Viewing page 106 of 145

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-78-

are all routinely made available for the very best people in all great universities, but they do not exist here.

Fourthly, the prospect of contributing significantly to Washington cultural and intellectual life might be appealing to some donors. The Smithsonian is already supporting concerts and other cultural performances out of "Trust" funds without the assistance of an endowment devoted to this end, and hence at the expense of other potential uses of such funds. One might imagine and endowed series of distinguished lectures, and initiative in which the Smithsonian might well want to collaborate with the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Library of Congress, the National Academy of Sciences, or other Washington institutions of comparable stature.

Finally, as would be strongly affirmed by a large part of the professional staff of the Smithsonian, pre- and post-doctoral fellowships represent one of the most effective forms of research enhancement and revitalization with which they are familiar. Funds to enlarge the scope of our present activities in this regard (involving a total of some 67 pre- and post-doctoral fellows in fiscal year 1987, of whom 24 percent were from 10 foreign countries) would be enormously helpful, although how attractive this would be to private donors can only be speculated. Perhaps especially important would be additional funds specified for individuals from abroad (Third World countries, in particular), for whom other forms of funding have always been very limited and reportedly are continuing to erode. 

At the same time, there are two potentially negative considerations that need to be mentioned and briefly dealt with. First if would seriously undermine not only this campaign but future ones if the raising of a substantial amount of additional private funding provided a pretext