programs C RO S S R E G I O NA L P RO G R A M S O F T H E SSRC - ACLS Since 1996 the Social Science Research Council
and the American Council of Learned Societies,
with the help of the Ford Foundation, have been
redesigning their joint international progr a m .
Building on the Councils 40 years of work in the
field, its purpose is to facilitate an international
scholarly conversation for the social sciences and
humanities and to build the structures that can gen-
erate meaningful collaborative intellectual work.
The program is based on the double assumption
that things distant have strong consequences for
things local, and that things local importantly con-
struct the distant.Thus scholarship must acknowl-
edge both the specificity and history of place and
the global forces that shape events. In opening this international conversation, the Councils recognize the need for new forms of
organization for research and training.These must
be international in design,operation and leadership.
Their goal is using and sustaining intellectual re-
s e a rch capacity intern a t i o n a l l y, p a rticularly aro u nd
the important issues facing humanity over the next
decades. Some of the elements of the international
program are described below. international pr og ram advisor y
committee Charles Maier Harvard University Sherry Ortner Columbia University T.J. Pempel University of Washington Pearl Robinson Tufts University Thomas Skidmore Brown University staff Mary Byrne McDonnell
Steven Wheatley (ACLS) meeting November 17,1997, New York City Reg ional Advisory Panels Regional Advisory Panels (RAPs) are a crucial
component of the architecture of the new interna-
tional program of the SSRC and ACLS. The
Councils recognize that the area-based knowledge
we seek can only be developed by bringing togeth-
er interdisciplinary groups of scholars who possess
detailed understanding of a given region. A num-
ber of Regional Advisory Panels (there will eventu-
ally be eight) have been established to bring per-
spectives of different world regions to bear on the
research, training and related components of our
joint international proram. The mandate of each RAP is to strengthen links b e t ween the SSRC and scholarly communities in the
re gion in which it is expert , to foster dialogue and
collaboration among re s e a rc h e rs in the re gion and
i n c rease their engagement with the broader intern a-
tional scholarly commu n i t y, and to develop inititive s
that will enrich scholarship in the particular re gi o n .
RAPs typically meet at least annually and their mem-
b e rship is inva ri a bly mu l t i n a t i o n a l . E ventually many
of the panels will operate in part n e rship with institu-
tions based in the re gions themselve s . In addition to the individual RAP meetings listed below, an all-RAP meeting,Launching the New
International Program, was held in New York City
on April 4-5,1997. africa r eg ional advisory panel Michael Chege University of Florida,Chair Jean Comaroff University of Chicago Jane Guyer Northwestern University Paulin J. Houtondji University of Benin Ayesha Imam Women Living Under Muslim Law, Nigeria Bogumil Jewsiewicki Universit