LETTER TO STANSFIELD TURNER FROM WILFRID KNAPP

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP05T00644R000200510033-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 7, 2009
• Sequence Number: 33
• Publication Date: November 11, 1977
• Content Type: LETTER

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November 11, 1977
Admiral Stansfield Turner
Central Intelligence Agency
McLean, Virginia 22101
Mr. Murat Williams has, I know, written to you explaining what
we are trying to do at Oxford as a memorial to Alastair Buchan.
Since he wrote I have arrived in Washington, on sabbatical leave
at the Wilson Center and I am happy to have the opportunity to follow
his letter with my own, and with a copy of our Appeal brochure.
You will understand that we attach great importance and great
hopes to the Appeal. As you know we intend to establish a memorial
to Alastair which will continue, and we hope bring to fruition, plans
which he had initiated. Having been his close colleague I am particu-
larly anxious to make some contribution to completing what he began.
If we are successful we shall make a decisibA change in the
Oxford landscape. We shall be able to draw together and add to our
resources and so create at Oxford a distinctive centre for the study
of International Relations. We are confident of our ability to maintain
standards of objective scholarship; we have been set an example, in
Alastair's work, of a clear perception of the important issues in the
immediacy of events; and we have a long and lively tradition of study-
ing the present in an historical and philosophical perspective. If
we can strengthen the central core of our study and teaching in Inter-
national Relations we can do great things.
If I can answer any queries which you may have about the way in
which the Alastair Buchan Readership and its supporting fund will
fit into the present pattern at Oxford, please let me know.
Wilfrid Knapp
Guest Scholar
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Should you care to honor Alastair in this fashion, .rou may do so by sending
a check payable to the American Trust ford Oxford University. For U.S. Federal
tax purposes, gifts to the American Trust for Oxford UnlversitY are dedl :tible.
Because the Board of Direction of the Association of~ P^.cr~can iL^:o es Scholars
exercises co`rnlete discretion as to the use grade of contributions, a contribution
may not be "earmarked", but may be acco:panied by a statement as to the donor's
preference as to the ultimate beneficiary at Oxford of the; kind contained in the
form of card enclosed.
Mr. Do:;::ld H. Rivkin, Treasurer
Arr,criean Trust for Oxford University
Suite 3 i00
750 Third Avenue
New York, New York 10017
Dear Mr. Rivkin:
fOxford
I any enclosing as a contribution to the American Trust Cl-'
ount of S- payable to the
University my chack in the rym -
American Trust. It is my hope that this co ;tritx:t;on will b disbursed by
tho American Trust for the benefit of the Alastair Buchan Memorial Fund.
Very truly yours,
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Sponsors
Dr. Kingman Brewster
Lord Bullock
Mr. William Bundy
Lord Carrington
? Lord Franks
Rt. Hon..Denis Healey, M.P.
Mr. John Holmes
Mr. George Ignatieff
Dr. George Kennan
Professor Henry Kissinger
Rt. Hon. Marc Lalonde
Mr. Robert MacNamara
? Mr. Paul Martin
Professor Sir Rudolph Peierls
The Hon. Sir Peter Ramsbotham
Mr. Elliot Richardson
Mr. Charles Ritchie
Mr. Murat Williams
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
ALASTAIR BUCHAN
FUND FOR
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
A Memorial Appeal
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The Vice-Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford have approved
the establishment within the University of a Fund to enlarge and support study, teaching
and research in International Relations : the Fund to serve as a memorial to the late
Professor the Hon. Alastair Buchan.
The Appeal is initially for US $500,000.
The purposes of the Fund are :
? to establish by permanent endowment a new post, the
Alastair Buchan Readership in International Relations;
? to finance short term visits by outstanding exponents
and practitioners in the field of International
Relations and to facilitate longer visits;
? to improve substantially the facilities for research
(including travel) and to attract research projects;
? to provide graduate scholarships.
Oxford University and the Trustees of the Higher Studies Fund have contributed #50,000
to the Appeal.
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ALASTAIR BUCHAN
The Hon. Alastair Francis Buchan, C.B.E., M.A., was born in September 1918, being the third son of Lord Tweedsmuir.
He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford and was then elected, in 1939, to a junior Fellowship at the University
of Virginia. With the outbreak of the Second World War he was commissioned in the Canadian Army. He took part in
the raid on Dieppe in 1942 and then served throughout the campaign in north-west Europe.
After the war he became a successful journalist: he was Assistant Editor of The Economist, then Washington correspondent
and Diplomatic and Defence correspondent of The Observer. In 1958 he became the first Director of the Institute for Strategic
Studies, in which capacity he achieved a world reputation as a thinker about strategy and international politics. In 1969
he was appointed commandant of the Imperial Defence College, and presided over its transformation into the Royal
College of Defence Studies. Shortly afterwards he was elected to the Montague Burton Professorship of International
Relations at Oxford, and a Fellowship at Balliol. His first book was a life of Walter Bagehot, The Spare Chancellor. It was
followed by a series of works on international questions which included Nato in the rg6os, Arms and Stability in Europe, War
in Modern Society, Europe's Futures, Europe's Choices, The End of the Postwar Era, and his B.B.C. Lectures, Change Without War.
He took up his professorship at Oxford in January 1972. In the brief years before his death in February 1976 he established
a rare authority over graduate students, who gave him devotion and respect, and enlisted the ready co-operation of his
colleagues in his firm sense of purpose for the development of the subject.
I count myself fortunate to return to a University that has a lively and unbroken tradition that goes back six and a half centuries (to
Occam) of concern and interest in the world at large. Britain no longer has a worldwide nexus of interests nor global influence,
but this has one advantage; it is easier to observe what is actually happening in the world if there is not a perpetual clatter of
controversy over national foreign policy.
It is not our function to bombard the Prince with advice. But to the extent that we can assist him to devise coherent models of
alternative futures, what Stanley Hoffman has called `relevant utopias', we may help to restore some sense of value and of choice to
what must often seem to those most deeply involved in policy-making as simply the mole's alternative between one respiratory molehill
and another. International relations is what is known in contemporary jargon as a `policy-orientated' field of study and few would
spend their lives dealing with it if they did not have certain values which they desired to promote or to defend.
Can International Relations be Professed? Inaugural Lecture, Oxford, 7 November 1972.
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INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AT OXFORD
Alastair Buchan, at the time of his death, was Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford Uni-
versity. Since 1972, when he took up this post, he had been striving to develop the major centre of international studies
which Oxford is so conspicuously lacking yet so superbly equipped to provide.
Oxford, as a great European and international university, attracts students of the highest quality from all over the world.
In subjects cognate to International Relations-modern international history, the history of war, economics, international
law, political science, jurisprudence, area studies-it is a centre of excellence. It is close enough to London to be in touch
with the world of decision-making and public affairs, and yet distant enough to permit depth and detachment. It has an
historical awareness of great power politics and has nurtured a tradition of philosophical enquiry and humane values which
it is imperative to maintain in the study of contemporary international affairs.
The promise which Oxford holds as a centre for advanced study of International Relations has not yet been realised. The
Montague Burton Chair (in which Alastair Buchan has been succeeded by Hedley Bull) is the only senior post in the field.
The burden of research and supervision therefore falls largely upon College tutors who have major responsibilities for
undergraduate teaching in a range of subjects. Library facilities, which in some subjects are incomparable at Oxford, in this
one are inadequate. Provision for junior research posts, research assistance, fieldwork, visiting research appointments and
graduate scholarships is either non-existent or insufficient.
The Alastair Buchan Memorial Fund will be used to remedy some at least of these deficiencies, first priority being given to
increasing the number of tenured posts by the establishment of a Readership in International Relations. We hope that in
this way the work which Alastair Buchan began will be brought to fruition, and at the same time that a fitting memorial
will be provided to his association with Oxford University.
? We hope that you will find this to be an appeal to which you can contribute, in whatever .amount. Cheques should be
payable to Oxford University and sent to the Oxford secretary :
The Hon. Secretary
Alastair Buchan Memorial Appeal
All Souls College
Oxford ox i 4AL
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ALASTAIR BUCHAN FUND
Oxford Committee
Mrs. Alastair Buchan
Professor Hedley Bull (Montague Burton Professor of International Relations)
Lord Bullock (Master of St. Catherine's College)
Lord Franks (Provost of Queen's College 1946-48, British Ambassador at Washington
College 1962-76)
Professor Margaret Gowing (Professor of the History of Science)
Mr. Wilfrid Knapp (Fellow and Tutor, St. Catherine's College)
Dr. Zbigniew Pelczynski (Fellow and Tutor, Pembroke College)
Hon. Secretary: Professor Michael Howard (Chichele Professor of the History of War)
All Souls College, Oxford
1948-52,
Provost of Worcester
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