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The Arthur Doak Barnett Papers consist of personal and professional documents created and amassed by a leading scholar and government advisor on United States-China policy and relations in the 20th century. Barnett wrote, co-authored, or edited more than 20 books on China and Asia. His papers chronicle his academic, reporting, and government careers, plus his writings and travels throughout Asia and China from the 1940s through the 1990s.

This collection of records document the institutional history of the Center for US-China Arts Exchange, established in 1978. Under the directorship of professor and renowned composer Chou Wen-chung, the Center is a not-for-profit organization that connected arts professionals from the US and China through a spectrum of curated programs, conferences, and research trips. Bulk dated between 1977 and 2003, materials in this collection consist of correspondence, reports, photographs, printed materials, as well as audiovisual items. The collection serves as important material evidence that help to tell the recent history of cultural communications among individuals and organizations across the Pacific.

Joseph Elliot Slater was an American economist, internationalist and intellectual entrepreneur born in 1922. He died in 2002 of Parkinson's disease. Over the course of his lifetime, Slater was involved in a number of corporations, institutes, and government committees. From 1944-1954 he held a number of crucial post-war positions related to the denazification of Germany and the Allied High Commission. Throughout the twentieth century he worked as an economist and director of international affairs at a number of corporations including Creole Petroleum, the Ford Foundation and Volvo North America. While at the Ford Foundation Slater went on two details to work for the Executive Branch; first, as the Secretary for President Eisenhower's Commision on Foreign Assistance (the Draper Committee), and second, as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Education and Cultural Affairs during the Kennedy administration. Slater served as the President and the CEO of the Salk Institute from 1967-1972 and held the same positions at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies from 1969-1986. After leaving the Aspen Institute, Slater served as the Chairman of the John J. McCloy International Center. In the final decade of his life Slater served as a trustee and member of the board of directors for a number of organizations related to education, science, the arts, and foreign relations. The material in this collection includes files and items from all of these eras of Slater's professional life. While much of this collection is related to Slater's various professional roles, there are personal files interspersed throughout the collection.