East Asian Studies Drive Raises Nearly $12 Million

A joint faculty alumni campaign has raised an estimated $12 million in an effort to expand the University's East Asian Studies Department.

The long-range goal of the Program for Harvard and East Asia fund-raising campaign is to raise $30 million, William S. Olney '46, Director of Special Projects, said yesterday.

The fund raising program is composed of an alumni committee, headed by Thomas J. Coolidge Jr. '54, chairman of Back Bay-Orient Enterprises, Inc. and the Korea Capital Corporation; and a faculty committee chaired by John K. Fairbank '29, Higginson Professor of History.

The Ford Foundation has been the leading American contributor to date, pledging $600,000 within the last month to the program providing Harvard can now raise three times that amount.

Other large recent gifts include a pledge by David Rockefeller '36 and a contribution of $100,000 from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations of Miami, Florida, for the Harvard Yenching Library.

The funds from the program will be used to support research, teaching and student fellowships.

The two fund-raising committees, Olney said, are attempting to raise half the projected amount through funds from individual foundations and corporations in East Asia.

Nissan and Toyota Motor Companies each contributed $1 million last year while the Korean Traders Association pledged $1 million to create a professorship in Modern Korean Economy and Society at Harvard.

Coolidge said yesterday it may be another five years before the goal of $30 million can be reached.

"East Asian studies is an exotic subject for most people," Coolidge said, when explaining the difficulties he has had in fund-raising for the project. "It's not like building a hockey rink or a sicence building. Not everyone can relate, for example, to Mongolian affairs."

Coolidge said he felt that in view of the poor state of the American economy, the drive is going as well as can be expected.