Berman, Edward H. (1978) “Review: The Foundations’ Interest in Africa” in History of Education Quarterly. V. 18, no.4. pages 461-470.
Berman is reviewing Kenneth King’s book, Pan-Africanism and Education: a stidy of race philanbthropy and education in the southern states of America and East Africa as well as E. Jefferson Murphy’s book, Creative philanthropy: Carnegie corporation and Africa, 1953-1973.
Berman comes right out and mentions what the shift in critical perspective was that came about when these two books were being written (and just before his chapters in Arnove’s 1980 book, Philanthropy and cultural imperialism, were published) – WATERGATE and the irreverence to ask to hard question that would arise in America post-Nixon, post-Watergate
page 461: “Such investigations should come as no surprise in these post-Watergate days, when scholars and the lay public are at last willing to ask the relevant, and often irreverent, questions about influential American institutions that heretofore have escaped public scrutiny.”
Berman criticizes king for not offering up some of the very history about Phelps-Stokes Fund (King’s focus organization) that Berman would include in his chapter in Arnove – that is, detail how PSF’s policy of Tuskegee-izing Afriacn education, through inculcating second class status understandings into students.
p. 463: “In 1919 a request for an African education survey was making its way through the North Atlantic mission network, and it was decided that the most appropriate group to undertake such a survey was the Phelps-Stokes Fund, the recognized leader in the diagnosis of the educational problems of underdeveloped peoples. . . . The first Phelps-Stokes Fund educational commission to Africa set sail in 1920. Thomas Jesse Jones was chairman of the group.”
The PSF group quickly concluded that the prescription for British education efforts on behalf of Africans in its colonies ought to match those found in PSF-supported communities and programs in the American South – derived from Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute ideas about educating Black Americans.
On the second commission – the one that went to East Africa, Central Africa, and southern Africa, Jones brought along James Dillard, President of the Jeanes Fund. Not surprisingly, the establishment of Jeanes Schools became a first order conclusion of the Commission’s reports, which were eagerly soaked up by colonial and missionary authorities.
p. 464: “King indicates how Jones and the Phelps-Stokes Fund attempted to cultivate the ‘safe’ African, one who would accept the realities of the colonial situation and who would be willing to adjust himself and his people to the necessity of accepting an educational system that would not provide the skills whereby Africans cold alter their situations. Those Africans who Jones felt could be co-opted were brought to the United States on Phelps-Stokes Fund fellowships, where their educational programs at ‘appropriate’ (read, those in the Tuskegee orbit) institutions could be monitored. With some frequency, however, Phelps-Stokes Fund-sponsored African students in the United States recognized that the Tuskegee philosophy effectively precluded any modification of the colonial status quo; their desertion of their mentor’s principles and their sponsoring organization are documented by King.”
Berman then shifts to Murphy’s story about Carnegie corporation efforts in Africa. Again, Berman is going over territory he would write about in his Arnove chapters. He mentions that the President and the Secretary of Carnegie Corporation would travel to East and southern Africa in the mid-1920s to investigate educational opportunities for indigenous Africans, and come away willing to offer $500,000 to education efforts in Africa in 1927. Most of this money would be spent in South Africa.
Link proto-apartheid policies of the South African government of the day (Smuts & Hertzog, leap-frogging each other as Prime Minister).
In more recent efforts, Alan Pizer is credited as kick-starting Carnegie education programs in Africa when he joined Carnegie Corporation in 1953. By 1958, Pizer was the President of Carnegie Corporation, and pushed for greater involvement as well as greater coordination with other funding agencies (Ford, Rockefeller, et al), colonial offices, and multinational organizations in Africa.
African Liaison Committee – an American counterpart effort to the British Inter-University Council, through which American interest in higher education in Africa could be manipulated/channeled.
Ashby Commission – 1959 – undertook major survey of educational needs in Nigeria on the cusp of independence. Manpower development was the decided upon first focus, along with teacher training, and other ‘practical, pragmatic, utilitarian’ pursuits. This study was where the Princeton economist, Frederick Harbison, constructed the analytic schema that would be in use through the 1970s to measure manpower needs so as to formulate training and education programs.
Murphy spends much time, says Berman, describing the teacher training efforts supported by Carnegie Corporation in the 1960s – especially those located at Columbia University’s Teachers College.
Berman – apparently acknowledging Murphy himself put this forth – describes Creative philanthropy as not being a rigorous evaluation or comprehensive scholarly analysis of Carnegie programs. In fact, it is the Carnegie Corporation itself that commissioned Murphy’s work.
Berman’s sense of what is needed to better Murphy’s effort:
(1) the raison d’etre for the American foundation presence in African (and in Latin American and Asian) education.
a. Was this presence spurred by humanitarian impulses;
b. by a reflex action brought about by a Cold War mentality;
c. by the desire to insure that the leaders of independent African nations would not be overtly hostile to the interests of the United States
d. by the liberal impulse of American society as suggested by Robert Packenham’s Liberal America and the Third World?
There is evidence to suggest that all of these reasons may have influenced foundation personnel.
(2) The identities and ideologies of the decision-makers within the foundations regarding overseas (and domestic) activities. What were their criteria for focusing on this or that area and ignoring a third locale? The movement of high level executives between government posts in Washington and foundation posts in New York is well-documented; did their Weltanschauung alter or remain the same as they moved from important Washington posts to influential foundation positions?
(3) The reasons why and the way in which the major foundations created institutional links between major universities in the United States and in Africa to further the foundations’ interests in African education. We needs to examine the relationship between the Carnegie-created Africa (now Overseas) Liaison Committee of the American Council on Education and the Inter-University Council for Higher Education Overseas in London. . . .
Berman ends point #3 above with mention of the African-American Institute, yet another story he’d tell in his chapters in Philanthropy and cultural imperialism.
