Los estudios internacionales en América Latina: realizaciones y desafíos

Los ESTUDIOS INTERNACIONALES EN AMÉRICA LATINA there is in Argentina fOI instance at the present moment, whether the goverrunent would still have the self control to refrain from using its fmancial power over the universities as a means of bringing pressure to bear on them. 1 think it will, and 1 hope it will, but this is uncertain, but anyway in our Institutes of InternationaI Affairs we have resisted the temptation to take , government money,:even in tbis indirect formo BASIC PRINCIPLES OF THE INSTlTUTES: NO CORPORATE POLlCY Then we come to the second fundamental principIe of the American and British Institutes. Tbis is that the Institute of Intemational Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations would have no coporate policy of their own.1t should never be possible for anyone to say the Institute as such, or the Council as such, is in favour of, say coercing Rhodesia, or of carrying on the war in Vietnam, or against the war in Vietnam, or against coercing Rhodesia. Of course all the members of these two bodies would have their own personal views on controversial subjects of foreign policy, but they have these views as prívate individuals and they do not commit the institute to wbich they belong. This ¡s, 1 think, a very important principie, unlike the fmandal question, which is debateable and may be settled in a number of different ways, 1 think this policy of bemg neutral and objectíve and purely scientifíc, ís really essential for the study of current intemational affairs. UnIess you have this principIe, the meetings of a sdentifíc institute would tum into políticaI meetings, in which people who held different polítical . views and felt very strongly about them, would oppose each other in debates, and the meetings would tum, not into scientific discussions but into polítical fights. But if the institute, the forum in which thestl meetings take place, is neutral, then people of very different opinions can meet there and debate controversial questíons without compromising themselves. As a matter of fact in the Council on Foreign Relations and the Institute of Intemational Affairs in London, the people who outside would hardly be able to meet and debate controversiaI polítical questions can discuss them in a non-violent way within the walls of the institute, just because, as 1 say, the institute itself is neutral. Tbis applies to publications as well as to meetings. Perhaps 1 should mention the different activities of these two institutes. Starting as we did and continuing as societies consisting of prívate individual members, we naturally started by making OUT fírst activity to be meetings to discuss current intematÍonal question; ego ir someone had just come back from the scene of some war or some crucial international affair, we would invite him to give a taIk about this at our institute and members would tum up to ask questions and carry on the discussion after the Iecture. That 1 think 26