The Center of International Studies

ALMOST twenty years have gone by since the Yale Institute of International Studies moved to Princeton and became the Center of International Studies. The first Center offices were in what is now the Pyne Administration Building. Later, Corwin Hall was built on what was then its location on the corner of Prospect Street and Washington Road. The new Center of International Studies, regarded at the time as intrusive by some, took over the basement floor.

The Center offices are still there, moved some several hundred feet back off Washington Road along with the rest of Corwin Hall. Along one side of a brightly lit, busy corridor is the office of the present director, Cyril Black, and a room where the Center secretaries, whose accuracy and speed is a source of great satisfaction to Center staff, do their work. Opposite is a lounge stacked with newspapers and magazines from all over the world. A giant coffee percolator in the corner signals a welcome with its red light. The individual offices for Center associates stretch down the corridor and around the corner.

The story of how the Center came from Yale to Princeton is one of those institutional melodramas which are usually acted out behind the scenes. Sometimes the details, the crucial turning points, may not be revealed for years. When reputations and careers are at stake, who wants to tell tales?

The Institute of International Studies was founded at Yale in 1936. And until the move to Princeton in 1951, the group at Yale actively and vigorously engaged in research. Some outstanding people in the field of International Relations-lawyers, government officials, and academicians were associated with the Institute.

The original founders were Nicholas Spykman, who began his career as a Dutch journalist in the East Indies, and Frederick Dunn, formerly a legal adviser to the Department of State. Spykman was the first director. In the beginning, the Institute was heavily policy-oriented. Although research was done primarily by academics, there was an early commitment to relevant problems to public policy…