Gaither Report

The Gaither Report, prepared by a study committee and published in 1949, set out the Ford Foundation’s goals for the organization’s future growth. This excerpt from the report includes the preface and the introduction which outline the committee’s assessment of the problems facing humanity and the ways in which the Ford Foundation could best use its resources to address them. Among the committee’s suggestions are programs that would provide policy makers with research in a variety of fields, fund economic and social scientific research, improve equality in educational opportunity, and encourage academic exchange. In a later section of the report, the study committee suggests that “bringing scholars, scientists, writers, creative thinkers, and artists to the United States from other countries for limited periods of time can serve to cross-fertilize ideas and bring new conceptions to many fields, and could help vitalize and enrich our culture.”

The full report can be found at the end of the history section on the foundation’s website.