David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies

Founded in 1994, Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) works to increase knowledge of the cultures, economies, histories, environment, and contemporary affairs of past and present Latin America. The Center's main office is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard University. DRCLAS also has offices in Brazil and Chile.

• To expand research and teaching on Latin America and related fields at Harvard University

• To strengthen ties between Harvard and institutions throughout Latin America

• To enhance public understanding of Latin America in the United States and abroad

The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies is one of 11 inter-faculty initiatives at Harvard overseen by the Office of the University Provost, with an administrative home in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The Center's structure reflects its inter-disciplinary mandate: The Executive Committee comprises eight senior faculty members from throughout the University. A separate Policy Committee, helps to direct the Center's development.

While the Center is not a teaching unit of the University, it contributes to the Harvard's teaching mission. The Center supports faculty-directed research projects and academic conferences. It funds students who want to learn more about Latin America through research, work, study, or volunteering in the region. The Center also provides funding to underwrite course-based field trips to Latin America and to develop new courses with Latin American content.

DRCLAS was founded in 1994 as an initiative to promote high-quality teaching and research on Latin America and related fields at Harvard University. Neil L. Rudenstine, then University President, and David Rockefeller B.S. '36, LL.D. '69 (honorary) shared a sense that Harvard should be intellectually poised to respond to real-world changes in the Americas resulting from democratic transitions and economic restructuring.

Harvard was uniquely positioned to meet these challenges. While many U.S. universities had to downsize their Latin American studies programs in the 1990s, reducing numbers of faculty specialists and educating fewer students, Harvard benefited from President Rudenstine and David Rockefeller's shared hope to develop a center for Latin American studies to parallel Harvard's centers for European, Middle Eastern, Russian, and East Asian studies. They envisioned the Center as the academic cornerstone of a new relationship between the United States and the countries of Latin America, and as an influential example to other universities.

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