Institute for Pacific Relations. Founded in 1925 by Stanford University president Ray Lyman Wilbur, the businessman Frank Atherton, and Merle Davis, who, like many others, was formerly linked to the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), the Institute for Pacific Relations (IPR) sought to advance understanding of Asia through conferences with Asian leaders, annual meetings, research, and publications. By 1939, eleven national IPR councils had been established in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, the
Philippines, the Soviet Union, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and France. From the start, the American council exerted the greatest influence because of its size (nearly fourteen hundred members by 1939) and fund‐raising abilities. In the 1930s, under Edward C. Carter, secretary of the American council and later secretary‐general of IPR itself, IPR became the premier organization for the study of Asia. It published
Pacific Affairs and
Eastern Survey; gave scholarly research grants; and provided reliable information to scholars, the government, and the public at a time when such information was scarce. The respected Asian scholar Owen Lattimore, who edited
Pacific Affairs from 1933 to 1941, brought to the post a wealth of experience; insatiable curiosity; and impressive language proficiency in Chinese, Mongolian, and Russian.
Despite its nonpartisan beginnings, IPR became embroiled in controversy in the 1940s, when some members resigned over what they considered its left‐leaning slant. Principal among the disgruntled was the textile importer Alfred Kohlberg, who charged Lattimore and others with turning the organization into a front for communist propaganda. Senator Joseph
McCarthy picked up these charges in the early 1950s, particularly targeting Lattimore, who had moved to Johns Hopkins University. IPR never recovered; its membership declined, and it ended in 1960. In its heyday, however, IPR stood high among international nongovernmental organizations seeking to expand knowledge of Asia and to bring scholarly expertise to bear on the shaping of international relations.
See also
Anticommunism;
Cold War;
Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Asia;
YMCA and YWCA.
Bibliography
John N. Thomas , The Institute of Pacific Relations: Asian Scholars and American Politics, 1974.
Robert P. Newman , Owen Lattimore and the “Loss” of China, 1992.
T. Christopher Jespersen
