Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power

Abstract

Foundations of the American Century assesses the relationship between U.S. foreign policy and three major American philanthropic foundations—the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York—covering the period from the foundations' early efforts to combat U.S. isolationism during the interwar years through their role in promoting democratic peace theory after the Cold War. The most valuable portions of the book are the four chapters that discuss the foundations' roles in creating area studies programs across the United States. These chapters are original because they look at the United States but also because they examine how the organizations' networks extended into Indonesia, Nigeria, and Chile, and the part they played during political crises from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s. Inderjeet Parmar finds that the foundations funded centrist, liberal scholars who were ill-equipped to confront (if not downright sympathetic toward) the authoritarian turns that these countries took during that period.