The National Interest

From the point of view of the American government and of the American public, perhaps the greatest contribution of the academic exchange programs has been their success in maintaining a tie with a group of important Soviet citizens at a time of high tension and great hazard. In fact, the great paradox of the exchange programs has been that the universities and the scholars, by seeking primarily to advance knowledge and their own special interests, have in fact served the national interest supremely well by the effectiveness with which they have maintained this narrow bridge between the two countries. This opportunity for dialogue reinforces the tendency within the higher levels of the Soviet government towards peaceful relations with the United States and provides whatever influence we have "towards rationality, permissiveness, and openness." One should not overestimate the impact of programs such as this, but they do constitute a positive addition to the containment policy. They do to some degree soften the Soviet Union by opening a window in that closed society to the rest of the world. They do persuade the Soviet government to engage in relationships with the United States on peaceful grounds under conditions which are of mutual advantage, a practice which is regularly condemned in the Soviet Union as "ideological coexistence."

The academic exchange programs also contribute to the national interest by increasing Soviet understanding of the United States. The handful of Americans who live in Soviet dormitories and who come to know well Soviet scholars and Soviet students, the future elite of their society, inevitably provide them some understanding of the quality and of the friendliness of our society. Similarly, those Soviet scholars who work in the United States must acquire an increased understanding of the nature of our society and must have the MarxistLeninist glasses with which they view the rest of the world to some. degree cleaned. In fact, in 1964, seven Soviet alumni of the program who had each spent an academic year in an American university were serving their government in the United States, in their embassies in Washington or at the United Nations or in organizations such as TASS. This will in the long run contribute to reducing misunderstanding and fears on both sides and will help the Soviet elite to see more clearly the wider one world in which we all live. In fact, as Mr. Toynbee long ago recognized, the Soviet Union may now be learning that it is impossible to borrow Western efficiency without borrowing Western values, that it is impossible to import only a part of the West. Finally, the exchange program provides a kind of index or barometer of the atmosphere in which Soviet decisions are made. Identifying or defining Soviet policies and the considerations underlying these positions is a difficult task complicated by lack of information and the problems we face in penetrating the Soviet mind. The exchange program, one of the few direct, constant, measurable ties we have with the Soviet government, therefore serves as an effective touchstone of larger Soviet policies. Thus, recent increased harassment of American scholars by the Soviet KGB reveals a change in the temperature or atmosphere within which all Soviet policies are decided. Moreover,

the established history and the symbolic importance of the exchanges are such that a Soviet decision to reduce them sharply or end them would constitute a most important signal about basic Soviet goals and policies.

THE PROBLEMS AND DILEMMAS

Like any complicated new program, the academic exchange is an expensive one in the time and intellectual energy of scholars and administrators it consumes. Soviet administrative rigidity and inefficiency are so vast, and Soviet ability to create and to magnify problems so great that the exchange programs probably devour more administrative time and energy per individual involved than any other academic enterprise in which an American university has ever engaged. Only intense interest and resolute good will have triumphed over these Soviet qualities, which are apparently eternal and which deserve a new Gogol.

Great universities have been especially hampered because they are not properly organized to identify their own interests in such a program or to work effectively with other universities in a national organization. Thus, it is easy to identify the specialists in Russian history or literature or government who should be encouraged to study in the Soviet Union, but few universities have recognized the other fields of study which would offer benefits for Americans.

However, the university's principal problem has clearly been its transformation into an action agency, and the main dilemma is a simple one. Should the university accept a share of responsibility for exchanges of scholars with Communist countries and in so doing defend its integrity as a free institution, while at the same time developing close relations with agencies of our own government and of the foreign government, and exposing itself to domestic and foreign criticism and to the whims of international politics? Or should it instead allow our government to conduct the programs, with the great likelihood that inroads upon the university's integrity would occur? Or should the university declare that the problems are so complicated and so alien to its experience that it should not participate in any way?

The university's decision to accept responsibility has helped break down and destroy the ivory tower and bring it into the middle of public life, and even into international politics, positions which the university and scholar have not sought and which it is hazardous for them to share. Work for the Peace Corps, for AID, and for other government agencies, and especially programs involving foreign governments, has drastically changed the nature and character of the relationship between the university and the government. Thus far, the principles and procedures established have recognized the special role free universities must always play, and the main hazards have been avoided. Moreover, everyone agrees, first, that the university today cannot be removed from the society in which it functions and which it serves, and, second, that the university in a free country must remain true to its primary educational goals if it is to serve society effectively and remain truly independent.

In the exchange programs, for example, even though the university often plays an important political role in a front line capacity, it must at all times remain a privileged sanctuary of freedom. Our educational

institutions are free and independent, suspicious of government, and accustomed to their own ways in their assigned areas of responsibility. They must remain sovereign, conduct their work of research and instruction as they see best, and have a large share in the direction of cultural relations, in which they have always had an abiding interest. In brief, "political warfare" use of the universities and of the arts is useless and in the long run destructive, even though universities, artists, and scientists operating independently, doing their own work in their own best way, do have a very powerful impact.

Relations between the Department of State and the universities have been remarkably effective and amicable because the men and women involved have so well understood the others' purposes, qualities, and problems. However, tension between American universities and the Department of State over exchange programs is natural, because the State Department has the primary responsibility for critical, delicate, and highly involved relations with the Soviet Union, which cannot be separated from relations with our allies and with other countries in the world. Moreover, while the universities are interested basically in only a small part of the cultural affairs agreement with the Soviet Union, the Department of State has responsibility for the entire agreement, which it naturally sees as a whole and which it wishes to administer in a coherent and coordinated way, keeping in mind our total foreign policy towards the Soviet Union and with other countries as well.

The particular issues of disagreement are obvious and will continue. Thus, the Department controls admission to the United States and has on occasion denied visas to Soviet scholars nominated in fields which have military significance, such as microelectronics or new types of computers, or in subjects in which the Soviet Union has refused to accept American scholars. In addition, in retaliation for travel restrictions imposed on all Americans in the Soviet Union, Soviet participants in the United States must inform the Department of State of intended travel four days before they can leave their home campus. In cases } such as this, American scholars who are not informed concerning Soviet policies or concerning the larger framework in which the academic exchange resides, or who have a special personal interest in one person or one aspect of the program, frequently denounce the Department for policies which seem to them petty or senseless.

The Department of State is also vulnerable to domestic political pressures and critics, some of whom denounce the Department because the Soviets send scientists to work on important problems in American laboratories while we send scholars to work in ancient Russian history in Soviet libraries." Some Americans and their representatives believe that the programs should be curtailed or abolished because they are convinced that the Soviet Union obtains a significantly greater advantage from them than we do. Others on occasion believe we can and should send ten thousand each year, > bringing the walls of Moscow down by turning pages. The State Department, in short, is constantly vulnerable to critics and serves as a perpetual target for all Americans, some of whom have some influence on the annual appropriations for the Department and therefore for exchange programs. These pressures often cause disagreements between the Department and the universities, which resent any apparent

Departmental weakening before popular pressures and who resist suggestions from the Department which would help satisfy the most responsible of the public criticisms.

Unfortunately, the Department of State is not the only American government agency with which universities engaged in academic exchange programs have to deal. Some of these government institutions, such as the National Academy of Sciences and the Atomic Energy Commission, have exchange programs of their own, which are financed by the government but which rely on American universities to provide most of the American participants and the laboratories and libraries in which Soviet participants continue their studies. The AEC and the NAS tend to be quite independent because they are within the government, and because their programs involve scientists, in whom the Soviet Union is particularly interested and for whom, therefore, it creates more comfortable arrangements and fewer problems than it does for scholars in the ordinary academic exchange program.

However, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have raised greater problems for the American universities and their constituents, who tend to be critical of much of the government but especially critical of these two organizations. The CIA and the FBI, which have important national responsibilities, are interested in information concerning Soviet strengths and weaknesses, policies and practices. On the Soviet side, officials of the KGB almost inevitably evaluate all academic exchange programs with the Soviet Union in this context and, above all, in the perspective of their eternal suspicions and of their own extensive efforts. In fact, the universities' emphasis upon selecting young men and women of high intellectual quality with good command of Russian, considerable knowledge of the Soviet Union, and great interest in learning about Soviet society has no doubt increased Soviet suspicion.

The American scholarly organizations engaged in exchanges with the Soviet Union have done their utmost to insure that their programs provide no grounds for suspicion, but they are essentially powerless to affect the Soviet attitude. These organizations, such as the InterUniversity Committee and the International Research and Exchanges Board, are interested exclusively in scholarly activities. They have no ties with the Central Intelligence Agency or any other intelligence organization. They receive no funds from any intelligence organization, and they provide them no information. The Inter-University Committee in addition warned every candidate for study in the Soviet Union not only to reject any approaches that might be made by intelligence or other government agencies, but to report any such incidents should they occur. Finally, every participant in the Committee's exchange program signed a pledge that he would undertake no activity other than the scholarly ones for which he was selected.

Even so, the existence and the activities of these government agencies have created difficulties for the American universities in their dealings with the ever-suspicious Soviet government. They have also created problems within the American academic community, in spite of the efforts of the academic organizations and in spite of the genuine care, discretion, and propriety with which these organizations have carried out their activities.

Another kind of dilemma which the universities and all of those concerned with the national interest face reflects the advantages

hich the Soviet government derives from academic exchange prorams. In fact, it has been evident throughout the discussions and argaining over cultural exchanges, that tough-minded Soviet diploats and officials have taken advantage of the abiding American oncern about the international crisis and of our efforts to persuade the oviet Union to adopt more peaceful policies. In short, they use our forts to launch and to maintain these programs to obtain vast oportunities for themselves. American diplomats have sought not only advance our own national interests, but have also recognized legitnate Soviet objectives, because they perceived that any agreement ould have to provide benefits to both countries. However, above all, hey have sought to create an international framework and atmosphere 1 which the two countries together could reduce the tensions which fflict us both. Basically, the Soviet leaders have taken advantage of his spirit and approach and have concentrated on their own restricted terests, while seeking to minimize our benefits and to prevent our int escape from the present hazardous situation into a new structure nd a new atmosphere. For every apparent step towards a freer world. nd greater international amity, they have insisted upon a parochial Soviet advantage which has not affected the commonweal, except in a ivisive way, and which has indeed exposed the Americans involved to ubstantial criticism.

Here one must recognize that Soviet scholars, artists, and intellecuals have almost no influence on Soviet policy or on Soviet adminisration of exchange programs. These men and women share many of our scholars' interests. They seek to increase their knowledge within heir own special field. They are eager to cooperate with other scholars. They seek the recognition and respect of other members of the international community of scholars. Above all, they look forward to opportunities to leave the Soviet Union, to go "out," for a few months

or a year.

Those of the Party and the government who make the decisions. are different people and have different goals. Basically, they seek to strengthen the Soviet system and to weaken ours. Their primary concern has been to obtain scientific, technical, and military information from the United States. They have, in short, sought to use the exchange programs to strengthen their economy and to obtain important information and techniques from a more advanced country. Almost eighty percent of the Soviet participants in the basic program administered by the Inter-University Committee have been scientists or engineers, while somewhat less than ten percent of the Americans have been in science or technology. Thus, the Soviet Union has obtained a significant increment to its scientific and technical knowledge from these programs, from basic knowledge concerning polio vaccines to training in econometrics and new systems of business management to the latest work in biochemistry.

In addition, the Soviet government has acquired a kind of respectability both at home and abroad, especially among the large and mportant class of intellectuals or intelligentsia, who have been persuaded in part by these programs that the Soviet Union is a peaceful and responsible member of the family of nations. It also believes it derives recognition, prestige, and propaganda advantages from the presence of carefully selected Soviet scholars in American universities, and the impact which life in the Soviet Union presumably has on