International Workshop

C.A. Doxiadis and the Funding of the Ecumenopolis
 
Jeannie Kim (Columbia University)
 
The grant file at the Ford Foundation archives for Constantinos A. Doxiadis documents two decades of support totaling nearly $5 million. The file includes correspondence between Doxiadis and his Ford Foundation colleagues, reports from skeptical review boards sent to the Athens Technical Institute to account for the use of funds, plans of the vessels used for the Delos cruises, drafts of Ekistics articles, and ample evidence of the internal debate over the relevance of Doxiadis's project. Despite a great deal of internal skepticism, the Ford Foundation was ultimately not immune to the promise of Ekistics. The equivalent files at the C.A. Doxiadis Archives also include the title and address changes of the Ford Foundation's frequent fliers, a far-reaching network of academic and intellectual elites who would reappear in various capacities throughout Doxiadis's career. The postwar period for the Ford Foundation was one during which private philanthropic foundations - besieged by accusations from vocal McCarthy era veterans in Congress of harboring Communists, tax dodgers, and spies - strained to restore their credibility while confronting the urban crisis that had struck American cities. As a result, Doxiadis's own work in the United States would shift toward domestic concerns and the question of urban renewal. In an unpublished history of the Ford Foundation, former director Louis Winnick writes (of the Foundation's relationship with Doxiadis): "Ford's grants, to be sure, were correctly addressed to a qualified nonprofit institution. But, in a manner of speaking, they constituted the largest personal award in Foundation history." Beginning with a $600,000 grant and a research team from Harvard to develop a five-year plan for Pakistan, over two decades Doxiadis was able to secure a rather astonishing amount of money from the Ford Foundation. It will be the position of this paper that, with the advantage of a great deal of personal charisma, and through conversations held over cocktails or on the deck of a ship cruising between Greek isles, Doxiadis forged and fostered relationships with a network of individuals ever so slightly outside of the political realm who contributed significantly to the cultural history of European-American relations during the Cold War