C. W. de Kiewiet, Historian of Africa: African Studies and the American Post-War Research University

The momentous century that forged much of contemporary Africa formed the background for the life and career of Willem Cornelis de Kiewiet (1902–1986). In his lifetime he was recognized as one of the premier historians of British imperial policy and African history. His significance in the post-war period as a university president in the United States has received less attention. In advancing structural and curricular changes, internationalization, and a strategic role for universities in the policy arena, de Kiewiet helped create the research university as we know it today. His career is important for historians of Africa (and education) for that reason. Equally worthwhile is an understanding of how de Kiewiet brought his academic training to his administrative career in a powerfully transformative manner.

Cornelis Willem de Kiewiet was born in Holland in 1902. His father, a mine worker, had gone out to South Africa as a young man. A British prisoner during the South African War (1899–1902), he returned to Holland, married, and returned to South Africa in 1903. At fourteen, when most working class young men went to work, Willem's father, now a railway worker, insisted that he continue in school, completing secondary school in 1919. Offered a bursary at the University College of Johannesburg (later Witwatersrand University), he graduated in 1922 and went on to pursue an MA in history under William M. MacMillan (1885–1974), the outstanding liberal historian of his generation.1

De Kiewiet wrote his thesis while teaching Afrikaans in Southern Rhodesia. This sparsely populated environment of just over 35,000 whites and 800,000 Africans provided time to finish his thesis and acquire invaluable language proficiency.2 Rhodesia also exposed de Kiewiet to history in the making, as 78 percent of the primarily white electorate of 18,810 voted on 27 October 1922 in favor of responsible government rather than incorporation in the Union of South Africa. Of seventeen electoral districts, only Marandellas (Marondera), a tobacco growing area just east of Salisbury (Harare), narrowly voted for Union. For a naturalized Afrikaner from working class Johannesburg, albeit a liberal one, it must have been an interesting experience. Savings from his teaching salary and a fellowship enabled him to pursue doctoral studies at the University of London.

Relying on archival records at the Public Records Office (PRO) in London, he completed his degree in 1927. The University's Royal Colonial Institute selected his thesis, British Colonial Policy and the South African Republics, 1848–1872, for publication in 1928. Subsequently awarded a traveling fellowship, de Kiewiet went to study in Paris and Berlin.

De Kiewiet's interpretation of the dynamics of relations between settlers and Africans across nineteenth-century South Africa's fluid borders challenged romanticized interpretations of settler expansion portraying Africans as passive, disorganized, and incapable of strategic thinking. Nor did he accept biological determinism as an explanation for economic and cultural development. De Kiewiet concluded that shifting expediencies, as much as policies, governed the actions of the Cape, Free State, Natal, and British Colonial Office.3 His assertion that settler desire to fracture the internal integrity of African tribes predated mineral discoveries debunked the myth that contemporary efforts to do so arose from an emerging mining economy and African urbanization. British Colonial Policy was a remarkable intellectual achievement for a 27-year-old scholar and showed his considerable talent for good prose.

The Iowa Years

Committed to returning to South Africa, by the late 1920s de Kiewiet's views were too controversial for a university post and he was turned down for a position by the University of Cape Town (UCT). At a time of rising white ethnic tensions and Afrikaner political mobilization, soon to be exacerbated by the onset of the Great Depression, the liberal community was increasingly under siege. News of de Kiewiet's promising scholarship and his availability traveled informally through the academic world. He was offered a teaching position at the University of Iowa. Without other prospects, de Kiewiet accepted.

Then as now, young scholars unfamiliar with the American heartland viewed a move to the Midwest with trepidation. De Kiewiet's stop in New York has a contemporary ring:

New York warmed the cockles of my heart. … I ran right into a free love colony, lots of them with libraries on birth control … Jove how jealous I felt. Nice kids all of them, and having the time of their young lives. Most were assistant professors at the university, good brains, really cultured, and full of boundless pep … One evening after all had some gin, I came close to doing some poor lass wrong. She was all for coming to Iowa … and I was all for staying in New York. In the end we parted on a skyscraper staircase at four in the morning, having missed sinning by a hairsbreadth.4

The C. W. de Kiewiet who arrived in Iowa City for the fall term of 1929 was enthusiastic, socially open minded, and a bit smug. Mindful of his academic pedigree, he brought cultural baggage from London and a few parochial beliefs from home. The University's dour president, Walter Jessup, told him; “Young man, you have a lot to learn.”

The land-grant university concept was unfamiliar to de Kiewiet, although the idea of cooperative extension had been adopted in South Africa (1910); it was connected to the Union's agricultural colleges rather than its universities. That support for higher education should be driven by a populist and democratizing impulse rather than the elitism of British universities and their colonial offspring was surely different. While de Kiewiet's own profile of upward mobility and achievement fit well with the land grant ethos, he was bemused by the lack of social deference Iowa City's citizens gave those in university life.5

Like most new assistant professors, de Kiewiet had his work cut out for him. His department head, Dr. W. T. Root, was pleasant but autocratic and a prominent figure in the university administration. There was little room for maneuver in Root's shop. He set all the department agendas and made the teaching assignments. De Kiewiet stayed clear of university politics. His problems were more immediate: starting salary being one. Still, from the standpoint of his work, the University of Iowa was a good place to be. “The university is rich, I have only to say a word and they order whatever books I require … They are madly keen that you be given every chance to do good work …”6

Being alone in an alien environment without much money is a common difficulty for young academics, especially with little but work on the horizon. The unattached de Kiewiet need not have worried about romance, although it is doubtful he would get the same guidance today.

… [T]he head [Root] has informed me that “why if you like pretty girls, we have lots of them and I shall be pleased to watch you enjoying yourself”. … he does not want to interfere in anything that I want to do … I have … decided to split … [students] up and give them fatherly talks … these poor people are as pleased as punch to have somebody come over from England, and one cynical person … has already told me … that I shall be able to get a way with murder. What about a nice little coed?7

He found his “little coed,” Lucea Van Hejinian (1899–1988), employed at the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station, the university's acclaimed research and outreach unit. From Anamosa, Iowa, she was a Mt Holyoke graduate and held a PhD in human physiology with a specialty in nutrition. Lively and bright, Lucea soon grounded Willem in married life.8 Theirs was a lasting and happy union, with three children born in the first decade of their marriage.

An early advocate of a multidisciplinary approach to African history, de Kiewiet wanted to establish Africa as a legitimate area of academic inquiry. However, the reality was that imperial history, along with an assortment of other courses, would be the venue for his career development. De Kiewiet made good use of his teaching assignments, reading widely and making comparisons of economic processes and bureaucratic responses to change.9 British Colonial Policy and the Twin Republics (1929), while launching his career, had made him less than $200 in royalties.10 In 1937 de Kiewiet published The Imperial Factor in South Africa.11

This well-received book was an exercise in intellectual continuity, following themes from his earlier writing. It also marked de Kiewiet out as a historian given to broad, well articulated ideas.12 The Imperial Factor marked a turning point in de Kiewiet's development as a scholar and intellectual. Having expended enormous time, effort, and resources on a second book, he was told by both the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Iowa State Board of Assessment and Review (ISBAR) that his 1936 tax deductions relating to The Imperil Factor were disallowed.13 Over time de Kiewiet also felt a mounting annoyance with the autocratic leadership of W. T. Root, who supported the administration in insisting that materials de Kiewiet collected overseas become University property.14 Salary also remained an issue. Having been offered a trial position at Case Western (1932), headships at Lahore (1930) and Auckland (1934), and UTC's King George V Chair in Modern History (1936), he believed he deserved promotion.15 The front runner for a prestigious name chair, de Kiewiet's attempt to leverage this job offer into promotion at Iowa came at a bleak time for South Africa's liberal academics. He would be replacing Eric Walker who had accepted the Harmsworth Chair at Cambridge. William MacMillan had already left the country. He was promoted to full professor at Iowa in 1937 but his dissatisfaction remained.

In 1941 he accepted a position in the History Department at Cornell University. At Cornell he began to mark out a path for a second area of interest: university administration. (He also augmented his salary by purchasing an apartment building in Ithaca.)

Cornell, Administration, and the Carnegie Corporation

In his first year at Cornell, de Kiewiet published A History of South Africa: Social and Economic (1941), dealing with such themes as cooperation on the frontier, the evolution of race, class, and ethnic identity in labor, and the nature of capitalist development under conditions of segregation.16 In the structuring of the book he opted to include Africans as integral to the main themes rather than as a separate chapter or afterthought. De Kiewiet's History remains an influential book often cited as inspiring several generations of historians.17 De Kiewiet continued his scholarly work at Cornell but was drawn into administration, overseeing language-training programs for the military during the World War Two (1942). Administrative work gave him routine contact with a broader cross-section of the university. In 1945 he was appointed dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. In 1947 he became provost and a year later acting president of the university. De Kiewiet's transition to administration encouraged him to consider many of the problems he had entertained as a historian in broader, more contemporary terms. He now considered ways in which Cornell, and universities generally, could become more relevant in light of rapidly changing world circumstances in which the United States would play a more dominant role. The Quonset Huts that sprung up at many American universities to house research activities during the war years were harbingers of changes to come. Cornell's faculty and academics generally would not be able to go back to their pre-war interests and mode of operation.

De Kiewiet's own interests lay in the realignment of the major powers and the inevitable decline of the colonial system. The indigenous peoples that he had sought to understand in his teaching and writing took on a contemporary prominence for the post-war world. As a public figure and intellectual he would have an opportunity to put his views before a wider audience. His movement from historical to more polemical writings in the 1950s reflects this change in status as well as de Kiewiet's aspiration to influence public opinion and government policies.

In February of 1947 de Kiewiet was asked to become an Advisor on Africa for the Carnegie Corporation of New York by the corporation's president, Devereaux Josephs. Carnegie's long-standing involvement in southern Africa focused on education, including so-called “native education,” the modernization of institutions, and in a muted fashion, race relations. As of 1940, when most grant making ground to a halt in anticipation of war, the corporation's expenditures in the Union of South Africa accounted for half of its total African outputs.18

As part of his advisory duties, de Kiewiet began a five-month tour of South Africa under Carnegie Corporation's auspices later in 1947. His task was to assess the probable future of South Africa as well as scout out worthwhile grant proposals and individual recipients. His forty-two-page report outlined what he saw as a possible evolution of South African Society.19 His report drew from interviews with political figures, including Prime Minister Jan Smuts, scientists, business and civic leaders, as well as the reports of the Fagan and Van Eck Commissions, which dealt with urbanization, industrial development, and the use of science and technology in economic development.

He concluded that South Africa would be forced to follow a mildly ameliorative course, driven by economic development and industrialization. The Fagan Commission Report (1947) buttressed this view by cautioning that economic development was impossible without a permanent African presence in “white” urban areas. By implication, it seemed to liberals that South Africa's economic development therefore depended on an evolution toward some form of cautious pluralism. De Kiewiet did not anticipate Smuts's electoral defeat the following year, nor the unfolding of a radically different political agenda and mode of operation by the National Party.

At home, de Kiewiet's contacts with foundations and leading academics helped support the work of Cornell's faculty on important post-war issues. Cornell's Far Eastern Studies Program, under the auspices of its Anthropology Department, sought to “… obtain data along technological, health, economic, social, and ideological lines bearing on the prospects of cultural change in non-Western societies.”20 In upstate New York, the Rockefeller Foundation supported Cornell's studies of “intergroup relations” in Elmira, New York, factories, and extensive nation-wide surveys (in over 500 cities) to obtain an inventory of patterns of intergroup relation. He also sustained the work of the sciences by supporting requests for facilities and research grants.

It is interesting to note that de Kiewiet was still tempted by a major academic project despite his blossoming administrative career. On learning that the PRO had opened records to the crucial year, 1902, de Kiewiet wrote to Carnegie's Whitney Shepardson in excitement. In his doctoral dissertation, de Kiewiet had only had access to records up to 1885. De Kiewiet asked Shepardson if he had contacts that might clear the way for an assistant to microfilm the entire series of newly available documents.21 Having had a decade reviewing books by young Afrikaner intellectuals, whom he characterized as “… anti-British, anti-imperialist, and self-pitying,” de Kiewiet had come to believe that the core of National Party politics was drawn from the Afrikaner interpretation of the South African War.22 De Kiewiet's project as he outlined it was to

… set a standard, not so much of scholarship, but of interpretation and understanding. … The time is ripe for a generous and properly proportioned history of this stage of S.A. history. Just imagine in what an intellectual quandary we would be in if the authentic record of 1776 still had to be produced.23

At the same time he rejected the idea of an “agreed upon” history of South Africa posed by his friend E. G. Malherbe, de Kiewiet responded that history at its best “… must contain a series of judgments …” rather than a series of compromises.24 Implicitly, those who interpret and write history may sway the direction of contemporary events.

In this early post-war era, Africa began to loom larger in foundation agendas. Resistance to colonial rule was growing, and East–West conflict was emerging on a global scale. Western scholars knew little about Africa. For de Kiewiet, Indian independence (1947) marked a sea change since he saw India's future as closely linked to the future of the African continent.25 In response to these emerging circumstances, in 1950 Carnegie Corporation's John Gardner drew up a proposal for outstanding American scholars from various social science fields to visit Africa. Groups of first-rank scholars, likely to be enriched by the experience and motivated to pursue work in the field, preferably from institutions “… hospitable to expansion of its interests (if any) in African Studies …” were his target group.26

Scholars would have two weeks before their trip to prepare themselves. “… [T]oward the end of their trip they should have … two weeks in some fairly comfortable setting (in Africa) so they could attempt to crystallize their experience and sum it up.”27 The three trips that Carnegie sponsored in 1951 and 1952 were a part of a nucleus of activities designed to stimulate interest in Africa as a field of study.

De Kiewiet led the first “reconnaissance” trip but not before making a detour to the Public Records Office in London. In early March of 1951 he traveled to Nairobi where he was to meet up with six scholars with whom he would spent three months traveling through Kenya, Tanganyika (Tanzania), Uganda, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Nyasaland (Malawi), and South Africa. Two subsequent trips, led by others scholars, covered the rest of Africa.28

For some time, de Kiewiet and like-minded colleagues had been thinking of how sustained university work focusing on Africa could be organized. The terms “area studies” and “African studies” in particular start to appear in his correspondence in the years following World War Two. By the early 1950s, de Kiewiet was one of the university leaders promoting of area studies programs under the auspices of major foundations with government support.29

Competing demands for new faculty positions were strong in America's post-war universities. Forming new departments was out of the question at most institutions. By focusing the expertise and interest of faculty from established departments into area programs, the costs of initiating essentially new programs was greatly reduced.

Presidency of the University of Rochester—Remolding the University

De Kiewiet's career took an important turn when he sensed that he might be passed over for Cornell's presidency by the Board of Trustees. For some, his personal style was too abrupt, but more importantly, traditionalists felt he would push too fast for broad institutional change. De Kiewiet had been critical of Cornell's Board of Trustees, whom he believed were poorly led and managed. They had been particularly remiss in the area of finance, upon which innovation and growth rested. The introduction of area studies, non-Western languages, and closer integration of university departments, all rested on improved finances. As acting president, de Kiewiet had put the university on a better financial footing but not without making enemies. He also lost a highly publicized labor disagreement with Cornell's maintenance workers over wages and working conditions.

Unsure of whether he would get the strong mandate he desired, de Kiewiet took a leave of absence in 1949 to undertake projects in Europe and Africa and to scout for other opportunities. During this time (1950) he was approached by the trustees of the University of Rochester. After speedy deliberations by the trustees committee, the forty-eight year old de Kiewiet was named the fifth president of the University of Rochester.30

At Rochester, de Kiewiet would be able to offer leadership and defining principles for an ongoing university expansion. Changes included broad-based curricular reform and a tentative recasting of several of the university's departments into professional schools, begun earlier by President Alan Valentine. In some measure the university's growth and development was influenced by its unique relationship with the City of Rochester, its clientele, and its donors. Founded in 1850 as a private institution, Rochester was closely bound to the city's prosperous middle and affluent classes.31

The university was fortunate in having consistent supporters and benefactors. Lobbying by Susan B. Anthony had led to the admission of women in 1900, albeit in separate facilities. Foremost among Rochester's benefactors was George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak, and after whom the Eastman School of Music (a Rochester affiliate) was named. The university built a new medical and dental school in the early 1920s augmented by the Strong Memorial Hospital Complex, financed through a city–university partnership. The first medical school class graduated in 1929. A new (Genesee) River Campus, elegant and compact, was built in the late 1920s from the proceeds of a remarkable $7.5 million fund drive.

If Rochester was, like Ithaca, out of the way, it was not an institution entirely settled in its ways. The tradition of excellent science departments had paid dividends during the World War Two. In 1946 Rochester could boast of the second largest cyclotron in the United States and faculty expertise in nuclear physics. Movement in peacetime was toward developing a department of nuclear medicine. De Kiewiet was actively involved in all these matters, using the breadth of knowledge acquired from his Cornell experience.

As president, de Kiewiet's time was taken with speech making (20–25 per year), fund raising, serving on boards, and overseeing the operation of a growing university.32 Concluding that there was too much resistance to multidisciplinary structures in the social sciences, de Kiewiet set about planning a series of forward-looking faculty appointments within traditional departments. It would only be in the end of his presidency that he was able to make what he considered real progress.

Expanded Horizons and African Studies

Elected president of the American Association of Universities (AAU) in 1951, de Kiewiet's work with the association brought him into official relationship with the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU). Many members, like the University of Cape Town's Vice Principal Tom Davie and the University of Natal's Vice Principal E. G. Malherbe, he already knew well, facilitating close relations.33 Promoting collaborative links between the two organizations would be one of de Kiewiet's legacies in higher education as well as promoting international support for South Africa's English language universities.34 He also reached out to those with widely differing views from his own. As he wrote to Davie:

… Thom [Rector of Stellenbosch University] is coming here … to look at our Medical School. I talked to him at length in New York City and … remembered my own conversation with you about the same subject. I made a few comments about race relations in South Africa, but got no where … until I expressed my opinion that Wits had missed the boat in developing race study. This seemed to please him very much.35

In the coming years he would prove effective in helping to smooth over some of the rough edges of Anglo-American cooperation, particularly when the AAU came into contact with its direct counterpart, Britain's Inter-University Council.

During this period, de Kiewiet was also asked to join the Council on Foreign Relations by its directors through the membership chair, David Rockefeller.36 (He was by now routinely involved with the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.) The council brought him into association with leaders from the corporate world, including those with direct, albeit informal, links with government like Harvard's Dean Rusk, the future secretary of state. For 1953, the council's discussions focused on emerging problems of American foreign policy in Africa. In descending order of importance, United States interests in Africa were determined to be: maintaining Africa as a supply center and base of air operations; West Africa's strategic proximity to Brazil; Africa's abundance of strategic materials for stockpiling; expanded opportunities for trade; and “humanitarian interest” and sympathy with self-determination.37 In these early years on the council, he was named chair of the council's Board of Directors (1952–1954), a position of great prestige and influence.

By the mid 1950s, in addition to a few centers like Northwestern's Africa Institute (1948), a group of academics and business leaders in New York, organized around Alan Pifer of Carnegie Corporation, were considering establishing an African Institute in New York. The idea was an outgrowth of a private seminar on Africa that had been meeting for several years. The organizing group, convened by invitation only, included future leaders of the African Studies Association (founded in 1957) as well as supporters from private industry. Following the incorporation of the African Institute, the Council of Foreign Relations turned to addressing African issues through its Study Group on the Colonial Problem, composed of twenty-two prominent specialists drawn from academia, private institutes, government, and industry.38 De Kiewiet was recruited for this group by Philip Jessup, organizing chair of the Council on Foreign Relations. As Jessup put it:

We must reckon with growing anti-colonial sentiment among the … majority of the peoples of the world … mounting criticism of our policies by … particularly those administering dependent territories, who are our closest friends and staunchest allies. … the dilemma [of] developing effective policies commensurate with its [US] power position and large share of responsibility for maintaining the peace and security of the free cannot be overestimated. … charges of colonial mindedness [sic] and imperialism against the United States are increasing at an alarming rate by new and other underdeveloped nations and by colonial people who tend to regard the threat of western colonialism as a greater danger than communism. … the two fold task of countering both irrational anti-colonialism and communist exploitation of the colonial issue to entice neutralist and uncommitted nations into the Soviet Block has become one of our most pressing foreign policy problems39

Jessup's letter succinctly outlined the US interpretation of decolonization and independence movements. The influence of this group, with its informal links to the State Department, coupled with activities going on in individual universities and large foundations, set the stage for the construction of the of the twentieth-century African Studies establishment in the United States.40 The counterparts to these organizations were engaged in a similar process in Britain.

The British undertaking was favored by colonial history, coupled with a renewed focus on resource-rich Africa after Indian independence. The administrative, educational, and public health work of the Colonial Office, the Institute of Royal International Affairs (Chatham House), missionary societies, and foundations, offered moral authority. A sense of urgency would come later as the leisurely development of infrastructure came into conflict with African nationalism and ant-colonialism generally.

The center for African Studies was St. Antony's College, Oxford. An ambitious plan to train “Africanists,” funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, sought to train and place both experienced and promising scholars in university colleges in Africa. An equally important goal was to staff British institutions with an interest in Africa. The African Studies Center was led by Kenneth Kirkwood, the former head of the South African Institute for Race Relations (SAIRR), and a former assistant of South African anthropologist Hansi Pollack. While Kirkwood wrote, lectured, and contributed otherwise to the St. Antony's project, his strong suit was his administrative skill, energy, and infectious enthusiasm. Viewed from the mid-1950s onward the names of the scholars and degree candidates who passed through the college is a Who's Who in African studies for an entire generation.

While the tempo of activity surrounding African studies was quickening, Africanists remained a relatively small and intimate group, and the early coalescing of scholars into various institutions made the recognition of strong and weak programs easy to discern. De Kiewiet wanted badly for Rochester to have one of the emerging African studies centers. Funds were still scarce, and the international education provisions (Title VI) of the Higher Education Act (1965) were still in the future. He was bested by his friend Melville Herskovits (1895–1963) of Northwestern—the University of Rochester was deemed less accessible than metropolitan Chicago.41

At the end of the 1950s, the “collapse” of Rochester's Anthropology and Sociology Department finally left de Kiewiet free to recast the department in a new mold. His Berkeley colleague, Lloyd Fallers, cautioned that the costs of running a top quality anthropology department required faculty lines in all the major specializations:

I enclose a little note I did for Princeton recently … They want a couple of anthropologists but don’t want to get involved in having an anthropology department … The problem is getting people who will stick with this sort of task and not immediately start trying to build an anthropology empire. … What you want is a small group of specialists on different areas—Africa, India, China, Latin America—who will work together. It doesn’t really matter whether they’re anthropologists or sociologists, or for that matter, historians.42

If the “collapse” resulted from a “… an unusual exercise in incompetence …” de Kiewiet's shadow loomed large in its manufacture.43 Faculty researching fraternal organizations, educational sociology, corrections, and addictive drinking patterns, left Rochester, while those focusing on minority groups, ethnicity, socio-religious practices in Kenya, and research methods and statistics, remained and became the core of the new department.44 As he wrote Fallers:

… American education's need to absorb into the whole curriculum a … continuous awareness of the so-called non-western world. This is not done through an individual introductory course … rather through a suffusion that involves most … fields of the social sciences and humanities what I am thinking of now.., is doubling or trebling the dose [faculty hires] in the hope that these people will become a force or influence in the curriculum … that the rest of the faculty cannot ignore.45

De Kiewiet's own preference was for anthropology since he believed “… most modern sociology was second rate or worse.”46 As a doctoral student in London he had attended Malinowski's seminars, and many of his friends, Herskovits, Fallers, and Monica Wilson, among them, were anthropologists.

Investigations and Influence on Foreign Policy

In a more racially conscious world, de Kiewiet found himself in step with those recently victimized by fascism and communism. His earlier trials now qualified him as an intellectual refugee of sorts, “… deprived of his first university appointment because of his views on the civil and economic condition of black men.”47 Not surprisingly, one of de Kiewiet's heartfelt beliefs was that universities should be places of academic freedom. He was effective in protecting Rochester from the McCarthy red scare of the 1950s.

De Kiewiet himself was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) formally three times between 1950 and 1951 as part of screenings for access to sensitive programs. First investigated in 1950 at the request of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Syracuse Field Office recorded that de Kiewiet had given a talk to students in 1943 on “the place of a liberal organization at Cornell.” Agents also noted a syndicated New York World Telegram article (1943) on the hiring of communists and communist sympathizers in the Russian language section of the Army's Area Language Program at Cornell (1943–1945). Bureau investigations in Iowa City, Ithaca, and Rochester found de Kiewiet's loyalty unquestionable. The Language Program hires involved getting instructors with the best contemporary knowledge of the USSR for the Army.48

Again investigated for the Economic Cooperation Administration (1950) and European Recovery Program (1951), de Kiewiet's detractors from Ithaca found their opening. Speaking highly of his character and loyalty in FBI interviews, several trustees also noted that de Kiewiet was:

an extremely poor administrator and lacking in ability to handle a top-level administrative job. They [trustees] based their opinion on the fact that de Kiewiet antagonized many of his associates at Cornell, had tended to ride roughshod over subordinates and was a poor judge of men. … the Trustees … voted against naming de Kiewiet to the permanent position of President of the University because the great majority of the faculty … was strongly opposed … due to his poor administrative ability.49

The characterization of de Kiewiet as “… intensely ambitious and ruthless in manner to gain personal advantage” followed him in subsequent FBI inquiries for the next fifteen years.50 Elsewhere in the same FBI report Cornell senior faculty describe de Kiewiet as a person of great honesty and integrity and an excellent administrator.51 Five FBI field offices had participated in this investigation.

De Kiewiet was again an FBI person of interest in 1954 for participating in the defense of the Council of Learned Societies. The council's president, Mortimer Graves, had prepared a rebuttal to accusations made by a Select Committee of the House of Representatives then investigating the relation of such bodies to tax-exempt foundations. The FBI Report offered an allegation (July 1954) that the council was in effect pro-Soviet and anti-American:

The source was unable to provide any factual basis for the foregoing conclusion. … the files of this Bureau, however, has disclosed that in June, 1951, Louis [F] Pudenz reported that Mortimer Graves … had been a concealed Communist at least up to 1945 when Pudenz left the Party. … Pudenz claimed that Graves had been referred to as a Communist in his presence in a very discrete manner by Jack Stachel and Alexander Trachtenberg, leading officials of the Communist Party in the period up to 1945.52

De Kiewiet, chairman of the council, had written the cover letter for the spring 1954 report. Nothing came of these allegations and his influence continued to grow.53

The House's inquiry into the council came near the end of Alger Hiss's (1904–1996) forty-four month stint at Lewisburg Federal Prison. A prominent member of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, Hiss had been convicted of two counts of perjury when testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The far more serious charge that he had passed State Department documents to Soviet Agents could not be substantiated. Hiss's appearances before HUAC came when he was serving as head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

De Kiewiet followed the trial, and the Carnegie Corporation's John Dollard accompanied Hiss to one of the HUAC hearings and parts of the trial itself. Recalling the accusations, de Kiewiet shared the academic community's sense that Hiss was “railroaded” at the time, but with hindsight mused that this perspective may have been “unreflective.” Hiss had written part of the United Nations Charter for the State Department, an organization viewed with hostility by ultra-conservatives, as were other enternationalist or “think tank” organizations perceived to have private influences on government. The Council of Foreign Relations was a favorite target of 1950s ultra-conservatives who bombarded the FBI with investigatory requests regarding the Council and its individual members, including de Kiewiet's colleague on the Council, Philip Jessup.54

De Kiewiet's work for the Council on Foreign Relations, Association of American Universities, the Carnegie Corporation, and in various venues on behalf of area studies, provided opportunities for demonstrating what universities could contribute to redirecting the attention of society while contributing to the solutions of domestic and international problems. In 1956 he published The Anatomy of South African Misery, on contemporary South Africa and its relation to the decolonizing world.55 First delivered in Canada in January as the first Whidden Lecture at McMaster University, Anatomy recapitulates many of de Kiewiet's long-standing views as well as the influence of his newer associations. The significance of Gibraltar, Suez, and the Cape gave way to new strategic considerations drawn up by the Council on Foreign Relations. He noted also that “… a substantial measure of the initiative [in African affairs] has also gone into the hands of the African native population. … The world was still full of the discrimination of race, color, and creed. But it is no longer complacent.”56 He suggested that every gradual advance of Africans, whether in voting, striking, selling on the world Market, or assuming a modern occupation, made them an unconscious and remote critic of apartheid.

For South African society, which de Kiewiet felt was moving toward crisis, it was important to understand that “… the Boer War is the gateway to most of the issues of modern South Africa.”57 Starting at this point he gave a careful reiteration of modern South African history, not original, but clear and succinct. He reminded his audience that for Kenya, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), South Africa, and other parts of the developing world, Western ideas and the model of development were not the only choices for indigenous peoples. The Soviet Union and other Eastern block countries with their own ideologies and strategic considerations could offer aid, sympathy, and comradeship. It was a compelling, and no doubt, chilling argument.

Little was known about Africa by the intelligence community in Washington DC, and individuals like de Kiewiet were sought out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as potentially helpful to the interests of national security.58 De Kiewiet had been one of two people selected for debriefing by the CIA's Bureau of African Affairs, after their Carnegie sponsored African tour in 1951.59 Later De Kiewiet would muse that the CIA's interest in him stemmed from his penchant for strategic thinking and their desire to find covers for their operatives and activities. He was formally approached by the CIA when he was President of the Council of Learned Societies in this regard.60 The CIA already had adequate covers at Cornell, and de Kiewiet had little contact with them there. Rochester was different:

… I learned about some of the more subterranean things that possibly they were doing in 1951 but that I didn’t know about until subsequently. On more than one occasion they either tried to get me involved in some of their … activities or I simply bumped into them as president of the university [Rochester]—discovering, for example, that one of my own trustees was a CIA agent.61

De Kiewiet was careful to maintain a distance from the CIA as he learned of their clandestine operations.62 Extensively briefed on the activities of the Afro-Asian Institute (AAI), he was subsequently denied board membership due to the personal animosity of a board member. It was an embarrassing situation, since among other facts, de Kiewiet had been told of the AAI's funding links to the CIA. The AAI was as close as he ever came to working for an intelligence service.

In fall of 1956 he was called to give testimony to the Foreign Policy and Mutual Security subcommittee of the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. It was a remarkable performance, and needed to be, since he was queried on topics ranging from the US position on the Suez Crisis, to India, Soviet ideology and policy, pre-conditions for the establishment of a modern state, economic and military aid, Cyprus, aid to China, the Arab–Israeli conflict, Algeria, and Southern Africa.63

His most interesting remarks were on American foreign policy generally. Like nineteenth-century Britain, American interests, options, and opportunities, were often inconsistent. Alliances and partnerships were not always of one's choosing. Here he contrasted the long-standing relationship with the European colonial powers and the new and indispensable relationship with NATO. This was an adaptation of his earliest mature thinking to the American context. Consistency and clarity were goals; actual circumstances made them dauntingly difficult to achieve.

De Kiewiet's activities were helping to move the American university into the public arena as a source of knowledge, training, and measured expert opinion, but this success came at a price. His activities off-campus and his day-to-day duties at Rochester were enormous, particularly since the university was continuing to expand. His 1958 “Future of the University Plan” called for twenty capital construction projects across the River campus, Medical School, and Eastman School of Music. These were joined by thirty-eight lesser projects. The following year, the trustees approved the plan and set about raising $49.9 million in six years.64 As the 1950s drew to a close, de Kiewiet began to voice an interest in retiring.65 He was tired of administration and wanted more time for Africa, where events were moving rapidly.

Over the decade, American cooperation and financial support became more important for Britain's gradual withdrawal from an overt colonial presence.66 In 1957, Carnegie Corporation began talks with Andrew Cohen, the UK's permanent representative to the UN Trusteeship Council. The need for the Western democracies to cooperate in decolonization in the face of the Soviet challenge melded with the weakening of British power. After preliminary talks, a first conference was held at the Greenbrier Hotel, West Virginia. Representatives from universities, government, and foundations (in private capacities) attended. No Africans were invited. A second conference followed at Cumberland Lodge, England. Alan Pifer reported on progress made since the first meeting. Their most important achievement was the formation of the Ashby Commission that started its work in May of 1959. The final report, Investment in Education (1960), became a widely quoted document for African development. New universities and social science institutes, funded by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, would bring North American social science methods and theories to nations emerging from colonial rule. A legacy of the Ashby Commission was an expanded conception of the role foreign aid should play in development.

American assistance for British colonial territories required that Britain's long-term planning for regionally based university colleges (functioning as external units of the University of London) come into rough alignment with American educational thinking—and the growing pressures of African nationalism.67 The external college model ensured high standards but perpetuated the elitist nature of British higher education. For students, dissatisfaction with obvious differences in prestige, standards, and earning potential of university students (often headed for the professions), and those achieving (or settling for) courses at teacher training colleges, was an unintended consequence of overvaluing university education.68

The Rockefeller Foundation's Africa Program officer, Robert July, visited the University College of Ghana in 1960, writing in some exasperation when only twelve of sixty-five applicants for sociology could offer Latin or Greek for the qualifying exams.

The others were turned loose … forty-three young people of college caliber in a country hungry for trained people … when one questions the value of Greek or Latin … the remark is that these are really the only subjects that train the mind properly, and Ghanaians would raise a fearful row if they were eliminated.69

Oddly, there was truth to the notion that in those early days some African leaders interpreted modifications of university requirements and rituals as dilutions of quality.

Britain's IUC, the counterpart to the American AAU, sought to coordinate planning, administration, and staffing for new overseas institutions from within its member institutions. It was a complex task involving salary equities, career advancements, and raising the valuation of overseas experience, all complicated by strained financial resources

The first tentative steps toward Anglo-American cooperation (1958–1959) received an unanticipated jolt in 1959, when on 7 September a plane chartered by Project Airlift-Africa left Nairobi for New York with eighty-one students from Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika (Tanzania). Three young Kenyan politicians, Tom Mboya, Gikonyo Kiano, and Kariuki Njiiri, had organized the Airlift. Mboya had been to the United States several times (1956, 1959) to gain support and raise funds for this venture.70 Articulate and intelligent, the charismatic Mboya gained sponsorship from influential black leaders Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and Jackie Robinson. Letters with their signatures went out to 250,000 people and achieved well over 10,000 contributions, including a $100,000 grant from the Kennedy Foundation.

To the dismay of British planners, students assumed to be bound for the fledgling university colleges were suddenly off to the United States with scholarships. The pool of eligible students was small and skimming off some of the first- and second-tier secondary school graduates diminished the potential number of candidates for university admission. Additionally, logistical and fiscal planning was often haphazard. Still, Airlift-Africa captured the popular imagination. Ten thousand people came to see the students off at Nairobi's Embakasi Airport.

De Kiewiet developed a unique perspective on these events. First, he had been part of an AAU delegation that had gone to Montreal and then back to Washington DC to meet with British and commonwealth vice chancellors during their Quinquennial Conference.71 At the last minute, de Kiewiet was asked to speak in place of Harvard's James Conant. De Kiewiet's talk, on possible American university education's contributions to higher education in new countries, so offended several of the British delegates that they would not speak to him afterwards. As de Kiewiet put it dryly: “They looked upon this as a far more ambitious response to their first approach than they had anticipated.”72

If the British IUC was at this stage primarily interested in casual cooperation and substantial American financial support, they had, lupus in fabula, heightened American interest beyond fledgling Aid for International Development (AID) contracts in Ethiopia and Nigeria. The latter, with its carefully nurtured British-style university-level institutions, hit a sore nerve indeed.73

Dr. Nnamdi Adikiwe, a Michigan State University PhD, and a Nigerian politician, wanted an American-style university in Eastern Nigeria. Work toward this end began Michigan State's distinguished record of involvement in university development. De Kiewiet later recalled his experiences with the British IUC:

We found them … almost benighted, extraordinarily uninformed, and in some ways rather shockingly prejudiced about … American education. … There were people of great reputation who’d never been to the United States: others who had been … but had made contact with a Harvard or a Yale and didn’t have an inkling of the historic importance of the land-grant university or of a state university. … Some of the ignorance was damaging and abysmal.

The following year, when representatives of the newly formed American Council on Education's (ACE) African Liaison Committee (J. L. Morrill, president of the University of Minnesota; Arthur Adams, ACE; and de Kiewiet), were in East Africa, they met with Mboya to discuss British and American educational concerns about the Airlift. This was the first of many meetings de Kiewiet would have with Mboya. Indeed, the two would get to know one another fairly well. If not entirely persuaded by Mboya's arguments, he was impressed with Mboya's intelligence, understanding of the issues, and dedication. Recognizing that independence was rapidly approaching for many African colonies, de Kiewiet understood Mboya's concern that as many university-level graduates be produced as possible. That American institutions and private groups were helping Airlift students put De Kiewiet's group on sensitive ground with their British counterparts. The final report of the Morrill Commission, as it became known, suggests that the members were more sympathetic to Mboya then they may have let on.

In order … that United Kingdom standards of education be met, as well as to take account of the limitations of funds available for education, there is strict selection at each stage of the educational ladder. … probably not much more than 1 percent of those … in primary school are selected to go on to higher education. … [I]n great contrast to the … United states through which perhaps … 30 to 35 percent … go on to college. … all of the people in East African territories must pay for education from the start … While the charges in the primary school do not seem to be large in absolute amount, they are large in terms of … income … Once the student … has succeeded in reaching university college status, he then is eligible a bursary … 74

De Kiewiet's university duties, coupled with his growing range of African involvements and the wear and tear of travel, were now joined by domestic crisis; Lucea's serious illness and his daughter Christina's emerging battle with cancer.

In addition to his work on African universities, he was involved in a faculty exchange program for South Africa—and efforts to get grant support for people like Helen Suzeman.75 He was also active in a campaign to secure the ailing William Macmillan, poor and nearly blind, research support.76 He sometimes wrote the tedious reports of various groups as well.

There was too much in play and distraction was inevitable. Confiding in William MacMillan, de Kiewiet (then 57) wrote that he had seriously injured himself chopping wood “… with quite a story of casts and operations and crutches and what-not.”77 In June of 1961, following Christina's death at age 27 the previous December, Kiewiet resigned the presidency of the University of Rochester.

Retirement Years

De Kiewiet could look back on an exemplary career of intellectual achievement and public service. Albert (Mvumbi) Luthuli (1898–1967) quoted De Kiewiet's 1960 Hoernlé Lecture in his 1961 Nobel Peace Prize address. He had also prepared well for retirement, owning a home and cabin cruiser in the Bahamas, a farm near Brockport, New York, and accumulating $425,000 in stock investments aside from his university pension.78 Active retirement in African affairs promised to be invigorating.79

Unfettered from his role as university president, de Kiewiet could be less circumspect. While he got on well with African leaders he found many problematic. As he wrote his South African friend Leo Marquard:

… a number of the African leaders have been spoiled by an excess of liberal sentiments uttered on their behalf. Their job is to be practical, to give leadership to economic enterprise and political development and to do as little international ranting as they can. It is not … reassuring to watch all this African posturing and gesticulating in the United Nations. The new African leaders continue to put all their hard work into what they think is international diplomacy and not into setting their houses in order. They will disillusion both themselves and the rest of the world.80

Later in the year, he offered much the same analysis to a joint meeting of the AAU and the Associated Universities of the British Commonwealth (AUBC) in Cambridge (UK). “We shall know better ten years from now whether the deference the world shows new African leaders will have been deserved.” He was also troubled by the looming specter of failing race relations, raising the eventual prospect of an exodus of whites and Indians from Africa. In his view, history had cast them as more than “intrusive nuisances” and that the colonial relationship, while undeniably domineering and exploitative, was also a vehicle of cultural and educational transmission, potentially constructive in the process of nation building. This rather abstract view of the colonial relationship reveals a blind spot in de Kiewiet's thinking. If a few years earlier he could recognize the almost visceral reaction of Afrikaners to the South African War, he could not make the same connection in the African response to colonialism. That he believed colonialism was good for indigenous peoples suggests uncertainty about the capacities of Africans to successfully achieve self government, an echo of an earlier generation of Carnegie associates.81

De Kiewiet's scholarly work and wide experience grounded him in the belief that nation building was a long term processes. The emerging timeframes for independence, economic development, and self governance made him apprehensive. He recognized injustices and empathized with popular aspirations, but remained skeptical about emerging African leaders as a whole. Some of this was personality; he was not particularly patient when expectations were not met, and was exasperated by the mistakes of others. He also carried some of the Carnegie ethos of the period, as a Rockefeller Foundation memo put it succinctly:

MY [Montague Yudelman] had a long discussion … with AP [Alan Pifer]; AP considers the Union of South Africa to be the most important area intrinsically (his word) on the continent—consequently a good deal of the Carnegie Travel grant money goes to … (white South Africans). … AP hopes that some parochialism might be rubbed off the visitors’ shoulders … In general it was a satisfactory visit, though there was one fundamental difference in our viewpoints: AP considers Africa to be essentially a “white man's” continent; MY doesn’t.82

Over time, differences in purpose and method narrowed between the AAU and the IUC. A more cooperative spirit came to prevail. This led to the council calling in de Kiewiet and other AAUP members to consult on a number of time consuming and thorny problems. Here de Kiewiet's expertise in Southern Africa came to the fore.

As the regional university concept was overtaken by political events, fuller consideration was being given to American models of university development. Standards remained a central concern but institutional structures, staffing, and devolution of administrative authority to “branch campuses,” unfamiliar in Britain, was equally important. Looming in the background was the failing Central African Federation (1953–1963), presided over by Prime Minister Roy Welensky.83 That de Kiewiet understood the larger geo-political dynamics was invaluable for the future.

The Colonial Office recognized the handwriting on the wall for settler rule and had decided on decolonization as policy. Meanwhile long-term colonial civil servants on the ground and their settler compatriots sought to make settler control viable. (They were not without their allies in Whitehall.) If more keenly attuned to the practical problems of African independence than those that flew in and out from London for short periods, they were largely unsympathetic to African aspirations. Policy makers thus tended to be highly selective in the distribution of information about goals and timelines. Promoting a sense of false security served to dampen white resistance to change. Both Roy Welensky and Ian Smith would later complain about mixed messages and British duplicity.84

Understanding the central theme of decolonization while working between the two groups and interpreting their shifting positions required considerable skill. For de Kiewiet, concerned with university development, the problem was how to plan around the dissolution of the Central African Federation without the perception of “outside” interference into this highly volatile subject. As it was de Kiewiet's “liberal” record raised sufficient anxiety within the settler community that he was banned from speaking in Southern Rhodesia in 1962. Within three years Southern Rhodesia would have three prime ministers: Edger Whitehead (1958–1962) and Winston Field (1962–1964), and arrive at a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) under Ian Smith (1964–1979) in 1965. Moreover Whitehead's predecessor, Garfield Todd (1953–1958), would spend nearly a decade confined to his ranch under house arrest. Liberalism was not only unpopular, it was considered dangerous in settler society.

The single university-level institution at Mount Pleasant, outside of Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (Harare, Zimbabwe), quickly gave way to three separate national institutions, two of them framed in quick time. De Kiewiet credited Teachers’ College, Columbia's, Karl Bigalow, with devising the university framework for Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), and Eldon L. Johnson (president of the University of New Hampshire) for work done in Nyasaland (Malawi).85

De Kiewiet was also asked to look into the small Pope Pius XII College in Basutoland (Lesotho). The college, in operation since 1946, was bankrupt and unable on its own to undertake any transformative work. While the British pronounced the college of insufficient stature to become a University of London affiliate, Sir James Cook, one of de Kiewiet's counterparts, felt that there was a possibility of an affiliation with an American University, adding, “But who would want to be affiliated with an American University?”86 In the short term, the institution would also have to fill the needs of the emerging British Protectorates of Bechuanaland and Swaziland (Botswana, 1966, Swaziland, 1968). Cook's comment was taken in stride and a determination made that the institution should be reinvigorated.87

Persuading college officials and the Canadian diocese sponsoring the college that they must surrender control of the institution to receive an infusion of funds and a new mandate was left to de Kiewiet as leader of the AAU team. This difficult assignment, which de Kiewiet later described as “fun,” was accomplished in stages, and in 1963 agreement was reached on the transfer of the college. The following year the University of Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland began operation. Money for the university came from the British government and the Ford Foundation. What de Kiewiet and his colleagues had recognized was that given recent South African legislation (The Extension of Universities Act, 1959), an independent, non-sectarian institution in Southern Africa would be of growing value over time.88

Conclusion

In retirement de Kiewiet had surmounted the financial problems of the Iowa days and was now free to pursue his life's calling, but it was scant consolation for the shattering tragedy he and Lucea suffered as their other two children also died of cancer in early adulthood. After Christine's passing (1933–1960), John (1937–1970), at the beginning of a promising medical career, died, and last, their oldest daughter, Marie, a London University PhD first gaining recognition in her career in African history, passed away (1931–1972).89 Lucea too became ill again in the late 1960s but survived. And de Kiewiet himself also had several bouts in the hospital. There is no doubt that the extension of de Kiewiet's career into retirement provided a respite from the grief any parent would experience under those circumstances.

Nearly a decade into retirement, the de Kiewiets moved to Washington DC, where de Kiewiet continued his work with ACE's Overseas Liaison Committee.90 He continued his biannual trips to Africa as well as work with the State Department Advisory Council on Africa and USAID. Through USAID he continued his working relationships with the IUC, Overseas Development Ministry of the UK, and the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations. And he remained a University of Rochester Trustee. C.W. de Kiewiet died in 1986, predeceasing Lucea by two years.

To the end of his life, de Kiewiet maintained his panoramic perspective on historical processes. Despite his personal ties, he never retreated from the belief that South Africa was an anachronism in the modem world, which he likened to Goa and Macau to his old friend Malherbe.91 His commitment to fostering a just and equitable society in South Africa was forthright but his knowledge and experience left him with sufficient forebodings to forego easy scenarios for the future. He never endorsed overly optimistic predictions for South Africa.92

He was also anxious about the stalled progress of the American civil rights movement after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy in 1968. He criticized what he observed as ineptitude and contradiction in the Poor People's March (1968) and the weekend assemblage called Resurrection City that followed. He interpreted these events, with their petty bickering and conflicts, as signs of decline in the non-violent civil rights movement, reducing race relations to a debate over civil liberties and law and order in the next election (November 1968). As he wrote Malherbe in June of 1968:

As far as America is concerned the chances of any tangible leadership in the interest of the African states has become almost nil … Because of the death of [Robert] Kennedy it is now more than likely that we will go to the polls confused, and … decide that the dollar and law and order are more important than the other two [the Vietnam War and race relations]. These might look strong but leave us exposed to the awful dangers of racial violence, a total breakdown of our foreign policies. People like [Walter] Lippman are beginning to pick up the theme … that our foreign policy crisis … is going to stimulate the increase in anarchic and insurgent forces throughout the world.

What I want to raise … [is] the possibility that the Negro repudiation of the traditional meaning of American History, may be part of an equally unsettling repudiation, in Africa especially, of the meaning of western history. And by history I do not mean a record of events, but an explanation of how things get done, successfully and beneficially. This would contain new dangers for Africa …93

This perspective was very much a part of his later thinking about Africa. If flexible in his practical work on the ground, he left little theoretical space for putting an African stamp on development, encouraging popular ownership of processes and ideas.

He recognized education as one of the crucial factors in advancing the aspirations of the emerging nations of the period. That popular leaders embraced the foundational character of education was to him a hopeful sign for the future. But would the products of the emerging education systems of Africa and their national leaders promote development mirroring their social realities, i.e. embracing agriculture, village life, efficient and just civil administration, and sound fiscal policies? It was not in de Kiewiet's character to provide the quick praise politicians sought for processes that he knew required decades.

Establishing viable nation states would be tougher and take longer to achieve than many politicians were willing to concede. This was doubly so for South Africa. He had been receiving indications of recalcitrance for years.

I received a letter from South Africa yesterday … unsigned, although I was enough of a historian to make an excellent guess as to the authorship. It rather nastily said that I was now a left winger. … I wish he had been right. Young people are more left wing than old people. But people like myself, partly through age, and … reflection seem to be driven to some point right or left of center. I think of myself as still left of center, but without any great passion, perhaps because this has become a very noisy and strident country, and somebody has to do the listening and thinking.94

In the end it was de Kiewiet's penchant for thinking and listening that gave rise to his signature talent: recognizing the essential elements in complex and unfolding circumstances, as well as their implications. He left a legacy of scholarly approach in which the constituent parts of a question are examined without presupposition, often from the ground up. His attraction to anthropology underscores his belief that understanding the social mores, belief systems, and other ways in which societies develop and maintain their internal integrity was essential in understanding their history. As de Kiewiet put it to his students: “… as historians … we want to take our meals in the kitchens of the people we want to study.”95

To de Kiewiet, events on the ground, however framed by governments and policy makers, were interactive and dynamic, often leading to practical and unforeseen accommodations. Another aspect of his legacy, obvious in both in his teaching and administrative work, was the ability to compare similar processes from seemingly disparate circumstances. Thus he could start by detailing the cultural exchanges between Roman settlements and Teutonic tribes in the later Roman Empire and end by comparing the Roman caupo with the bush store keeper “… as one still finds in Africa, selling cheap finery in exchange for more valuable raw products.”96

De Kiewiet's talents would have meant little beyond his scholarly work without the drive to exercise his powers of persuasion, a strong work ethic, and willingness to expend considerable energy on the projects he valued. He had these qualities too. That he could wrap ideas and insights in elegant and accessible prose makes reading his works a pleasure and sets a standard for historical writing to be emulated by following generations.

Acknowledgements

Portions of this research were funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Archive Center, North Tarrytown, New York. Opinions expressed herein are the author's alone. Archivists Tom Rosenbaum of the RAC; Karl Kabelac, Rush Reese Library, University of Rochester; David F. McCartney, University of Iowa Collections; and the staff of the Karl Kroch Library, Cornell University, were especially helpful to my work. I am grateful as always to the staff of the Killie Campbell Africa Library, University of KwaZula/Natal, South Africa.

Notes

¹ Cf. Saunders, “A Liberal Descent?”

² Saunders, C. W. De Kiewiet.

³ De Kiewiet's scholarship presaged the imperialism of free trade controversy made famous a quarter of a century later. Robinson, Gallagher and Denny, The Imperialism of Free Trade.

⁴ Six months before (16 April) Margaret Sanger had been banned from speaking on birth control at the Ford Hall Forum on Boston's Beacon Hill. She wore a gage and dramatically handed her speech to historian Arthur Schlesinger who read it to the packed hall. The police had raided her New York clinic the previous day arresting five of her staff members. De Kiewiet to Magda (Unknown). 9 September 1929. 3/7/3 72 Box 2. Carl Kroch Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. (hereafter DEK/Cornell).

⁵ The German social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) came to Iowa (1935–1945) after exhausting other avenues for avoiding repatriation. Awarded the Iron Cross in WWI, Lewin was an internationally recognized scholar dismissed from the University of Berlin by the Nazis. Gertrude Lewin, Jewish like her husband, and with two small children from this second marriage, wondered how they would “survive” in Iowa City. His appointment at the Iowa Child Welfare Station enhanced his career, the Lewins’ social standing, and brought stature to the University. Iowa Years, Box 946, Folder 21, Kurt Lewin Papers, Archives of the American Psychological Association, The University of Akron, Akron, Ohio.

⁶ C. W. de Kiewiet to John de Kiewiet (brother), 15 September 1929. 3/7/72, Box 2. DEK/Cornell.

⁷ De Kiewiet to Helen___, 25 September 1929, 3/7/372, Box 2. DEK/Cornell.

⁸ De Kiewiet submitted his name for immigration under the Dutch rather than the more liberal English quota. Married overseas in 1930, they believed (erroneously) that marriage eased the restrictions of the 1924 Immigration Act. Eventually both de Kiewiet's chair and the University's president had to intercede on his behalf. Root to W. J. Can (State Department), 18 August 1930, A. D. Hodgdon, (State Department) to Root, 25 August 1930, W. A. Jessup to Congressman Cyrenus Cole, 26 August 1930. History Department Archives, de Kiewiet File, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City. (Hereafter DEK/UI.)

⁹ His lecture notes for ancient and early modern European history contain periodic references to Africa. Commenting on the indispensible nature of slavery to Greece, he pointed out that Greeks cast slaves as collaborators rather than as “beasts.” At the bottom of the page is penciled in Afrikaans “… oorsake van undergang nie vergeet ne,” roughly “something we shouldn’t forget.” Course notes 1-39. Box 1 3/7/372, DEK/Cornell.

¹⁰ For a critique of de Kiewiet's, British Colonial Policy, see Eric Walker to de Kiewiet, 4 July 1928. DEK/UI.

¹¹ De Kiewiet, The Imperial Factor in South Africa.

¹² In 1936 he had written “Social and Economic Developments in Native Tribal Life” for the Cambridge History of the British Empire.

¹³ Clarendon Press, Oxford, sold few copies of The Imperial Factor, and so de Kiewiet's travel expenses, Public Records Office research, proof reading, and miscellany qualified only as a hobby for tax authorities. Litigation was finally resolved in 1940 the year after he became a naturalized citizen. The $2,136.82 deduction claimed was the equivalent of $33,294.45 in 2008 dollars. De Kiewiet to White, 1 April 1940, de Kiewiet to Blackburn, 7 January 1939, Forsen to Blackburn, 29 December 1938, Papers, Series 5/7/372, Box One. DEK/Cornell.

¹⁴ Root was finally ousted in 1944 by a group of young faculty led by German refugee scholar George Mosse (1918–1999), just arrived from Cambridge University. Mosse would later become a distinguished international authority on European History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

¹⁵ De Kiewiet to Root, 27 April, 1937. DEK/UI.

¹⁶ De Kiewiet, A History of South Africa.

¹⁷ Saunders and de Kiewiet, “The Writing of C. W. de Kiewiet's A History of South Africa: Social and Economic”; Saunders, “Liberal Historiography before 1954.”

¹⁸ Glotzer, “The Influence of Carnegie Corporation,” and “A Long Shadow.”

¹⁹ De Kiewiet, “Report to the Carnegie Corporation on Trip to South Africa,” 11 August 1947–18 December 1947 (marked confidential). Grant Series one, Box 131. Carnegie Corporation Archives, Butler Library, Columbia University. (Hereafter CC.)

²⁰ “First Progress Report,” 1 August 1948, Siam Project 1948–49. Cultural Anthropology Program, Far Eastern Studies Program. Item 3/7/2559, Box 10. DEK/Cornell.

²¹ The South African War ended in 1902 with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging, which, among its provisions, promised the Boers eventual self government. The four provinces became the self-governing Union of South Africa, a British Dominion, in 1910. De Kiewiet to Shepardson, undated. Carnegie Corporation Archives, Box 331, de Kiewiet Correspondence, CC.

²² Ernest Gideon Malherbe (1895–1984) was a tenth generation Afrikaner who earned a PhD at Teachers College, Columbia (1924), and subsequently taught, directed the National Bureau for Educational Research, and served as vice principal of the University of Natal. He wrote the grant for the original “poor white study” and maintained influential ties to the Carnegie Corporation. E. G. Malherbe to de Kiewiet, 5 Sept 1950; de Kiewiet to Malherbe, 20 September 1950. Malherbe/de Kiewiet Correspondence, E. G. Malherbe Papers, Unassessioned Files, both 56986 (4767). Killie Campbell African Library, University of kwaZulu/Natal, South Africa. (Hereafter EGM Papers.)

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ C. W. de Kiewiet, “Memorandum on India—A New Great Power” (marked confidential), Association of American Universities, 30 December 1948. Item 3/7/2559, Box 10. DEK/Cornell.

²⁶ John Gardner to DH (unidentified), A Proposal for Visits by Social Scientists to Africa, Item 3/7/2559, Box 9. DEK/Cornell.

²⁷ Few of the thirteen scholars that took part in these trips came from Gardner's original A List. While the experience, at least from one account, was deeply enriching, only six individuals of the thirteen retained a long-term interest in Africa. Murphy, Creative Philanthropy, 29–31. Author interview, Leonard Doob, New Haven, CT. 20 April 1991. Doob (1910–2004), a distinguished social psychologist, was part of the second reconnaissance group. He supported African interest at Yale and became a strong supporter of Yale's Southern Africa Research Program (SARP).

²⁸ Report “On Institute of International Education Grant of $20,000 for Support of Reconnaissance Study in Africa,” De Kiewiet Papers (unaccessioned boxes), Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York. (Hereafter UR.)

²⁹ Martin and West, “Introduction,” 1–35; and “The Ascent, Triumph and Disintegration,” 85–122.

³⁰ Arthur May, the university's historian, described the hiring as “hurried and unorthodox.” The vote on de Kiewiet's candidacy was due at Cornell's October Trustee's meeting and the Rochester Trustees feared he would be elected. De Kiewiet negotiated well, receiving a package which included a house, allowances for maintenance and entertainment, and an automobile, aside from his salary. May, A History of the University of Rochester, 297–9.

³¹ Ibid., 201–20.

³² Early in his tenure, de Kiewiet became the principal architect of co-education at the University (1953), advancing a fiscal savings argument to outflank traditionalists. The war had revolutionized many aspects of medical treatment, training, and research, and he considered as central issues opening up department structures to reflect the nature of new knowledge and putting the medical and dental schools on a firm financial footing. He was also a board member of George Eastman House, the Lincoln-Rochester Trust Company, the Advisory Commission on Underdeveloped Areas, Mutual Security Agency, among others. May, A History of the University of Rochester, 299–300; De Kiewiet, “Medicine in the Architecture of the University,” 458–68.

³³ Davie (1895–1955), trained as a physician, was, like de Kiewiet, from a modest background. His parents had emigrated from Cornwall, England. As vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town, he was strongly opposed to the National Party encroachment on academic freedom at UCT. Ill toward the end of his life, Davie's last work was proof reading de Kiewiet's manuscript lectures The Anatomy of South African Misery.

³⁴ He supported Davie's bid for a Carnegie Travel Grant, which brought Davie into high level contacts with over 30 institutions in the United States and Canada in 1953. Davie to De Kiewiet, 1 July 1954, UR; T.B. Davie, “Report on the Visit to American and Canadian Universities under the Auspices of, and with a Travel grant from, The Carnegie Corporation of New York,” September–December 1953, 1–15. UR.

³⁵ Hendrik Bernardus Thom (1905–1983), trained as a historian at Stellenbosch and Utrecht, was a prominent historian at Stellenbosch University. He became University Rector in 1954. In 1960 Thom would be a major player in negotiating faculty exchanges between U.S. and South African institutions. He relied on de Kiewiet as a fair broker to articulate his pro-government choices for members of the selection committee. De Kiewiet also knew, as he told Melvin Fox of the Ford Foundation, that Thom was Chairman of the Broederbond. De kiewiet to Davie, 10 October 1955, De kiewiet to Melvin Fox, 20 March 1960 (Written from South Africa) Both UR.

³⁶ David Rockefeller to de Kiewiet, 21 May 1953. UR.

³⁷ Discussion Meeting Reports: No 1. “Emerging Problems of American Foreign Policy in Africa.” Leader Vernon McKay, 5 February 1953; “Problems of American Foreign Policy in Africa,” Leader, James S. Coleman, 4 March 1953; No. 3. “Emerging Problems of American Foreign Policy in Africa,” Leader, Archibald Campbell, 7 April 1953. Printed copies, Council on Foreign Relations Archives, New York, NY.

³⁸ Study Group on the Colonial Problem, Council on Foreign Relations, 13 November 1956. Unsigned mimeograph, UR.

³⁹ C. Jessup to de Kiewiet, 17 October 1956. UR

⁴⁰ Martin and West, “The Ascent, Triumph and Disintegration.”

⁴¹ De Kiewiet had simultaneously pursued the introduction of Canadian studies. Here he was successful. At Rochester, Canadian studies became an interdisciplinary center, headed by Canadian Mason Wade and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and Canada's Sun Life Insurance Company, among other backers. As a student of the imperial system, de Kiewiet understood Canada, and his colonial upbringing stood him in good graces with Canadian groups. His edited volume covering Canada's relations with Britain gave gravitas to the project. De Kiewiet and Underhill, Dufferin-Carnarvon Correspondence.

⁴² Lloyd Faller (1925–1977) was a prominent anthropologist who did pioneering work in East Africa and later Turkey, e.g. Bantu Bureaucracy (1956) and Law without Precedent (1965). Fallers to de Kiewiet, 24 April 1959, UR; and Lloyd Fallers, “A Role for Anthropology at Princeton,” unsigned mimeograph, UR. Bendix, “On Fallers,” 169–73

⁴³ De Kiewiet to Fallers, 30 April 1959. UR.

⁴⁴ “Sangree Outlines New Sociology Changes,” Campus Times 5, no. 34 (October 1959): 9.

⁴⁵ De Kiewiet to Lloyd Fallers, 30 April 1959. UR

⁴⁶ Romano, To Each his Farthest Star.

⁴⁷ Cf. De Kiewiet's, “Medicine in the Architecture,” 458. Cf. “Toleration and the Liberal Faith,” Commencement Address, 14 June 1948. “The Individual and the State,” Commencement Address, February, 1949, Both Box 11, DEK/Cornell.

⁴⁸ To SAC Washington from J. Edger Hoover, 1–7, 22 May 1950. Documents obtained under The Freedom of Information Act by the author, 9 September 2007. (Hereafter FBI.)

⁴⁹ J. Edger Hoover to Sherman Adams, White House, “Summary of Investigations to Date,” 1–7, 15 November 1955. FBI.

⁵⁰ Unsigned Report to Mildred Stegall, White House Staff, 13 May 1966. FBI.

⁵¹ Ibid, 4.

⁵² Pudenz also accused Owen Lattimore, director of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations at Johns Hopkins, of being a concealed communist. Seven counts of perjury upon which Lattimore was to be tried were subsequently dropped. Ibid, 4–5. Also see Lattimore, Ordeal by Slander.

⁵³ While choosing his words carefully, de Kiewiet spoke out on free speech and free inquiry issues, and his views were generally known. For their part, the FBI primarily took interest in those translating speech into social action. De Kiewiet, interview by Isabel S. Grossner, 28 September 1967, interview 1, 44–5, Oral History Research Project, Washington DC. CC. (Hereafter interview date, number, page, Oral History Project.) Price, Threatening Anthropology.

⁵⁴ Philip Jessup (1897–1986), a Columbia University law professor, had served as assistant secretary-general of the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration conference (1943), the UN Monetary and Financial Conference (Bretton Woods, 1944), and as a technical advisor to the US delegation to the UN Charter Conference in 1945. Targeted by Senator McCarthy in 1950, eventually all charges were dropped. Under the Kennedy Administration he was appointed to the International Court of Justice, in the Netherlands (1961–1970).

⁵⁵ De Kiewiet, The Anatomy of South African Misery.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 6.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 8.

⁵⁸ President Roosevelt established the Office of Strategic Services (1942) to collect intelligence and pursue operations broadly based on that intelligence. The National Security Act (1947) established the CIA, refining the original OSS mandate.

⁵⁹ Requests made to the CIA by the author under the Freedom of Information Act disclosed no files pertaining to de Kiewiet.

⁶⁰ De Kiewiet interview 14 May 1968, interview 4, 29–30, Oral History Project.

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² Ibid., 28–31.

⁶³On Israel, de Kiewiet suggested the best way to have avoided the Arab-Israeli conflict was if no state of Israel had been allowed or its existence had been subjected to firm international control. A permanent remedy for the Arab refugee problem was a prerequisite for any long-term solution. On national liberation, he believed pronouncements that subject peoples should be quickly freed from colonial rule were misguided: the real focus needed to be on the viability of nation states. On the (unfolding) British and French position on Suez, he remarked that in turning back the clock, they had opened a Pandora's Box for the West. He described France's Algerian policy as failed and driven by the recent defeat in Indo-China. He cautioned that Algeria could not be incorporated into metropolitan France, and that even securing the position of a million pieds noirs could be problematic. Statement of Dr. Cornelis W. de Kiewiet, President, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. Foreign Policy and Mutual Security Subcommittee 84313-56, 329–53.

⁶⁴ In 2008 values the projects totaled $354 million. May, A History of the University of Rochester: 341–3.

⁶⁵ Alarmed that de Kiewiet might suddenly retire, the trustees reintroduced the position of full-time provost and delegated some of his responsibilities to other levels. This reorganization enabled him to take several trips to Africa. Cf. de Kiewiet, “America's Role in Africa” (address, National Conference on Education, University of Natal, Durban, South Africa. July 1960); and C. W. de Kiewiet, “Can Africa Come of Age?” (R. F. A. Hoernlé Lecture, South African Institute of Race Relations, 7 July 1960).

⁶⁶ 953/54 -Note by the Colonial Office. 16 February 1955. Dominion Office 35/4466 Public Records Office U, Kew, also, Notes on Extending the Africa Bureau's Relations with American groups interested in Africa (Confidential) 29 September 1959 MSS Africa, Africa Bureau 7/6, Rhodes House, Oxford University.

⁶⁷ Colonial Office planning, starting in the early post-war period, assumed that the earliest that a few African colonies might achieve independence was the 1980s. Whitehead, “The ‘Two-way Pull’,” 119–33

⁶⁸ Cf. Glotzer and Engberg, “Teacher Training in Ghana.”

⁶⁹ Robert July, diary entry, 15 February 1960, Box 2, Folder 12, RG 1.2 Series 475. Rockefeller Archives Center, North Tarrytown, New York. (Hereafter RAC.)

⁷⁰ Kiano had attended Antioch, Stanford, and Berkeley. See also Mboya, “African Higher Education,” 23–6.

⁷¹ Both the Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Corporation were keen to have an American presence at this meeting. Carnegie and Rockefeller grants had underwritten travel costs for the entire of vice chancellers between Montreal and Washington (1953). An American presence at the AUBC in the UK was considered essential for a cooperative momentum to grow. Stephen Stackpole interview with CG, 24 April 1956, RF, RG2 CG 200, Box 118, RAC.

⁷² From Montreal the entire group had then gone down to Washington, supported by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations and the AAU (1958).These first meetings lead to the formation of the (American) African Liaison Committee, supported by the Carnegie Corporation. De Kiewiet interview, 29 September 1967, interview 2, 53, Oral History Project.

⁷³ De Kiewiet interview, 28 September 1967, interview 2, 54, Oral History Project.

⁷⁴ “Impressions of Visit to Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar, 2–31 August 1960,” 1–10, Committee for Educational Liaison between the United States and the Countries of Sub-Sahara Africa, American Council on Education. Open Boxes, UR.

⁷⁵ Helen Suzman (1917–2009) served as an MP in South Africa's Parliament for 36 years, the sole parliamentary voice against apartheid for many years.

⁷⁶ In advising the Ford Foundation on faculty exchanges, de Kiewiet emphasized South Africa's need to develop expertise in demography, statistics, and computer science. Cf. De Kiewiet, “East African Liaison Committee Report,”1–9, 24 November 1960; De Kiewiet to Melvin Fox, Ford Foundation, 19 April 1960; Frank S. Loescher, “Report of the Washington Conference on Faculty Exchange between South African and American Institutions,” 13–4 June 1961, Brookings Institution, Washington DC. All three UR.

⁷⁷ De Kiewiet to MacMillan, 16 December 1959. UR.

⁷⁸ Writing the president of the Board of Trustees, Joseph C. Wilson (President of Zerox Corporation), de Kiewiet detailed justifications for administrative raises although he himself had not received a raise in ten years. He earned $30,000 annually or $213,315.00 expressed in 2008 values. The head of a private consulting firm, more attuned to contemporary practices than Rochester's Trustees, “… was dumbfounded” when a suitable pension was initially rejected because de Kiewiet “… could walk away from the university” [into another position]. His original retirement plan provided $3,000 a year or just over $21,000 in 2008 values. His private holdings, about $2,950,000 in 2008 values, must in part be understood in this broader context. C.W. de Kiewiet and Mrs. Lucea de Kiewiet, “Investments,” February 1961, Rochester, New York, unsigned; de Kiewiet to Wilson, 1 October 1959, 1–5; de Kiewiet to Wilson, 8 February 1960. All three UR.

⁷⁹ In 1961 Teachers College, Columbia, outlined plans to select 1,500 American college graduates to teach in Africa, augmented by students from Canada and Britain. Another scramble for Africa was on.

⁸⁰ Leo Marquard (1897–1974), an Oxford trained Afrikaner scholar, was the founder of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) and contributed a number of books on South Africa, including Liberalism in South Africa (1965) and The Peoples and Policies of South Africa (1969). He was a vice president of the Liberal Party. Drawn into liberal politics as a young lecturer at Grey College, Bloemfontein, Marquard was a mentor for Bram Fischer (1908–1975) who later led the legal defense of Nelson Mandela and spent the last nine years of his life in prison for his Communist Party membership and activities. De Kiewiet to Marquard, 21 March 1961. Open boxes, UR.

⁸¹ De Kiewiet, “Address AAU–AUBC Meeting,” 1–14, Cambridge, UK, July 1961. UR. Also see Glotzer, “The Career of Mabel Carney.”

⁸² Alan Pifer interviewed by Montague Yudelman (24 April 1956, underlining in the original, Box 18, Folder 118). RAC.

⁸³ The joining of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Nyasaland (Malawi), and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), established a sounder economic unit, also consolidating settler power as Britain sought to distance itself from colonial rule. Each part of the federation had active political movements, viable leaders, and majority-rule aspirations. Welensky himself admitted that Africans looked to Ghana as a model of political development rather than the federation's incremental franchise. There was also white opposition to Southern Rhodesia financially supporting the poorer units of the federation. See Welensky, Welensky's 4000 Days.

⁸⁴ Welensky, Welensky's 4000 Days; and Smith, The Great Betrayal.

⁸⁵ Negotiations leading to a University of Rhodesia presence in the north (Zambia), through the Rhodes-Livingston Institute were now undone as Rhodes-Livingston came into affiliation with the new University of Zambia. The background for these developments as well as the work of de Kiewiet's friend, Monica Wilson (1908–1982), are examined in Jan-Bart Gewald, “Researching and Writing in the Twilight of an Imagined Conquest: Anthropology in Northern Rhodesia 1930–1960” (working paper 75, African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands, 2007).

⁸⁶ De Kiewiet interview, 29 September 1967, interview 3, 71, Oral history Project.

⁸⁷ When Basutoland (Lesotho) and Botswana gained independence the institutional name was changed. In 1975 the University of Lesotho became a separate entity. In 1982 the University of Botswana and the University of Swaziland also became national universities. Each served their national constituencies and performed a significant service by offering places for students and faculty unable or unwilling to survive in South Africa's polarized universities.

⁸⁸ The Extension of Universities Act barred African and other students of color from attending so-called white universities. Instead, universities based on ethnic and linguistic groups were established by the government. These institutions remained in place, although modified over time, until the end of apartheid.

⁸⁹ Marie J. de Kiewiet, “History of the Imperial British East India Company: 1876–1895” (PhD thesis, University of London, 1955).

⁹⁰ Cf. de Kiewiet, “The Emergent African University: An Interpretation,” Overseas Liaison Committee, American Council on Education, December, 1971.

⁹¹ De Kiewiet to Malherbe, 1 September 1968, File 608/473-91. EGM Papers.

⁹² “Change … in which political power is somehow shared … by all racial groups is going to come peacefully … probably within the next ten years—perhaps even five years. [It] … will be at least minimally acceptable to most whites … their standard of living will not be seriously affected. Perhaps what emerges in time will not be unlike Brazil where there is no legal segregation but where whites tend to occupy a substantial portion of the better jobs.” This was written by Alan Pifer in Rio, where the Commission on American Policy Toward Southern Africa had stopped on its way back to Washington DC. Pifer to Malherbe, 10 November 1980, 56987(88). EGM Papers.

⁹³ De Kiewiet to Malherbe, 13 June, 1968. EGM Papers.

⁹⁴ De Kiewiet to Malherbe, 1 September 1968. Unaccessioned Collection, EGM papers.

⁹⁵ Course notes, p. 38, box 13/7/372, DEF/Cornell.

⁹⁶ Ibid, p. 15.