Economic Order, Religion, Philosophy, the Technological Order, the Legal Order, Nature, Human Nature, Education, Communications, Mathematics and Logic, the Social Order, the World Order, the Fine Arts, and Medicine. While the proposed restructuring of Britannica was not completed in time for the anniversary, the Roof Article project did result in the publication of Britannica Perspectives in 1968. The issues addressed by the Roof Articles, combined with the Basic Issues program, set the agenda for the Center's dialogues in the years to come. Over the years Hutchins tried to explain this unusual institution, the Center. In a speech at the University of Chicago in 1967, he described it this way: "The Center consists of twenty-five men who meet every day in a Spanish style building known to the members as El Parthenon. The men, one of whom is a woman, are writers, philosophers, scientists, social scientists, and lawyers, with two bishops and two ex-college presidents thrown in... It is not a think tank hired to do the planning that public agencies or private businesses cannot or will not do for themselves. Neither is it a refuge for scholars who want to get away from it all and do their research and write their books. It is an organized group, rather than a collection of individuals. It is an Guide to the Center for the Study Mss 18 3 of Democratic Institutions Collection organization of men who are free of any obligation except to join in an effort to understand the subjects they have selected for study. It is a community. And, since its members are trying to think together, it may be called, at least in potentiality, an intellectual community." Guided by Hutchins' vision of truly interdisciplinary discourse, this intellectual community