Organizational History
In 1956, the International Research and Exchanges Board's (IREX) predecessor, the Inter- University Committee on Travel Grants (IUCTG), was created to enable American scholars specializing in Russian studies to travel to the Soviet Union on thirty-day tourist visas, the maximum time the Soviet government then allowed. The committee was originally composed of seven founding universities that joined in a cooperative effort, selecting Columbia University, New York, New York, to manage and direct the program from 1956 to 1960 and Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, from 1960 until 1969 when the committee's functions were assumed by IREX. Since the end of the Cold War, IREX has become more global in its exchange programs and has shifted emphasis away from Russia and Eastern Europe.
On January 27, 1958, the United States and Soviet Union signed an agreement authorizing reciprocal academic exchanges with visits lasting from four months to two years. Although IUCTG was the largest of the independent organizations designed to administer the terms of the agreement, other organizations also promoted their own academic exchange programs including the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foreign Area Fellowship Programs, the Institute of International Education, and the National Academy of Sciences. Financial support for IUCTG was provided by the committee's member universities and by a combination of public and private funding with substantial assistance from the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Ford Foundation. In addition to funds, the State Department also contributed logistical support, and because the exchange program operated under the auspices of an intergovernmental agreement, the department increasingly influenced the day-to-day management of the committee's operations.
By the late 1960s, dissatisfaction with the structure of the IUCTG's area studies approach in general and with its management in particular resulted in the creation of the advisory Committee on the Future, established in 1967 to present a blueprint for restructuring American scholarly exchange programs with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The committee's final report proposed that a new organization administer the exchanges and broaden their coverage.
On July 1, 1968, IREX officially began operations and worked with IUCTG during the following transitional year, after which the committee disbanded. IREX assumed responsibility for the exchange programs formerly operated by the American Council of Learned Societies and IUCTG, and when fully organized, it operated programs in the Soviet Union and also in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. The board was funded by grants from the Ford Foundation, the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In addition, IREX was for many years sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council. IREX became an independent entity in 1991 and has been located at three successive addresses: New York, N.Y., 1968-1986; Princeton, N.J., 1986-1992; and Washington, D.C., 1992-present.