Description
Records of the internationally renowned Santa Barbara-based think tank, emphasizing issues such as education, freedom of the
press, international relations, public policy, religion, and science and technology in modern society. Included are materials
relating to CSDI leaders such as Robert Hutchins, Harry Ashmore, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, W. H. Ferry, Frank Kelly, Stanley
K. Sheinbaum, and Harvey Wheeler. Also includes papers, talks, correspondence, and other materials relating to hundreds of
other well known figures such as Mortimer Adler, Alexander Comfort, William O. Douglas, Mircea Eliade, J. William Fulbright,
Hubert H. Humphrey, Clark Kerr, Eugene McCarthy, Gunnar Myrdal, Reinhold Niebuhr, Linus Pauling, James A. Pike, B. F. Skinner,
Adlai Stevenson, Arnold Toynbee, UN Secretary-General U Thant, and Earl Warren.
Background
The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions grew out of the 'Basic Issues' program of the Fund for the Republic. The
Fund emerged from a desire to combat the rampant abuses of American civil liberties that characterized the McCarthy era. With
a fifteen million dollar grant from the Ford Foundation, the Fund set in 1954 to provide support to church, educational, and
social service organizations in their efforts to protect the rights enumerated in the first ten Amendments to the Constitution.
Extent
ca. 650 linear feet
(942 boxes; 191 reels of microfilm; ca. 3,500 audiotapes, 127 reels of film, and 57 videotapes [various formats].
Restrictions
Copyright has not been assigned to the Department of Special Collections, UCSB. All requests for permission to publish or
quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publication is given
on behalf of the Department of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply
permission of the copyright holder, which also must be obtained.