Center of International Studies

The Center of International Studies (CIS) was a research center that was part of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in Princeton, New Jersey. It was founded in 1951 by six scholars who came to Princeton from Yale Institute of International Studies under the leadership of the center's first director, Frederick S. Dunn. By 1999, its stated mission was to "promote world peace and mutual understanding among nations by supporting scholarship in international relations and national development" and to "support analysis of abiding questions in international security and political economy". In 2003, the center was merged with the university's regional studies programs to form the considerably larger Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.

The Yale Institute of International Studies had existed since 1935, but during 1950–51, ran into a conflict with the new President of Yale University, A. Whitney Griswold, who felt that scholars should conduct research as individuals rather than in cooperative groups and who thought that the institute should do more historical, detached analysis rather than focus on current issues and recommendations on policy. In addition there was some personal animosity involved, related to Griswold believing that institute members had argued against his receiving tenure.

In April 1951, the longtime director of the Yale institute, Frederick Sherwood Dunn (who was a Princeton alumnus), together with five of his political science colleagues – Percy Corbett, Gabriel Almond, Klaus Knorr, William Kaufmann, and Bernard C. Cohen – all left Yale and came to Princeton. With the goal of strengthening international studies within the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Center of International Studies was thus created. It was initially funded by donations, including a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, which had also sponsored the Yale institute. Dunn became the first director of the new body. The President of Princeton University, Harold W. Dodds, said that the new center would focus its attentions on the problems of foreign policy and conflicting national policies, would work with the U.S. State Department and other governmental agencies, and declared that, "Basic research in the foreign policies and behavior of nations is just as essential as research in physical science and engineering if the United States is to achieve security and avoid catastrophic total war."

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