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The Smithsonian Institution’s International Center and the Woodrow Wilson International Center of Scholars. 

It has been understood, since the inception of the Smithsonian Institution as an organization devoted to the increase and diffusion of knowledge, that its activities were “for the benefit of all mankind.” Its sphere of actions hence has always been international. Taken as the whole envisioned by James Smithson and the Institution’s founding legislation, the pursuit of knowledge recognizes no national boundaries. 

International conditions governing the increase and diffusion of knowledge have changed profoundly during the Institution’s life. The United States, starting from a rather provincial position in the mid-nineteenth century, had by the mid-twentieth century surged into clearly preeminent standing. In most fields and by most measures, we retain that preeminence today. Yet a number of changes are underway in the international climate that profoundly affect not only the conduct of research but the application and communication of research findings.

The most important of these changes can be briefly summarized. There has been substantial growth in the aggregate scale of research activity, with the result that knowledge along the frontiers of most fields is advancing at an unprecedented rate. But the process is more poly centric than ever before. U.S. leadership is increasingly being shared with, if not challenged by, other, developed countries. In addition, significant and growing contributions are being made by a middle tier of rapidly developing nations whose research traditions were relatively weak or even negligible until the last generation or so. New institutional forms for scientific and scholarly cooperation have arisen, but as yet these principally involve only the more advanced Western countries. More generally, quite the opposite is true. There has been a slowing in the international movements of scientists and scholars and an ominous growth of political, religious and other barriers to intercommunication. Especially for Americans, for example, field access has become a persuasive problem in many parts of the world. It is increasingly clear that the future programs of interregional and world scope will require the effective cooperation, intercommunication and joint publication of numerous, independently constituted national teams. Yet as is illustrated by the politicization of UNESCO and the consequent U.S. decision to withdraw from it, the instrumentalities by which to carry forward this cooperation are still very much weak and few in number.

This is the new challenge that the Smithsonian Institution must face. It is a challenge for which, we believe, the Smithsonian Institution is uniquely well equipped. The Institutions’s special strengths in this regard include: the independence of action assured under its commendably broad charter; its long, well recognized tradition of disinterested