Era: World War II

1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s

Understanding the Business Cycle: Funding Economics Research

In nearly a century of activity in the field of economics, the Foundation initiated new research centers and training programs around the world.

1940s

Documenting Injustice: Recording the Histories of the Japanese American Incarceration

The origins and legacy of a research project conducted in the American concentration camps for Japanese Americans.

1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s

Building Global Understanding: Area Studies, Language, and History

Encouraging cross-cultural knowledge in an interconnected postwar world by shaping new interdisciplinary programs and retooling traditional academic fields.

1930s 1940s 1960s 1970s 1980s

Rockefeller Foundation Support for Communications Media in the 1930s and 1940s

The mid-20th century was an era influenced by mass communications, and a handful of philanthropic programs sought to tap into the possibilities of film and radio.

1920s 1930s 1940s

The Rockefeller Foundation’s Role in Creating the Atomic Bomb

In the aftermath, Foundation staff struggled to rectify their organization’s involvement with this weapon of mass destruction.

1930s 1940s

World War II & the Rockefeller Foundation

Saving threatened scholars and confronting a dramatically changed world.

1930s

War of the Worlds: Rockefeller Philanthropies, Disinformation, and Media Literacy in the 1930s

Orson Welles’s 1938 radio performance of The War of the Worlds prompted a foundation to explore issues of media literacy and fake news.

1930s 1940s 1970s 1980s 1990s

Preserving Scholarship During World War II: the Rockefeller Foundation, Libraries, and Microphotography

Using new technology to save threatened world resources and keep free inquiry alive under threat of fascist destruction.

1940s 1950s

Funding a Sexual Revolution: The Kinsey Reports

The inside story of the study that first questioned binary sexuality and spurred outcry and controversy.