Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

THE SCtiOOL OF HUMANISTIC STUDUS
The humanities did not present a completely new challenge to
the Director. In 1924 he had initiated the first programs undertaken
by any of the Rockefeller foundations, inaugurating grants in the General
Education Board to aid teaching and research in various humanistic dis-
ciplines in American universities. Gifts to the endowment of selected
institutions supported the training of archzeologists, field explorations
and research, and helped to raintain the Arraerican Council of Learned
Studies, a federation of institutions dedicated to promoting humanistic
studies. As Director of Studies of the International Education Board,
he recocnended and secured support for the hrican School for Classical
Studies at Athens and the American Academy at Rome as well as for arch-
aeological operations in the Nile Valley. In 1926 he persuaded Mr.
Rockefeller, Jr., to underwrite anonymously the excavation of the
Athenian Agora, thus earning the eternal gratitude of the American
School of Classical Studies.
As often happens to the pioneer,. Flexner was the target of
acute criticism for these activities on the one hand, and on the other
was accused by the classicists of failing to support the classics. In
appraising Plexner's record at the General Education Board and the Inter-
national Education Board, Mr. Raymond B. Fosdick later vrote:
In reviewing the history of the early work in the humanities
... one gathers that it was colored by traditional concepts,
centering largely in archaeological excavations, in scholarly
work in ancient cultures, and in researches centered in this