In August 1951, on the occasion of George Blakeslee\u2019s 80th birthday, Secretary of State Dean Acheson sent the retired Clark professor a congratulatory letter, in which he wrote: \u201cYour abiding interest and close participation in foreign relations and the role of the United States in world affairs has left its indelible imprint on the course of events and on the colleagues with whom you have served so eminently over the years in the Department of State and in international organizations.\u201d Acheson also referred to Blakeslee\u2019s \u201cdistinguished academic work\u201d in international relations \u2014in which he was a far-reaching pioneer and major transitional figure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In order to grasp the role Blakeslee played in reshaping the curriculum of higher education and establishing a role for academics in the making of the nation\u2019s foreign policy, it is important to recognize that international relations was not a field of study in the early 20th Century. Even the study of non-Western cultures was not a part of college or university curricula. The subject of history was basically limited to the United States and Western and, to some extent, Central Europe. As a result of that educational posture, leaders of American society shared the attitude that Western culture was superior to all other \u201calien\u201d cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blakeslee was a pioneer, not only in bringing serious study of other cultures and of international relations into higher education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, but in attempting to educate the American public, understand public opinion about foreign affairs and help shape American foreign policy through the influence of academic study. Even while he never fully shed the cultural and racial biases so commonly held by his contemporaries in responsible positions, Blakeslee was a significant transitional figure-rejecting an attitude of exploitative superiority over \u201cbackward\u201d peoples and adopting, in its place, a kind of noblesse oblige. This son of a Congregational minister was committed to the idea that education, mutual understanding, and negotiation were always preferable to the use of force. \u201cRace-child\u201d peoples could be cultivated to maturity. The efficacy of democracy and the benefits of the free market were his twin convictions. Blakeslee\u2019s appreciation of valuable and laudatory cultural distinctions in the history and practices of non-Western nations never quite reached an attitude of parity but he seemed always to be moving in that direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before arriving at Clark as a young professor in 1903, Blakeslee received a bachelor\u2019s degree from Wesleyan University and master\u2019s and doctoral degrees in history from Harvard University. He also studied at Johns Hopkins and at the universities of Berlin, Leipzig and Oxford. And even while he had a number of appointments at other prestigious institutions during the interwar years, Blakeslee remained a member of the Clark faculty until 1944. Toward the end of World War II, he devoted himself to his responsibilities at the Department of State, to which he had given periodic service since 1920.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Blakeslee\u2019s recommendation, Clark University early established a department of history and international relations. As a consequence, before World War I, courses for undergraduates were being offered that treated Russia, Liberia, Manchuria, Japan, China, Turkey, Siberia, the Philippines, and the Congo Free State. During the same period, graduate courses were being taught on Russia and the Far East, the Near East and Africa, British colonies and dependencies, and Latin America, soon followed by courses on diplomacy. Clark\u2019s first doctoral degree in \u201chistory and international relations\u201d was awarded in 1916. By the 1920s and 1930s, international studies were offered prominently at a number of universities, including Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Tufts, Stanford, Michigan, and Chicago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBlakeslee developed a distinctly international perspective in his courses as early as 1905 \u2026. Beginning in 1915 he was permited to add \u2018and International Relations\u2019 to his title of Professor of History. The department itself was called \u2018History and International Relations\u2019 after 1920.\u201d <\/p>William Koelsch, \u201cClark University 1887\u20131987: A Narrative History\u201d<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n While he led the reform of curriculum, Blakeslee also established the first scholarly journal of international relations, the Journal of Race Relations<\/em>, subsequently renamed the Journal of International Relations<\/em>. He also helped form the Council on Foreign Relations, which remains an important and influential citizen organization. Meanwhile, beginning in 1910, Blakeslee prompted G. Stanley Hall to approve what became a ground-breaking series of six conferences on international relations \u2014 each one attracting large numbers of eminent government officials, businesspeople, commentators, academics, admirals and generals, foundation officials, and leaders of international organizations. As was to be the case with so many of the achievements of Clark\u2019s pioneers, inadequate funds resulted in others taking over the Journal of International Relations<\/em>, which became the Foreign Affairs Quarterly<\/em>. Blakeslee continued to help edit the journal. Likewise, an inability to continue funding the conferences meant that they moved to the Williamstown Summer Institute of World Politics, again with Blakeslee\u2019s assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is difficult to imagine how a single individual could accomplish so much and with so little assistance. His description of his initial decade or so at Clark is evocative: The \u201cearly days were a thrilling experience: a small, young faculty; a small, able student body; plenty of academic freedom and intellectual initiative. We all worked hard; we had to; each of us had not a Clark chair, but a settee.\u201d Even so, Blakeslee managed regular tennis games (at which he had great talent), less frequent baseball games, and occasional adventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His most notably hazardous trek was taken with his wife to Czarist Russia in 1906, during which he narrowly escaped being blown up, when a bomb destroyed the house of the Russian premier. Subsequently, Blakeslee was arrested in Russia on suspicion of being a spy \u2014 having traveled the country with radical leaders, meeting rebellious peasants, and being accused of distributing a revolutionary manifesto. After the intervention of the American Consul General, the Governor of Moscow released Blakeslee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The six major international conferences that Blakeslee organized at Clark between 1910 and 1916 ultimately resulted in the recognition of his talents by officials in Washington. He had, for every one of those conferences, attracted large numbers of prominent figures and public officials as participants, and as a consequence he became widely known and appreciated. Blakeslee helped set in motion the practice by the Department of State of using academic experts in the formulation and conduct of foreign policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Toward the end of World War I, Blakeslee served Woodrow Wilson\u2019s administration on matters related to the Pacific Islands. In 1921 and 1922, he was a technical adviser for Warren G. Harding\u2019s Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes, at the Washington Conference, which reduced naval armaments and contributed to peace in Asia for the next decade. In 1931 and 1932, Blakeslee served under Herbert Hoover\u2019s Secretary of State, Henry Stimson, on the Lytton Commission, concerning Japan\u2019s seizure of Manchuria. (According to a story later told by a member of the Japanese royal family, Blakeslee and others on the Commission survived an attempted poisoning during their 1931 Manchurian trip.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n During World War II, he was first a consultant to and then officer in the Far Eastern Division of the State Department, finally serving as political adviser to the Far Eastern Commission, which shaped policies in occupied Japan from 1945 to 1952. In fact, a substantial percentage of the people working the Asian desk in the State Department at that time had been trained by Blakeslee. By his last decade of service, under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, Blakeslee had served in important capacities under five different presidents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was a remarkable career, both for the breadth of the contribution and the longevity of earnest, dedicated service \u2014 not to mention the ground-breaking character of much of what he accomplished. Never fully rising above the cultural and racial attitudes of his age and class, Blakeslee\u2019s practical idealism nonetheless advanced the American people\u2019s understanding of other cultures and the enduring hope for a peaceful world. Described as an \u201caction-intellectual,\u201d he clearly stands in the center of that Clark University tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Clark professor advised five U.S. presidents on world affairs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":25074,"template":"","meta":{"story_color":"var(--clarku-color-darker-blue)","story_headerImg":25074,"section_label":"Clarkives","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[223],"displayed_author":[],"featured":[],"topic":[234,181,338],"class_list":["post-12655","story","type-story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clark-community","topic-clarkives","topic-history","topic-international-relations"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/Latin-America-Conference-1913-1024x689.png\")
Frequently controversial, these conferences covered a wide range of issues, and each resulted in a volume of learned essays, some 200 in all, including \u201cChina and the Far East\u201d; \u201cJapan and Japanese-American Relations\u201d; \u201cRecent Developments in China\u201d; \u201cLatin America\u201d; \u201cProblems and Lessons of the War\u201d (published in 1916, prior to the United States\u2019 entry into World War I); and \u201cMexico and the Caribbean.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\u201cNews\"](\"\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/Blakesee-news-clips-748x1024-2.jpg\u201d\")
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