Institute of Pacific Relations

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The Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) was established in 1925 to provide a forum for discussion of Asian problems and relations between Asia and the West. To promote greater knowledge of the Far East, the IPR supported conferences, research projects and publications, and had a quarterly journal Pacific Affairs.

IPR was financed by important grants from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and other major corporations. In the early fifties, the IPR came under what one author called "a relentless attack from the American right",^[1] which included a lengthy investigation by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. This controversy resulted in legal battles and reduced funding for IPR, and the Institute ceased operations in 1960.

IPR was founded in the spirit of "Wilsonian internationalism," 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. IPR was an international institution, with "National Councils" in the U. S., Australia, Britain, China, Japan and 10 other countries.^[2]

Many of the members of IPR were also among those referred to as the China Hands--a group of American diplomats known for their expertise on China and the Far East. As the Chinese Civil War began to go in the favor of the Communists, some among the China Hands recommended that a Communist China should be accepted as inevitable, and that the U.S. should open relations with Mao Zedong to prevent China from allying itself too closely with the Soviet Union. This led to accusations by the China Lobby that policies drafted by the China Hands had "lost" China to Communism, and to charges that a Communist conspiracy was at work among the China Hands and within the Institute of Pacific Relations.

The attacks on the Institute began with a study by Alfred Kohlberg, an American businessman who had owned a textile firm in prewar China. After finding what he believed were Communist sympathies in IPR, Kohlberg first published an 80 page report, then launched a publicity campaign against the Institute. This eventually led to Congressional investigations of IPR.^[3]

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 very 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. It was revealed 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:

"The IPR itself was like a specialized political flypaper in its attractive power for Communists.[…] The IPR has been considered by the American Communist Party and by Soviet officials as an instrument of Communist policy, propaganda and military intelligence. The IPR disseminated and sought to popularize false information including information originating from Soviet and Communist sources.[…] The IPR was a vehicle used by the Communists to orient American far eastern policies toward Communist objectives."

The accusations of a subversive conspiracy were never substantiated, although it was clear that IPR scholars had at times been naïve in their statements regarding Communism and Stalinist Russia. Owen Lattimore was charged with perjuring himself before the SISS in 1952. After many of the counts were rejected by a Federal Judge and one of the witnesses confessed to perjury, the case was dropped in 1955. 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. The legal actions to regain tax-exempt status lasted until 1959, with the final judgment rejecting all the Internal Revenue Service's allegations.^[4] Despite the outcome, the IPR's finances were exhausted by the protracted litigation, and the institute dissolved in 1960.

[edit] Sources and notes

• Hearings before the Senate subcommittee investigating the Institute of Pacific Relations
• National Archives and Records Administration, Senate Internal Security Subcommittee