Rockerfeller Foundation

Excerpt from G. William Domhoff (1967) Who rules America?, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. p.68-9.

If the Ford Foundation is now the largest, the Rockefeller Foundation is still the most famous of the foundations. Its activities have ranged over a larger field and for a longer period of time. They include studies of tropical diseases, a Population Research Center at Harvard, a Russian Research Center at Columbia, and support for universities. The Rockefeller Foundation is also a guiding light behind the famous Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. Details on the foundation’s trustees can be found in Table 5.

TABLE 5 TRUSTEES OF THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION

UPPER-CLASS MEMBERS

• Barry Bingham (Middlesex School, Harvard) is the publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times, and an heir to a Standard Oil fortune. He is an Episcopalian, a Democrat, and like many upper-class Southerners, a listee in the Washington Social Register.
• Lloyd D. Brace (SR, Boston) is a Boston banker who sits on many corporate boards.
• Arthur Amory Houghton, Jr. (SR, NY), is president of Corning Glass and a director of New York Life Insurance and U. S. Steel, among others.
• John R. Kimberly (Phillips Andover, MIT) inherited the Kimberly-Clark Company of Wisconsin, which was originally a paper-making firm. He sits on the boards of Northwestern Mutual Life, First National City Bank of New York, Corning Glass, Lawrence College, and the Episcopalian Church Foundation, as well as being president and chairman of the family firm.
• Lord Franks of Headington, chairman of Lloyd’s Bank, Ltd., London.
• John D. Rockefeller III (SR, NY) is the Rockefeller brother who specializes in cultural matters. As chairman of the foundation he has a firm grip on its activities. Other trustees come and go—he does not. He is president of the Japanese Society, the Asia Society, and the Council on Economic and Cultural Affairs. He is chairman of the National Council of the United Negro College Fund.

Thomas I. Watson, Jr. (SR, NY), is head of IBM and a director of Bankers Trust, Time, Inc., Cal Tech, and Brown University. William B. Wood, Jr. (SR, Baltimore), is vice-president of Johns Hopkins.

REPRESENTATIVES FROM UPPER-CLASS BUSINESSES

Frank Stanton is president of CBS, a director of New York Life Insurance Company, and chairman of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences. George D. Woods is chairman of the board at First Boston Corporation, which is the biggest underwriter of utilities in the world.

OTHERS

Ralph Bunche (AB, UCLA; Ph.D., Harvard) is one of the nation’s most prominent Negro citizens. A professor before he became a United Nations official, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. Lowell T. Coggeshall, formerly a research physician with the foundation, is a dean at the Rockefeller-founded University of Chicago, and a director of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago. John S. Dickey is president of Dartmouth. Lee A. DuB ridge is president of Cal Tech. Robert F. Goheen is president of Princeton. Clifford M. Hardin is president of the University of Nebraska. I. George Harrar, a former professor, is an expert on plant pathology who is the foundation’s director for agriculture as well as its president. Theodore Hesburgh is president of Notre Dame. Clark Kerr was president of the University of California.