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The American Academic Freedom Project at Columbia conducted a historical survey of the rise, development and changes in academic freedom in the history of the United States, and an analysis of the contemporary situation, including a study of the respective roles of governing boards, administrative officers, faculties and students. The 1955 volume, Academic Freedom in Our Time: A Study prepared for the American Academic Freedom Project at Columbia University, was undertaken by the Director Robert. M. MacIver. This collection includes the Project's research and administrative files as well as the book's editorial and publication files. The material is arranged under such headings as Censorship, Pressure Groups, Communism, Student Rights, etc. and includes pamphlets, newspaper clippings, reports, and correspondence. The general theme of the book was the same as that of the Columbia University Bicentennial in 1954, "Man's right to knowledge and the free use thereof."

Correspondence; manuscripts of books, chapters, addresses, lectures, articles, and other writings; clippings and other printed materials relating to Butler's life and career, and memorabilia, ca. 1900-1947. Also, correspondence, 1891-1946, between Butler and presidents of the United States including William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry S. Truman.

Correspondence, minutes of meetings, financial records, publications, notes, subject files, awards, speeches, reports and audiovisual materials document work by the Church Peace Union, its successors Council on Religion in International Affairs and Council on Ethics and International Affairs, and related organizations such as the World Alliance for International Friendship Through the Churches. The first installment of the CCEIA archival materials came to the RBML in 1974, with numerous additions over the years. A major addition in 1982 contained primarily the records of the Board of Directors and their semi-annual meetings, as well as the various programs and institutes of the Council, for the years 1972-1982, along with selected 1930s materials. 1986 addition contains presidential correspondence files, minutes of the Board of Trustees and committees, special projects, programs and conferences files, and the business and editorial files of "Worldview". Correspondents include John Foster Dulles, Jane Addams, Fiorello La Guardia, and Paul Tillich. 1990 and 2000 additions includes files of CCEIA presidents and vice presidents, paper and audiovisual materials on Merrill House Conversation Programs; Educational programs; International Monetary Fund/Lecture series; The Annals Of The Academy Of Political & Social Science; Washington Consultations; Colloquia for the Clergy; Church State Project; Asian Development & The Carribean Initiative; Korea: Year 2000 Project; fundraising files, printed materials and files of the Department of Publications.

Materials include correspondence and e-mail communications, mission reports, testimonies and interviews, addresses and contact lists, confidential interoffice memos, legal and advocacy material, internal planning and policy material, declassified government and United Nations documents, published and unpublished human rights reports from individuals and fellow non-governmental organizations (NGOs), press clippings and news releases, and maps. Another category of documents consists of HRW reports and briefing papers, as well as press releases and open letters to heads of state, governments and various government agencies.

Wesley McCune founded Group Research Inc. in 1962 after a successful career as a journalist for such magazines as "Newsweek", "Time", "Life", and "Changing Times. Group Research Inc. was based in Washington DC until ceasing operations in the mid-1990s. The organization collected materials that focus on the right-wing and span four decades. The archive includes information about and by right-wing organizations and activists in the form of publications, correspondence, pamphlets, reports, the newspaper "Congressional Record," and magazine clippings and other ephemera. McCune and his small staff also published an initially bi-monthly but in later years monthly newsletter Group Research Report which kept its subscribers abreast of the latest views and actions of right-wingers.