Topic: Global Engagement

Featured

Ping-Pong Diplomacy: NGOs and International Relations

When a friendly interaction unexpectedly emerged between American and Chinese table tennis players, one nonprofit seized the opportunity to support broader cultural diplomacy.

Global Engagement

“Distasteful Regimes”: Authoritarianism, the Ford Foundation, and Social Sciences in Brazil

When the restrictive military regime that had taken power in Brazil in 1964 became even more repressive by 1969, staffers at the Ford Foundation found themselves facing a conundrum.

Peace & Conflict

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.

1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 2000s

The Rockefeller Foundation’s 20th-Century Global Fight Against Disease

Programs designed to build public health infrastructure, eradicate disease, and increase access to healthcare have formed the core of more than a hundred years of one foundation’s strategy.

1950s

International Cooperation and Soft Diplomacy: The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center

Convenings at Bellagio have tackled global challenges of every sort, from trade and finance to public health, agriculture, and food security.

1960s

The Birth of International Agricultural Research Institutes in the Mid-20th Century

Rockefeller Foundation agriculture programs begun in Mexico achieved global reach through four major research institutes. Building them was the result of partnership.

1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s

“Without Distinction of Race, Sex, or Creed”: The General Education Board, 1903-1964

In the early 20th century, the General Education Board was devoted to the cause of improving education throughout the United States, without distinction of race, sex, or creed.

1930s 1940s

Toward a More Robust Study of Mental Health: Rockefeller Foundation Funding for Psychiatry

Two decades of funding helped legitimize the study of psychiatry as a medical issue, not a problem of character.

1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s

Rockefeller Philanthropy and Population-Related Fields

As the scarcity of global resources became increasingly worrisome in the 20th century, these organizations more boldly approached work in population and family planning.

1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s

The Rockefeller Foundation’s Agriculture Program in India

India was not the first country to take up the new seeds and methods developed by the Rockefeller Foundation, but the story of India’s adoption of them in the 1960s is dramatic.

1940s 1950s 1960s

The Rockefeller Foundation’s Mexican Agriculture Program, 1943-1965

The Rockefeller Foundation’s first intensive agriculture endeavor is now credited with launching the global transformation known as the “Green Revolution.”