International House Berkeley

"International House is a laboratory for a new kind of experiment – the day-to-day practice of international fellowship among men and women." — John D. Rockefeller Jr., I-House Benefactor point of entry from the Orient and claimed the women of standing in the community, would be largest number of foreign students on the West responsible for seeing that the purposes of the Coast (in those days about 200). institution would be fulfilled. John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s gift of $1,800,000 Later in the '30s, Rockefeller established to the University of California resulted in the similar institutions in Chicago and Paris. He establishment of International House Berkeley hoped that contact between the Houses would in 1930. In a letter to University of California facilitate an exchange of ideas and experiences President Robert Gordon Sproul, Rockefeller that would assist the carrying out of a kindred outlined his reasons for the gift: purpose. "The idea of the establishment of this institution on the Pacific Coast was suggested by the success of Resistance to International a similar one on the Atlantic Coast, in New York House in Berkeley City, which has become well and favorably known llen C. Blaisdell, Edmonds' former throughout the world. By bringing together in assistant in New York, was appointed in unfettered cooperation the educated young people of 1928 to be the first executive director all lands, many of whom will in years to come be of the Berkeley I-House. Blaisdell was a Phi leaders in their several countries, and International House under construction, April 1930. by giving them the full opportunity for frank discussion on terms of equality, there is being performed, I believe, a service for the well-being of the world, the importance of which it is difficult to over-value. International House is a laboratory for a new kind of experiment – the day-to-day practice of international fellowship among men and women." The Berkeley House, while owned by the University, was leased to a separate corporation whose Board of Directors, men and A 2

• Cover