change, Washington Academic Register and Information Systems Division programs and facilities. We have already received several requests for short-term guest scholar appoitments, some from experts in the areas we have designated for special encouragement in the fellowship program whose occasional presence would lend great strength to the work of the fellows. INTERIM QUARTERS IN THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUILDING The Board of Trustees was most pleased to accept for the Center's use in its opening years the Smithsonian Institution's offer of interim quarters, which are uniquely appropriate and fortunate for the purposes needed. The quarters are in the original Smithsonian Institution Building, which was designed by James Renwick, Jr., in 1846 and has served since 1849 as the headquarters for the worldwide activities of the Smithsonian Institution. This is a most fitting international use of the building, in which young scientists roomed until the turn of the century and which served as the home of the National Academy of Sciences throughout its early history and as the meeting place for many past scholarly conferences. By virtue of the funds appropriated by Congress in recent years the building has undergone top to bottom renovation, which is scheduled for completion by early summer. On the third and fourth floors of the central section of the building 55 offices have been designated for the use of the Center for office space for the Center's first fellows, guest scholars, and staff. The estimated cost of furnishing these offices, some of which will hold desks for two to four persons, is included in the request I am submitting today. In addition, the Center will have the use of a conference or seminar room, a common or reading room and rooms which will serve as a small reference library on the third and fourth floors, a lounge and desk area and dining room on the first floor, and estimates for furnishing these rooms are also included in the requests submitted today. It is the unanimous judgment of those other institutions that we consulted during the planning period that it is essential for the Center to have a dining area of its own in order to establish the sense of community which is essential for any new institution of this kind. We hope to be able to engage the food service which presently serves the Smithsonian Institution to cater weekday lunches and occasional dinners in the dining room of the Smithsonian building, which also has a small service area attached. PERMANENT BUILDING SITE SELECTION Acceptance of the offer of temporary space in the Smithsonian Institution Building, where the Center's fellowship and guest scholar programs could begin, should not slow down in any way the search for and acquisition of a permanent site for the Center and its early construction. The Center will not be fulfilling one of its prime legislative purposes until it has its own permanent quarters. The demand for a center in the Nation's Capital where visiting scholars can meet, talk, dine, reside and receive information services is real and widespread as indicated during the legislative hearings on the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Act and in subsequent correspondence and discussion during the planning period. Plainly this demand cannot be met in any substantial way until the Center has a home of its own adequate to meet these needs. The Woodrow Wilson Memorial Commission and the President's Temporary Commission on Pennsylvania Avenue both recommended that the Center for Scholars which they proposed as a memorial to Wilson be located on the north side of the proposed Market Square (between Pennsylvania Avenue, D, 7th and 9th Streets) in downtown Washington. The legislation creating the Center noted the Memorial Commission's site recommendation and authorized the Board of Trustees in section 4(a) (7) to “prepare plans and specifications for the Center, including the design and development of all buildings, facilities, open spaces and other structures on the site in consultation with the President's Temporary Commission on Pennsylvania Avenue, or its successor, and with other appropriate Federal and local agencies...". At the same time Congress made clear that it was not authorizing a specific site acquisition, and section 4(a) (4) of the act empowered the Board to "acquire such site as a location for the Center as may subsequently be authorized by the Congress." To explore the suggestions that the Center be located at the Market Square site, a contract was entered between the Smithsonian Institution and the Urban Design and Development Corporation, a nonprofit District of Columbia corporation established in 1969 by the American Institute of Architects, to study the feasibility of the proposed Market Square site for the Center as well as other possible sites in the area between the National Archives and the National Collection of Fine Arts and Portrait Gallery buildings. The feasibility study discussed the problems of acquisition of land in the immediate Market Square area and suggested utilization of possible adjacent sites. Any site in this vicinity would pose serious environmental problems unless other adjacent major development efforts were in prospect. The question has been temporarily shelved pending a decision by the Administration on the submission of legislation to expedite and promote private and public development of the area included in the Pennsylvania Avenue plan, including the proposed site for the Woodrow Wilson Center. In the coming fiscal year funds will be needed for further studies relating to the selection of a permanent building site, including a survey of the size and nature of the visiting scholarly community in Washington at any one time and more information about scholars' opinions on basic location and design issues as well as a more detailed examination of the specific sites identified in the existing feasibility study. FUNDING The legislation creating the Center included an open-ended authorization for appropriations of funds necessary to carry out the purposes of the Act for the fiscal years after 1970, and directed the Board of Trustees to "solicit, accept and dispose of gifts, bequests, and devises of money, securities, and other property of whatever character for the benefit of the Center" as well as to "obtain grants from and make contracts with state, federal, local and private agencies, organizations, institutions and individuals." We were able to begin operation in March of 1969 by virture of a $45.000 grant obtained from the Ford Foundation, and in fiscal year 1970 Congress appropriated $100,000 "to meet the expenses of the Board of Trustees of the Center and for necessary studies and planning activities" in the current fiscal year. The table shown at attachment B indicates the expenditures of public and private funds made and estimated from March of 1969, until the end of the current fiscal year. As this table shows, the bulk of the sums expended and to be expended cover the employment costs. Those include the salaries of the director and his secretary, who were the two permanent positions for whom funds were requested when the presentation for the Center was made by the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in March of last year, and the subsequent employment of three assistants to the director and two additional secretaries, start in August as anticipated in the 1969 hearings (House hearings p. 724; Senate hearings p. 902). At its fall 1969 meeting the Board of Trustees approved a fiscal year 1971 budget estimate of $1.4 million, of which $934,000 was requested in the Board's first submission to the Bureau of the Budget, and the balance was to be sought from private sources. The $934.000 sum submitted to the Budget Bureau was to include $440,000 for administrative expenses, including $165,000 for 15 staff positions: $175.000 for furnishings, equipment and supplies, and $140.000 for other services including travel, conferences, consultants fees and planning contracts; and $494,000 to cover the stipends, travel expenses, and housing allowances of the Center's first 20 to 40 fellows. The Board undertook to raise a like or greater sum toward the cost of a like number of fellowships. Because of the uncertainties of initial financing, the Board stated in the brochure announcing the opening programs of the Center that "fellowship candidates with some outside means of support may be in a preferred position." Although almost none of the non-U.S. candidates to date have reported such outside support, several of the U.S. scholars who were approved by the Trustees Committee for early invitations do have such other financial means. Plainly, however, the Board does not want to limit participation in the Center to those with outside financial means, and the principles on which we have based the stipends we would like to provide in the long run are ones that will assure that the Nation's Center in honor of Woodrow Wilson is not limited to scholars of means only. Section 6 of the act creating the Woodrow Wilson Center states "there are authorized to be appropriated to the Board such funds as may be necessary ***” In keeping with this provision, the Board of Trustees of the Wilson Center and the Secretary of the Smithsonian agreed it would be in keeping with legislative intent to request that any appropriation for the Center be kept separate from the Smithsonian Institution's regular S. & E. appropriation, as in the case of the National Gallery of Art and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It was also agreed that the Chairman of the Board of the Center would be responsible for the presentation of congressional appropriations. The Bureau of the Budget recommended that no funds be requested for the Center in the coming fiscal year, and this recommendation was endorsed by the administration. No reasons were given at any point. Presumably the rationale was based on the principle of no new starts in time of inflation. The President merely advised me in a letter, which his staff has advised may be quoted publicly, that "we simply have not been able to include funds directly for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the coming budget," but he expressed the hope that "* ** next year the Center will fare better, as it most certainly should." But it confronts the Center with an extremely difficult problem. This is not a no-new-starts situation. Thanks to Congress we have made a start. Our plans are carefully laid. With the unanimous approval of the Board, including the administration's representatives, last fall we sent out announcements of the opening programs of the Center. We have received some outstanding applications from scholars in this country and abroad with the intellect, experience, and dedication to enable them to do superior work on some vital contemporary problems. We have put together a topnotch bipartisan advisory committee of distinguished U.S. citizens, including several Members of Congress, to help us with development work and advise us on substantive issues. The committee is chaired by Mr. Stuart T. Saunders, chairman of the board of the Penn Central Railroad. It includes as honorary members several heads of government and foreign ministers of friendly allied nations, including Prime Minister Wilson, Prime Minister Trudeau, Chancellor Brandt, Prime Minister Rumor, Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands, and others. I am attaching a full list for the committee's record. (Attachment C.) This has not, is not, and should not be permited to become a partisan issue. The Woodrow Wilson Memorial Act was passed with the unanimous bipartisan support, as was the $5 million appropriation for Eisenhower College by the last Congress with the backing of the Johnson administration. The President himself has declared: "*** an International Center for Scholars, to be established as a living memorial to Woodrow Wilson *** could hardly be a more appropriate memorial to a President who combined a devotion to scholarship with a passion for peace. The District has long sought, and long needed, a center for both men of letters and men of affairs. This should be, as it was first proposed, an ‘institution of learning that the 22d century will regard as having influenced the 21st'." The trustees and members of the Advisory Committee of the Center have been and are continuing to make strenuous efforts to raise private funds for the support of the Center in its first year of operations. We have engaged the services of a highly competent professional fund raiser, Mr. Henry C. Suhrke of New York City, who has undertaken similar services for the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowship Program and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Under the guidance of Mr. Charles Horsky, Ambassador Averell Harriman, and Mr. Robert Baker, we are setting up a Council for the Woodrow Wilson International Center to help us raise funds first in the Washington area and then nationally. The Center's staff and I have personally contacted dozens of possible individual and institutional donors. We will continue vigorous efforts along these lines. But we are facing unusual difficulties caused by the uncertainty of public support, difficulties of interpretation of the Tax Reform Act of 1969, the falling market of recent months, and the fact that the institution is not yet in operation. Our limited success in raising private funds to date makes it necessary for us to turn to the Congress for our principal support, particularly in the first year of operations of the Center. The Center was created by Congress as a living memorial to a great president. We have labored long and hard to bring it to life in accordance with congressional intent. We have made a hopeful start toward doing so. But we will not succeed, and we will not be able to open this Center as scheduled this year unless the Congress is willing to support us. I have reviewed in detail with our staff director the appropriation request we are submitting to the Congress today, and I consider it sound and reasonable in all respects and essential to begin the planned operations of the Center. In the light of our experience to date we are requesting an appropriation of $784,000. This is the amount we requested in the trustees' submission to the Bureau of the Budget last fall ($934,000) less $150,000 which, with the concurrence of the committee, we would anticipate receiving from the National Endowment for the Humanities-half from Federal sources and half from our own private fund-raising efforts. (On April 9, 1970, the Endowment notified the Center that it would receive a $130,000 matching grant.) The $784,000 request includes $440,000 for administrative expenses—including salaries and employment costs, administrative expenses, and $130,000 for one-time furnishing costs to equip the Center's interim quarters-and $344,000 to enable us to pay the stipends, travel, and housing allowances of the first 20 to 40 fellows to be appointed by the Center estimated on the principles already stated above. We do not feel the Center should have fewer than 20 scholars since the interaction and interdisciplinary work which is planned would not be likely to prosper in a smaller intellectual community according to the experience of other institutions. The funds we are requesting for the fellowship program are no year funds because of the necessity of having the means for making commitments to scholars well in advance of their arrival. These estimates are based on the closest experience we can learn from others, but I give the committee the Board's categorical assurance that there will be no reluctance in reporting to the Congress if experience proves that we have overestimated our needs. As I have indicated we plan to continue to make strong efforts to raise private funds here and abroad to finance additional fellowships, and the sums raised will be added to the appropriations requested to permit us to make commitments next winter to those scholars who would be invited to join the Woodrow Wilson Center community during fiscal year 1972. Our detailed justification for this request is set forth in the table found at attachment A. Mr. Read and I will be glad to answer any detailed questions of the committee about our plans and submission. (1) Salaries: 1 director (GS-18) – Fiscal year 1971 (estimates) A. ADMINISTRATIVE EXPENSES 1 department director (GS-16). 1 associate director (GS-14)_ 1 information services officer (GS-11). 3 staff secretaries (GS-9, 8, 8). 1 librarian (GS-13)__ 1 part-time services of scholar coordinator of group studies- 6 pool GS-6 secretaries (3 from October 1, 1970; 3 from January 1, 1971) Total $33, 495 25, 044 21.003 11, 233 28,532 15, 812 5,000 25,808 165,927 12, 274 Personal benefits- In-grade promotions-- Total (2) Furnishings, equipment, and supplies: 1,799 180,000 (3) Other: Printing costs.. $5,000 Travel (administrative, scholars' research, conference attendance)-- 15.000 Guest scholar consultations__. Seminars, dinner discussions, lectures__. Planning contracts-survey of D.C. scholarly community. Total Grand total____. B. FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM (a) Stipends.-During its first year of operation the Board intends that there will be approximately 20 fellows (and a like number of guest scholars) at the Center. The stipend for the fellows to be chosen based on the scholar's 1969-70 salary rate, less amounts obtained by the fellows from their home institutions, governments, foundations, or otherwise, with cost-of-living adjustments for foreign scholars, will vary according to the estimates of other institutions for advanced scholars from zero to a ceiling of $30,000, averaging $22,000 per fellow-----. (b) Travel expenses.--For round trip direct route jet economy and family fare to and from Washington for the fellow and his wife and children are estimated to cost $3,000 for 10 U.S. scholars (three single round trips $600; seven family round trips $2,400; and $6,000 for 10 non-U.S. scholars (three singles at $1,500; seven family round trips $4,500) (c) Housing allowances.-Will be provided at the rate of $150/month for six single scholars: $225/month for six married couples without children; and at $50/month/child up to two children or an average of $300 for eight married couples with children_-__-. Total Less.-Anticipated matching grant for the support of the Center's fellowship program (see pp. 19–20) – Subtotal Total 10,000 5,000 15, 000 35,000 85,000 440, 000 $440,000 9,000 45,000 494, 000 150,000 344, 000 784,000 EXPENDITURES AND ESTIMATED EXPENDITURES OF $100,000 APPROPRIATION BY WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS IN FISCAL YEAR 1970 EXPENDITURES OF $45,000 GRANT FROM FORD FOUNDATION BY WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS IN FISCAL YEAR 1969 AND FISCAL YEAR 1970 |