CENTER FOR CULTURAL AND TECHNICAL INTER CHANGE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST (East-West Center) MONDAY, JANUARY 8, 1962 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE DEPARTMENT OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 10:30 a.m., in room G-3, the Capitol, the Honorable Wayne L. Hays (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Chairman HAYS. The subcommittee will come to order. We are meeting this morning to hear from the Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Honorable Philip H. Coombs. As you know, four members of the subcommittee held some hearings in Hawaii on the East-West Cultural Center, mainly due to some complaints we had heard from various Members of Congress who requested that we, having legislative jurisdiction, look into this activity. We have quite a few pages of testimony, the last of which only got here this morning. We thought before Dr. Coombs left for an extended trip that he might like to comment on the testimony adduced in Hawaii. We asked him if he would like to and he indicated he would, and that is the purpose of the meeting. He is leaving day after tomorrow for some weeks and not knowing exactly what we would get into in the way of hearings we thought we would like to get this matter completed and report written perhaps before he gets back. So, Mr. Coombs, we will be happy to hear from you at this time. STATEMENT OF HON. PHILIP H. COOMBS, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF STATE Mr. COOMBS. Mr. Chairman, I very much appreciate the inconvenience to which your committee members have gone in scheduling an early hearing, and I want to express at the outset the gratitude of the Department of State and myself personally for the very constructive work which the committee has been doing with respect to the East-West Center. The document which you produced November 1, 1961, is an exceedingly useful compilation of the pertinent documents on the Center. The trip which you have recently taken to Hawaii-and I did have the opportunity to read the first day's transcript which came in a little earlier-obviously was a stimulus to the Center and I think should be very helpful to your colleagues in Congress and certainly to those of us in the Department of State who are concerned with the Center. I think we all recognize that the Center is a rather unusual enterprise, not only for a university to become involved in, but for the Federal Government to become involved in. Thus, we have to learn as we go along how to make this Center as effective as possible in the national interest. In the 10 months that I have been in office I have enjoyed excellent cooperation with all of the officials of the university and the Center. I think there is a mood on the part of the Center and the university and the Department to work together in close partnership and tackle some of the yet unresolved problems. What surprises me, frankly, is not that there are some unresolved problems still in this area, but that there are not more than there are and that such remarkable progress has been made in such short time. I know some of the members of Dr. Clark Kerr's committee of consultants told me when they came back that as experienced people on university campuses they were very struck with the speed with which the Center got into action. They said that in their view the campuses they had lived on on the mainland could never have produced such action so rapidly. I think that the principal officials responsible for getting things underway at the Center, particularly Dr. Snyder, Dr. Turnbull, and Mr. Wachter, deserve particular commendation for the skill and devotion they have given to the Center. It is one of the most remarkable instances in American education, I think, of rapid translation of a good idea into action. After all, the first appropriation for the Center did not come until August 1960. The first contract between the Department of State and the Center was not consummated until October 1960. Thus in the 15 ensuing months there has had to be a very great deal of constructive effort to have 231 students from over 20 countries actually on the campus now. I think that the progress report submitted by the Center dated September 1961 is an impressive record of actions taken. Having said that, it seems to me we still need to focus on some of the unfinished business, some of the unresolved problems and opportunities which will require the close attention of the officials of the Center and the Department of State in the months ahead. You, I think, are generally familiar with the background of the actions taken by the Department of State since I came into office in March. Let me review very briefly how the situation looked to me at that time and what steps we have taken, and then suggest some of the steps we propose to take in the immediate future. When I came into office the situation was that an appropriation request had already been submitted to Congress for an additional $9,693,000 as the second appropriation for the Center. There had already been a $10 million appropriation and that had been written into the contract in October 1960 between the Department and the university. As the official in the executive branch responsible for justifying this new appropriation to Congress, I frankly felt that I was not yet prepared to make a good justification, so I requested Mr. Rooney of the House Subcommittee on Appropriations for the opportunity to defer consideration of this particular item until I could get myself better informed. I had certain initial reactions from what I could learn about the Center, and these reactions tended to be confirmed when I spent 3 days at the Center and the university discussing matters with all interested parties. It seemed to me, first, that with a few months of actual operating experience behind them, now was the critical time to reappraise the general plan and to make any changes desired in the direction of clarification of the program, a sharper focus of the program, and any adjustments in administrative and other arrangements. I was convinced that the Center had a very good potential for serving the national interest, because there were in Hawaii many favorable and unique factors, but the problem was how to capitalize on these favorable factors and how to develop quality and distinction and a high reputation for this Center. I was concerned also that the speed with which the original plan proposed to have the Center grow might not be compatible with the building of quality into the institution from the outset. I felt that perhaps a somewhat lower rate of growth would result in a better and more efficient use of funds. I felt also that the plan as originally contemplated in the university's plan was perhaps too diverse. It stretched not only over the evident strong points in the university's setup but also embraced less strong points, and if this Center was to be built into a top quality operation it had to lead from strength and not from weakness. Therefore, it seemed to me that the program they undertook ought to focus on the strength and uniqueness of the Hawaiian situation. The Center should not get a reputation as a second-class operation in a field where the university had not yet had a chance to build national distinction. I thought also that the program ought to take into account the priority needs, especially the manpower needs, of the Asian countries that could not be met by those countries in their own institutions and could not be met by other American institutions or European institutions. I felt further, from what knowledge I had of the university world, that if this new and unique kind of institution was to grow in a creative way, it needed more independence from the detailed procedures and direction of the university itself. A university that has generally an institutional function is one thing and requires certain procedures and salaries and the like. The Center, however, is not a university and hence can have more administrative flexibility; it should not be bound by the practices and, if you will, the folklore of the university. Chairman HAYS. Secretary Coombs, since you are speaking from notes and not a prepared statement, it might be useful, if a member has a question, to interrupt right there, if you do not mind. Mr. COOMBS. Not at all. Chairman HAYS. I might say at this point, that is one of the things I think the people who were out there decided pretty quickly, that the East-West Center did need more independence from the University of Hawaii. We did think that they should be separate but very closely related institutions. That is, that they should be separate in the administrative sense. This was a tentative conclusion I think I can say the subcommittee agreed on when we were there. Do you agree with that? Mr. COOMBS. I do. I think the important thing is to strike the proper balance between administrative flexibility and autonomy. Mr. FARBSTEIN. May I ask a preliminary question? Chairman HAYS. Certainly. Mr. FARBSTEIN. You said this Center is to be a unique institution ! Mr. COOMBS. Yes, sir. Mr. FARBSTEIN. I would like a description or definition of the word "unique" as you envision it; because as I read part of the report there are certain subjects that are to be taught or examined. There is also to be what I interpret as the usual relationship between students of foreign countries and local students similar to that which takes place in ordinary institutions where there are foreign students who come for the purpose of studying and for meeting students of the West, and so forth. That is why I ask this preliminary question, to know what you envision in this whole business that makes it different from the other institutions. Mr. COOMBS. Congressman, by "unique" I mean simply that the East-West Center should undertake to do those things which are important to do and which it can do better than any other institution in the United States. Mr. FARBSTEIN. Well, will you be more specific? Mr. COOMBS. It should examine, as it has, the special conditions and assets of Hawaii, its climate, its population, its traditions, its university strengths, its other institutional strengths in the local government, those things which set it apart and make it different from other parts of the United States. For example, there are climatic and soil conditions in Hawaii that are not duplicated elsewhere, and out of that fact has grown a certain competence in such fields as tropical agriculture, oceanography, meteorology, and the like. This would be an example of the unique assets of Hawaii that should be capitalized upon in working with Asian countries. There are, of course, important social conditions- sociological conditions if you will-in Hawaii which make it a relatively outstanding example of how different ethnic and cultural streams can flow together and become harmonized to create something new and distinctive and valuable. This is another uniqueness of Hawaii. There are certain factors in the local economy which distinguish it from mainland economies. The scale of the Hawaiian economy is sufficiently small that a visitor from a small country of Asia can encompass the total economic system of Hawaii. If he wants to study, say, the problem of electric power, he has there a power system he can comprehend, whereas if you threw him into New York City, for example, this is something he could not readily comprehend. Or take the case of agricultural extension work. There again he has an agricultural economy small enough for him to comprehend. It does not baffle him by hugeness and complexity. So the whole scale of things in Hawaii is appropriate for many people seeking specialized training in economic development. The educational system, again, in Hawaii is comparable to the scale of an educational system in a comparatively small country, say, of southeast Asia. All of these are unique distinctive qualities of Hawaii, and it seems to me the key to success in Hawaii is to relate this uniqueness to the special needs of Asia and to try to capitalize on the special qualities of Hawaii so that we can give through this Center something to Asians that we could not otherwise give to them. The reverse of that situation would be for the Center to try to do for Asians what others are also doing on the mainland. This, it seems to me, would not give the Center its greatest value. To illustrate: Something over 40 percent of the 60,000 foreign students in the United States today are from Asia, if we define Asia to include India and Pakistan and all points east of that. That means we have over 25,000 Asian students today. A little over half are graduate students; the rest are undergraduates. They are studying in a wide variety of American institutions. These institutions all have their unique strengths and weaknesses. There would be little point, it seems to me, in the Center merely adding another few hundred to that 25,000 and doing for them what could be done for them in mainland institutions. The Center has to go in not for numbers but for quality and specialization along certain lines in order to add something new to what is already being done for Asian students and scholars elsewhere. Mr. SEELY-BROWN. Could I interrupt at that point? Chairman HAYS. Certainly. Mr. SEELY-BROWN. Because that is the question I had in mind. I certainly agree with Wayne we should have separate administrations for the Center and for the university and they should be autonomous in themselves. My question is this, Are you going to be able to get the right kind of people and keep them there as professors or teachers or lecturers? I can see you could get them to come for a year, but I think one of the problems you will face is getting the kind of men and women you want and keeping them there. Mr. COOMBS. May I first say, Mr. Seely-Brown, on this question of independence, it seems to me the problem is to strike the proper balance between administrative flexibility and autonomy while at the same time maintaining a close enough affiliation with the university so that strength can flow in both directions between these institutions and so that the East-West Center will enjoy the proper reputation in Asia of being an educational institution and not a political institution comparable, say, to Friendship University in Moscow. The Center must be able to provide, through the university, a degree in the case of those visitors for whom a degree is appropriate. It must be able to hold its head high in the traditional university sense, but at the same time it must not be hobbled by too close an association with the university. I must say from what I have known of the development of recent months we are pretty close to this proper balance under the arrangement adopted by the regents in having a chancellor rather than a director and making it possible for that chancellor to be basically |