FRANK BROWNING The Tensions :1 Resolution .of Confli Scholars ponder peace in a Center with a history of controversy, non-conformity and part-time management THE CENTER for ,Research on Conflict Resolution (CRCR) for nine years has struggled without money, permanent head- 'quarters, faculty support or a permanent director. It has probably only survived because its handful of prestigious researchers have a combined international reputation greater than that of almost any University depart- ment. This fall, CRCR moved from a warehouse downtown into what might be permanent of- fices in West Quad. And at their last meeting, the Regents appointed a full-time CRCR director, Prof. Robert Hefner, a social psychologist who had been both a researcher and administrator for years. CRCR's supporters hope permanent of- fices and a full-time-organizer will bring some stability. CRCR has always been interested in that area of peace research known as "conflict reso- lution." But its own history has rarely been peaceful. CRCR has broken many of the norms of contemporary American academia; its af- fairs have been stormy and convulsive: --CRCR was organized in 1959, at the height of the Cold War, when its orientation toward international "peace research" was al- most automatically labelled "pinko Com- munist." -Its perspective was not only passionately interdisciplinary but quantitative and behav- ioral in 1959, when behaviorism was not yet a powerful force in University departments. -It failed to get spirited backing from the political science department, whose chairman, the late Prof. James Pollack was promoting a special, project of his own, the propgsed Arthur Vandenberg Center for Foreign Affairs. Creation of the CRCR seemed to kill any chances for the Vandenberg Center. - -Its founders, notably Prof. Kenneth Bould- ing, formerly of the economics department, were not particularly tactful in answering the criticisms of CRCR's opponents in the faculty. -Lacking any strong bureaucratic ties with any University academic department, CRCR wielded little power in the University. -Administration of CRCR was half-heart- edly handled by scholars with major interests in other fields. BOULDING AND now Prof. emeritus Robert Angell founded CRCR'with a core of behav- ioral scientists interested in quantitative re- search in the resolution of international con- flict. Explains Angell, who was chairman of CRCR's executive committee from 1959 to 1961, "The original focus was twofold: to bring social science resources to bear on the general problem of conflict, and to maintain inter- national relations as the major interest while not excluding any other research which might throw light on the problem of conflict." Most of the Center's work in its early years was concentrated in the study of international policy. As its current program review explains, "In effect, the Center began with one con- ceptual point of reference from which creative scholars were invited to move out in any direction. This can be expressed, oversimply but usefully, as a single variable in any inter- national conflict: the probability of war." The first investigations probed the range of kinds of parties to -conflict, "from nation- states all the way to "parts" of a single human being in intrapsychic conflict." A second inter- est in the ways of conducting conflict has resulted in a "growing conviction that social conflict can best be understood if its opposite - cooperation, integration, love - is also under investigation," the report says. A breakdown of CRCR's work includes six areas of international research: -general theories about conflict itself, -the conditions and policy necessary for transforming, a "nationalist" doctrine to an international outlook, -the Cold War, -the economic consequences of arms con- trol and disarmament, . -development of international agencies and procedures, -problems of developing nations. In addition since in the early 1960's when lunch counter boycotts at Montgomery evol- ved into flaming pawnshops at Detroit, CRCR increased its research on domestic conflict. A project directed by Prof. J. David Singer of the pglitical science department, empirically analyzes structural and behavioral correlates of historical ars from 1815 to 1945. The study is aimed at correlating factors of social organizations and internal economic activity between nations during and prior to international conflicts during' that period. Another study completed in 1966 by Prof. Arthur Mendel of the' history department relates Soviet ideological changesinpart to invasion of the Soviet physical sciences by new theories generated in the West. The find- ing as interpreted as foreshadowing a con-, vergence of ideology between Russia and the West, based in part on shared science. WORKING ON a $98,000 grand from the Ford Foundation, Dr. Irvin Katz, professor of psychology,, has directed the Center's "Pro- giam of Race RelationslResearch" between the University and Tuskegee Institute. The pro- gram is part of the University's overall "sister- institutioi" relationship witl4 Tuskegee and is primarily designed to provide CRCR research- ers data.on racial conflict in the South while enlarging the research resources available to Tuskegee. As a part of the program, Tuskegee will soon be tied into the University's comput- ing services via long distance terminals to the Institute. Since CRCR was organized to facilitate the work of individual scholars, no center-wide program of research was preconceived. The loose nature of the organization has Ansured an interdisciplinary characted, but it has spawned internal administrative problems and has drawn numerous skeptical sideglances from the rest of the academic community. "It's very difficult for an interdisciplinary center of any kind to operate and maintain itself in deference to the departmental nature of the University," Angell explained. Director-designate Hefner agrees. "For ex- ample, fellowships in the graduate school are allocated to departments, not to us." The result has been that for the Center to draw graduate students into course sequences in conflict reso- lution-taught in several departments by Cen- ter professors-it must depend on each depart- ment to set aside fellowships for that purpose. No real consistent cooperation has shown up. Since the Center's professors work only on a half-time basis at most, difficulties some- times arise, Hefner claims, with departments unwilling to share their scholars. Singer is one of the few political scientists who have been with CRCR since its inception. A behaviorialist who has traditionally had a large student following. Singer locates many of the Center's troubles in the morass of fac- ulty politics. He points to the Center's attempt to estab lish a graduate program in conflict resolution cooperatively with several academic depart- ments. "The program had high promise, but it never got off the ground. Political Science never cooperated; Economics worked only with Boulding, and Sociology was almost as bad as Political Science.' IN AN EFFORT to gain much-needed political A science support, Singer explains, the Center named as director Dr. Charles McClellan, a TZte .tomb To be resolved . r ARPA turned a Center request down a year ago, some new hopes have been revived for a grant later this year. (The first action the Center took in 1959 was a resolution prohibiting acceptance of classified research. Since then it has done a "substantial amount of government and De- fense Department research," none of which was classified. An ARPA grant would be un- classified.) THER SOURCES of support have been sketchy throughout CRCR's history. When the Ford Foundation made a $3 million in- stitutional grant to the University in 1961, the "THE CENTER has probably only survived because its hand- ful of prestigious researchers have a combined international reputation greater than that of almost any University de- partment." ..n .....asss behaviorist from the University of Southern California in Summer, 1966. A man with "impeccable credentials" in his own profession, he should have won the local department's good will-or so Singer, Boulding, Angell, and fiefner hoped. Instead Political Science didn't bother even to offer him an of- fic, a matter of protocal which Singer claims offended McClellan. McClellan only stayed at the Center a year, most of the people now a$ the Center euphe- mistically discuss his directorship as some- thing "that just didn't work out." Writing in a generally pessimistic tone in Winter, 1967, McClellan said he felt the Cen- ter's "set of objectives has become diffused in recent years" adding that "additional activities and interests have been rationalized and in- troduced in the Center." Those "interests" were Katz' race relations program. Most of McClellan's description carries a note of imminent doom about lack, of money, expiration of contracts, and the infrequency with which staff members appeared at the Center. But the most serious problem he noted is the lack of "resources to generate anything" beyond currently existing programs. He pre- dicted that the organization would remain at a "low level of activity for the next four years" and that the Center was "'broke' in the sense that it has no means with the funds at hand to undertake new projects, to attract new re- search, or to underwrite any enterprise for anybody." Things haven't changed much at the Center in that respect.; The only money available for administration is some $22,000 which goes to- ward office salaries, limited secretarial ex- penses, and minimal office costs. All other monies from foundation grants cover research Center won $170,000 of it for new projects. Again when Ford made a similar $4 million grant, the Center got only $150,000. "The allocation of those Ford funds was intellectuallyt reprehensible," Dr. S i n g e r charges. After announcementof the fund allo- cation in 1966, Assistant Director William'; Barth sent a memorandum to LSA Dean Wil- liam Haber 'charging a "lack of commitment on the part of the faculty for the development of a visible program at the Center." Haber followed in an unsuccessful effort to extract a further commitment of Ford Funds for CRCR. Instead he received only assurances that the Center would -be able to apply for grants from $1.75 million: Ford had made available tq the University for comparative international study. "The groups distributing that money were and continue to be fr'om the University's area studies institutes," Hefner says. "Groups which are not in area studies, like ours, have gotten relatively small amounts of money." Hefner's interpretation is that area study centers-like the Center for Southeast Asian Studies or the Center'for Russian Studies- are much more closely related to specific de- partments that CRCR and that they conse- quently get preferential financial treatment. Prof. George Grassmuck, now Assistant Vice President for International Affairs in the Academic Affairs office, worked closely with the faculty committee allocating the original Ford funds. He is very careful in describing the Center's support and financial operation: "They have more difficulties than many other operations do due to the mixed sources of their funds and due to their floating nature within University administration." The Center ra -rt fiio nill t Aarla 4.min ffarsis m erned by a Regental committee, receives some money from LSA (the rest from foundations), and its members teach in several LSA depart- ments. "The difference with the Center is that its people have a grand idea that conflict resolu- tion is important to mankind. The Center is more doctrine oriented-it has a mission- and sometimes this can conflict with another academic discipline more than the (cultural- geographic) work of an Area Studies center would," Grassmuch explains. Dean Haber explains his support of the Center is due largely to the fact that "it's out in left field-trying to do something nobody else is doing. (The only other research group doing similar Work to the Center's is the Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway.)? WHETHER THE University - and more specifically the faculties of th Economics, Political Science, and History departments- will increase its support of the Center still remains a moot point. It has at least gotten a campus location where it will be inacontact with faculty and students. For the last two years,, it has been headquartered in a decaying brick building over a mile from campus on Fourth Street, where neither faculty nor students frequented. It is that which Singer calls devestating to the Center.. Most other Center members agree with him, adding that the organization's phy- sical location had functionally eliminated es- sential informal contact among scholars and graduate students. Composition of the departments from which Center members come has changed sub- stantially since the early 60's, and behaviorial- ists now have a much stronger'voice in policy decisions. Similarly, according to Hefner, federal agencies are gaining ,a greater propensity to depend on solid work in social science in mat- ters of policy decision than ever before. If so, then the Center should stand a somewhat bet- ter chance for snagging government funding of its work and for having an increased inpast on state department policy. ' Yet probably the best thing the Center has going for it is its quarterly journal, the Journal for Conflict Resolution, established in 1957. One of its kind in academic publishing, the Journal has an international circulation and is made up of peace research done by scholars throughout the country. Charles McClellan's evaluation of the Journal in 1967 is probably still both it and the Center's most apt description: "The Journal has had an enormous effect in creating .the impression of great research strength. My experience is that visitors come to our building, often after detouring several hundred miles to get here, in the hope of "seeing" the research operation on the ground. "I can do little more than point vaguely to the rear of the quarters." The quarters have changed, but any broad- ',. Univm,.ity em mniuman+ is Millij nr,a.a &....