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The Institute of Current World Affairs records document the history of the ICWA, its sister organization, the American Universities Field Staff, and its founders, Charles and John Crane. Documents include first-hand reports authored by Fellows and field staff, correspondence, minutes, planning documents, subject files, financial records, publications, and photographs.

The office files of the American Institute of Pacific Relations and the international Institute of Pacific Relations, containing correspondence and reports concerned with international conferences, research programs, and publications programs of both Institutes, and relating to the political, economic, and social problems in eastern and southern Asia and the South Pacific, as well as with problems of American foreign policy. There are many travel letters and on-the-spot reports relating to conditions in China, Japan, Russia, Australia, the Philippines, India, and Pakistan during the period 1933 to 1954.

Correspondence, manuscripts, notes, documents, subject files, photographs, art works, and printed materials. This collection covers the entire span of his life, although by far the greatest part relates to his activities as a professor from the 1930s to the 1960s. Among the correspondents are many important figures in American Russian studies or Columbia University; there are also many letters from his wife, Clemens T. Robinson, and Lewis Mumford. Manuscripts by Robinson include his "Rural Russia under the Old Regime" lectures, notes, speeches and essays, and also miscellaneous pieces (essays, reviews, poems, stories, plays, etc.) that he wrote while he was an aspiring young journalist and writer in the 1910s and 1920s. Manuscripts by others consist of student theses, papers, books and reports that were given him for review or comment. Subject files deal with such topics as his service in World War I; Columbia University (especially the Libraries and the History Department); and various aspects of academic life and Russian studies. Almost nothing in the collection has any bearing on his government service during World War II; items from the war years concern personal affairs or scholarship. There are photographs of Robinson and his wife; family photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and Russian scenes. Art works include items by Clemens T. Robinson. Among the printed materials are two books inscribed by Mumford to Robinson.

Minutes, correspondence, annual reports, press releases, financial records, photographs, memorabilia, audiovisual, digital and printed materials document the philanthropic activities and administration of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The collection is actively growing, primarily through regular document transfers from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Andrew Carnegie's biographical information and personal philanthropic activity can be found in Series VII. In addition, his pre-1911 gifts, most notably his donations for libraries and church organs, can be found on microfilm (Series II), in the Home Trust Company Records (VI.A), and Financial Record Books (I.C.1). Grant files (Series III.A), which comprise the bulk of the collection) provide information on projects and institutions founded, endowed or supported by the Corporation. The Special Initiatives series (Series IV) contains the records of task forces, commissions and councils, formed by the Corporation mostly during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s to address specific issues. The Corporation's records include those of other Carnegie philanthropic organizations (Series VI), including the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Home Trust Company, both of which shared staff, officers, and office space with the Corporation for a period of time.

The Corporation awards grants to nonprofit organizations and institutions for projects that are broadly educational in nature and that show promise of having national or international impact. Certain appropriations are made for activities, such as Corporation-led initiatives that are administered by the foundation's officers. The trustees set the overall policies of the foundation and have final authority to approve all grants above $50,000 recommended by the program staff. Grants of $25,000 or less, called discretionary grants, are made upon the approval of the president and are reported to the board; larger discretionary grants, those between $25,000 and $50,000, are also reviewed by a Corporation-wide group, which makes recommendations to the president. (from Program Guidelines 2003-2004 (http://www.carnegie.org/sub/program/areas.html))

The career, philanthropic, political, and personal aspects of Charles Richard Crane's life were closely intertwined. Among the correspondence of significance in the papers are letters to and from James Francis Abbott, Kathryn Newell Adams, Jane Addams, Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, Edvard Benes, Boris III, King of Bulgaria, Louis Dembitz Brandeis, Nicholas Murray Butler, Frances F. Cleveland, Grover Cleveland, Archibald Gary Coolidge, Calvin Coolidge, John Dewey, Charles William Elliot, Hamlin Garland, William Rainey Harper, Jean-Jules Jusserand, William Lyon Mackenzie King, Alexander Kuprin, Robert Marion LaFollette, Seth Low, William Gibbs McAdoo, Jan Masaryk, Tomas Masaryk, Pavel Miliukov, John Pierpont Morgan, Alphonse Maria Mucha, Fridtjof Nansen, George Haven Putnam, John Davison Rockefeller Jr., Theodore Roosevelt, Upton Beall Sinclair, William Howard Taft, Lillian D. Wald, Herbert George Wells, Edith B. Wilson, Woodrow Wilson and other.