University of Chicago. Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations

On August 16, 1947 University of Chicago President Robert M. Hutchins announced the formation of the Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations. Funded by equal grants of $75,000 from the Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Committee was constituted to be a five-year program under the direction of Louis Wirth, professor of sociology. At its inception the Committee enumerated 5 practical objectives:

1. to design research that would test theories of race relations in order to provide a scientific basis for public policy and programs, as well as for further field research

2. to introduce the social scientific knowledge acquired through this research into both general and adult education curricula, and to instruct teachers how to apply and transmit this knowledge

3. to train professionals, educators, and community leaders in the science of race relations and minority problems

4. to foster national institutional cooperation in research and training in the field of race relations

5. to implement pilot programs to test the findings of race relations research, and to design methods of evaluating existing programs. The Committee worked in cooperation with the American Council on Race Relations at the national level, and with the Industrial Relations Center, the Committee on Communications, and the Committee on Human Development within the academic community at the University of Chicago.

Unlike other committees at the University of Chicago such as the Committee on Human Development and the Committee on Social Thought, the Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations did not confer degrees. Rather, graduate students in the Division of Social Sciences at both the master’s and Ph.D. level could construct a concentration of course work, or elect to write a thesis with a focus on race relations. Working simultaneously with faculty in their own departments and members of the Committee, such students formed bridges between the social sciences and the Committee.

A major component of the ongoing work of the Committee was preparation and publication of the Inventory of Research in Racial and Cultural Relations. Published with the aid of the American Council on Race Relations, the Inventory was a quarterly bulletin containing abstracts of articles, books, and reports on unpublished research dealing with racial and cultural issues. After a debut issue of June 30, 1948, the Inventory continued production through volume 5, number 3 in 1953.

The original members of the Committee under the direction of Louis Wirth were anthropologists Robert Redfield, Fred Eggan, and Sol Tax, sociologist Everett C. Hughes, education professors Allison Davis and Ralph W. Tyler, and the executive officer of the Industrial Relations Center, Frederick Harbison. Membership fluctuated slightly between 1947 and 1956 and included at various times Kermit Eby, professor of social sciences, Donald T. Campbell, professor of psychology, William C. Bradbury, professor of sociology, and Clyde W. Hart, professor of sociology.

After the death of Louis Wirth in 1952, the Committee extended its work beyond the five year period of its original design under the leadership of Sol Tax. Although the Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations disbanded in 1956, its educational and research interests continued in the research and mentoring of individual social scientists at the University of Chicago.