It was from 1936 that Fosdick became the president that the Foundation officially listed humanities and social sciences as its focus. He is a lawyer himself and served as the president of 12, which has a great influence on the work direction of Rockefeller Foundation. After the Great Depression and on the eve of World War II, the whole western society felt a sense of crisis. People have witnessed the economic collapse and social crisis in the rapid development of productive forces, as well as the extreme poverty of the broad masses with great wealth; Realizing that material wealth and scientific development not only may not benefit mankind, but may also be a disaster, the 1920s and 1930s were a period of great development of social sciences. Fosdick belongs to this kind of person with strong consciousness. He constantly stressed that if we can't find solutions to the increasingly serious problems in complex social and interpersonal relationships, medicine and science will lose their significance in this world. He declared loudly that conquering nature is more dangerous than man's ability to control himself. Therefore, he advocates expanding the scope of public welfare undertakings, paying attention to social problems and interpersonal relationships, and trying his best to implement the work of the foundation during the term of 12. Prior to this, in 1922, Rockefeller established the Laura Spearman Rockefeller Memorial Fund with a total investment of 74 million US dollars to commemorate his late wife Laura, which laid the foundation for sponsoring social science. This is the dominant idea of its director Ramo. Lammer majored in psychology. As soon as he took office, he decided to take social science as the central task and carried it out with great enthusiasm. The fund has only existed for seven years, and the allocation for developing social sciences has reached $4,654,380,000. The most important achievement is the establishment of the Social Science Research Association in 1923. Today, this organization is still the most important and authoritative organization in the United States to promote the development, exchange and cooperation of social sciences. Its research objects in social sciences include Brookings Institution, Pacific International Society, National Bureau of Economic Research, special projects of University of Chicago, University of Wisconsin, Harvard University, and the Institute of Interpersonal Relations of Yale University. In addition, there are individual studies by universities and individuals in many European countries. After the Rockefeller Foundation took over the Laura Memorial Fund from 65438 to 0928, the work in social science was inherited together with its funding model, and the Social Science Department was established. The first thing this department encountered was the stock market crash of 1929, and the Great Depression that followed. In the early 1930s, the Foundation allocated $6.5438+0.5 million to alleviate the pain caused by the economic depression. The Board of Directors appointed a special group to be responsible for the use of this money, including funding the Brookings Institution, the Social Science Research Council, the American Urban Association and other organizations to study the economic and social phenomena at that time, and also funding the government's National Bureau of Economic Research with $5 million.
After Fosdick took office, the Foundation gained knowledge and unanimously decided to take social science as a new breakthrough. There are three priorities: economic stability, public administration and international relations.
The first formulation is "economic stability" rather than general economics, which is targeted. Its leading idea is that economists in the past put forward various assumptions and theories, and their imagination was enough, but the research on evidence and induction was insufficient. Since there are advanced research methods, we should advocate replacing conjecture with scientifically verified facts and knowledge. There are two research directions: improving the statistical records of economic cycles in order to find out their various causes more accurately; Explore practical measures to reduce the harm caused by economic instability. In the past 20 years, the foundation has allocated millions of dollars for this research. On the basis of inheriting the above-mentioned Laura Memorial Fund, the recipients have made greater progress, including relevant departments, projects and individuals of universities at home and abroad, and the list is endless. Among them, the League of Nations Financial Information Center, the Institute of Statistics of Oxford University, the Department of Applied Economics of Cambridge University, the research on the financial and economic consequences of the government of Columbia University, the research on sociology, anthropology and psychology of the University of Chicago, the Food Research Institute of Stanford University, and the long-term problem of national resource allocation in the process of economic structural changes in the United States are more prominent. The Economic Research Institute of Nankai University in China 1928 became the focus of Rockefeller Foundation's funding in Asia shortly after its establishment. Therefore, it has made great progress and made achievements in research projects linked with practice. On the other hand, although the foundation emphasizes the combination with reality, it is not eager for quick success. For example, since 1940, the Foundation has funded research on American economic history through the Social Science Research Council, with a view to "truly understanding" the causes, paths and significance of American economic changes. This donation has greatly improved the level of American economic history in the past ten years, making it a recognized discipline (the study of economic history was also Carnegie's earliest project, and Carnegie Institute selected a group of historians and economists to write American economic history just after its establishment 1902, but it did not last).
In administration, the main purpose of the foundation project is to provide qualified staff for the government to meet the rapid expansion of the government after Roosevelt's "New Deal" in the 1940s. For this reason, the Foundation donated money to a series of universities to cultivate such talents, especially the pioneering plans such as establishing a graduate school of administration at Harvard University and setting up a training program for in-service civil servants at American University in Washington. During the 30 years from the 1920s to 1950s, this donation amounted to 1 1 ten thousand dollars, not including other personal donations. Another special task is to establish a public administration exchange office in Chicago, which provides opportunities for civil servants of various government departments to exchange work experience and research results across industries, and plays an irreplaceable role in improving the quality of civil servants, broadening their horizons, and promoting "team spirit and establishing certain professional ethics standards."
The foundation takes a long-term view when funding social science and humanities research. The relevant person in charge of the foundation realized that this kind of research could not achieve immediate results, and unlike natural science, many issues could not have accepted opinions and had to be debated for a long time, but they were convinced that a deeper understanding of people's values and interpersonal relationships was the key to human progress and happiness, so they did not hesitate to allocate huge funds for such projects. In the United States, an important project initiated by the Foundation is the study of law and political philosophy, which started at 1952. The purpose is to help a new generation of scholars who grew up after the war to deepen their research in this field. Its contents range from re-understanding the classical political philosophy theories of Plato, Aristotle, Locke and Burke to questioning the contemporary religious and economic forces and the concepts of freedom and justice. With the support of this project, a large number of outstanding political and ideological scholars and works emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, and 40 important works were published in ten years. Even in the 1960' s, the foundation began to support some frontier topics, such as international law of outer space and outer space in world politics.
Literature and art are also the objects of the foundation's funding, with early emphasis on classical aspects. For example, some famous universities such as Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Michigan and so on. In art, archaeology, ancient history, classical literature and art museums, as well as archaeological excavations in Greece, Rome and Egypt, it has received a lot of funding. After the 1930s, this orientation was gradually changed, and the focus of funding was changed to encourage artistic innovation and outstanding talents in this field, as well as art groups, schools and other institutions. The contribution of the Foundation to the development of American drama in 1930s and 1940s is obvious to all. Funded the activities of the drama major that flourished in the university at that time, and funded young playwrights, directors and stage designers through the National Drama Congress and the drama guild under the American Writers' Union, 17 years benefited 100 people. There is also a plan to support young writers and artists who have just started studying, many of whom later became famous artists. Some exchange activities are also among them. For example, the famous German dramatist Brecht 1934' s visit to the United States was funded by the Foundation. The most striking thing is to donate more than $6.5438+0.5 million to Lincoln Art Center in new york to build it into one of the largest comprehensive performing arts facilities in the United States. Other successful projects include: donating money to the American Museum of Modern Art to set up a film library ($2 million in a few years), and co-financing American TV education channels with Carnegie Foundation and Ford Foundation.
After World War II, the Hoover Institution and many universities such as Yale, California, Washington, and Chicago took the lead in obtaining funding for library construction and file preservation. During the period of 1956, the restoration of the ancient Mayan city in Tikal, Guatemala was also funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to the University of Pennsylvania Museum.
1986 during the bicentennial of the founding of the United States, the foundation supported the recording of 7,000 sets of American music anthologies, which were selectively given to libraries, music schools and other non-profit organizations, calling them "gifts for the American people".
By the 50th anniversary of the establishment of 1963, the cumulative expenditure of the Foundation on social sciences was equivalent to half of that of medical and natural sciences in the same period.
In the 1990s, the Foundation established a prize to support American independent film, audio-visual and film artists, and the prize was expanded from 65438 to 0992.