Thought Control?

In opening his investigation of tax-exempt foundations last year, Tennessee's Republican Congressman Brazilla Carroll Reece declared: "Here lies the story of how Communism and socialism are financed in the U.S. . . . There is evidence to show there is a diabolical conspiracy back of all this." Last week Recce's committee published the results of its work, along with an angry dissent by the committee's two Democrats, Ohio's Wayne Hays and Idaho's Gracie Pfost. The committee's conclusions, said the Democrats, "was, like the theme of doom in a tragic opera, revealed in its prelude."

Reece's report attacks a far bigger target than tax-exempt foundations. It looks with a jaundiced eye on the social sciences and at empirical methods of scientific inquiry. It excoriates empiricism as the "fact-finding mania," the "fetish of statistics" and the "comptometer compulsion." It charges that the Kinsey reports (partially financed by the Rockefeller Foundation) are "socially dangerous." The report declares but does not prove: "The research in the social sciences with foundation support slants heavily to the left."

Deluded Critic. The resentment with which Carroll Reece, once (1946-48) Republican National Chairman and, in 1952, Bob Taft's Southern manager, regards educational and research foundations was apparently stirred up during the 1952 campaign. At that time, men connected with some of the biggest funds, notably the Ford Foundation's Paul Hoffman and Henry Ford II, were active Eisenhower partisans. Reece, who suffers from a delusion that he would have been Secretary of State if Bob Taft had been elected President, is particularly critical of foundation-sponsored research in foreign policy and world trade, most of which, his report finds, is "internationalist."

The report charges, without citing any current evidence, that the foundations feed "subversive purposes." But, with the rare and thoroughly aired exceptions of the Institute of Pacific Relations and the 1947 appointment of Alger Hiss as president of the Carnegie Endowment, Reece's labors uncovered no Communist infiltration. "We do not know that any large sums of foundation money have gone directly into Communist channels," says the report. Accordingly, the "diabolical conspiracy" cited in Reece's prelude boils down to a tirade against interlocking foundation directorships and coordinated planning of research.

Confused Dissenter. Although the Reece Report fills 416 pages, it lacks the endorsement of a committee majority. It was issued over the signatures of Reece and the committee's other two Republicans, Michigan's Jesse Wolcott and Massachusetts' Angier Goodwin. A note added that Goodwin's "additional views" had not been received in time for printing. These turned out to be a sharp dissent from two chief hypotheses in the report: that the foundations have fostered socialism and internationalism. Goodwin, who has been defeated for reelection, explained that he voted with Reece at one point because he was "confused by the parliamentary situation in the committee."

Congress is expected to do nothing whatever with Recce's report, which cost the taxpayers $115,000 to produce. Reece thinks that the foundations waste billions of what he regards as public funds, i.e., if there were no tax-exempt foundations, some of the money given to them would be collected in taxes. But Reece does not want to abolish tax exemption for foundations. Apparently, he wants sharper legal distinctions between "good" research, which would be tax exempt, and "bad" research, which would not be. Who is the judge between good and bad research? Obviously, Brazilla Carroll Reece thinks he is qualified for an empirical foray into government thought control.

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