Foundation Has a Taste For Harvard, Conservatism

Even at foundations that support a broad range of research projects, overall trends and directions emerge.

The conservative John M. Olin Foundation, for instance, allocated more than $12 million in grants to universities last year, says executive director James Pierson. Although Harvard was not the largest recipient of those awards, the University still claimed its fair share.

In 1988, Olin's annual report notes that Harvard took in about $500,000 from the foundation for research in topics including Russian research, law, economics, government and sociology.

Olin awarded fellowships to Eaton Professor of the Science of Government Samuel P. Huntington and Thomson Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield '53 among others.

Looking at the foundation's current interests, Pierson says the organization concentrates on economics, law and foreign affairs. Some of its other recent projects have included an Olin chair in legal studies fo Judge Robert H. Bork, a failed Reagan nominee for the Supreme Court, and a grant to the conservative Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Foundation to study child care issues.

In addition, Olin gave The Dartmouth Review $100,000 in 1988 to help finance a law suit, and gave $500,000 to the Heritage Foundation, a Washington D.C. conservative thinktank, to study public policy and political economy.

At Harvard, Huntington says Olin's interests have centered an a few key areas. "Olin has been interested in work on national security matters," the government professor says. In that field, there are Olin professors at the army, navy and air force academies, the Harvard scholar adds.

Unlike many other foundations that only fund small projects, the foundation endows Huntington's two-year-old Olin Institute for Strategic Studies with packaged money to help support a variety of programs and personnel.

Olin currently helps finance post-doctoral fellows, visiting scholars, professors and three major projects. These research projects examine Congress and defense policy, Soviet and American views on the post-Cold War and the decline of multinational continental empires, Huntington reports.