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. The group worked from the offices of the American Geographical Society of New York.[1]
Mezes's senior colleagues were geographer Isaiah Bowman, journalist Walter Lippmann, historian James Shotwell, and lawyer David Hunter Miller.[1]. Others included James Truslow Adams and Walter Weyl.
Members of The Inquiry, later renamed the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, traveled to the Paris Peace Conference in January 1919[2], accompanying Wilson aboard the USS George Washington to France.
Some members would later establish the Council on Foreign Relations, which is independent of the government.
Paul Monroe, a professor of history at Columbia University, was head of The Inquiry. He drew on his experience in the Philippines to assess the educational needs of developing areas such as Albania, Turkey and central Africa. Presenting educational development as instrumental to nation-building and socioeconomic development, Monroe recommended the implementation of a progressive curriculum - with an emphasis on practical, adult, and teacher training - in a national system of education, as a basis for self-development, except in Africa. His approach shaped American cooperation with developing countries in the 1920s and modernization efforts during the 1920s-1930s.[3]