Norman Wait Harris Memorial Foundation Fund

The Norman Wait Harris Memorial Fund is one of the University of Chicago's oldest endowments. It was established in 1923 with a gift from the five children of Norman Wait Harris, founder of the Harris Trust and Savings Bank, in honor of their father. The purpose of the fund is to help citizens of the United States better understand other peoples of the world. Each year the fund supports conferences, lectures, invited speakers, and other events on international topics at the University of Chicago. Students, faculty, and University centers and organizations are eligible to apply for Norman Wait Harris support.

In 2007-08, the Norman Wait Harris fund supported international conferences on the effects of climate change in Siberia; on the Conditions of Settler Colonialism; and on Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency. In addition to the popular World Beyond the Headlines series, the Harris Fund supported lectures or lecture series on Sudanese refugees in Israel; on the future of U.S. relations with India; and on contemporary Latin American issues. The fund also supported a variety of cultural events including music performances by the visiting Kazakh group Roksonaki.

2007-08 Featured Event:
Conference on Anthropology & Global Counterinsurgency

In the winter and spring of 2008, a group of anthropology faculty and students organized what will be the first of a series of conferences examining the relationship between Anthropology, governance and war:

In the context of continuing violence in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States military and its planners have taken a new interest in culture and ethnography. Hoping to revitalize counterinsurgency theory and practice, the post-Rumsfeld Department of Defense has called for the production of "knowledge of the cultural 'terrain,'" in General David Petraeus' words. Simultaneously, global war and governance have emerged as significant objects of ethnographic and theoretical interrogation. The conference, audio for which will soon be available on CHIASMOS, explored Anthropology's relationship to the United States' global projection of its power, while simultaneously mounting an anthropological inquiry into the nature of that power and of the changing world in which it operates. A volume of papers presented at the conference is in preparation, and additional conferences on related topics are being planned.

2008-2009

Events chosen for support in 2008-09 included a workshop at the Oriental Institute to accompany the exhibition, Catastrophe!, on the looting and destruction of the Iraq National Museum in 2003; a screening and discussion with filmmaker Parvez Sharma of his film "A Jihad for Love"; a conference on the partition of India and Pakistan; a symposium on the work of the Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis; and a lecture by Native American poet, novelist, and filmmaker Sherman Alexie.

The Norman Wait Harris Fund will also continue its support of the World Beyond the Headlines series.

Competition Guidelines

Each year, the Center for International Studies awards grants of up to $3000 in its spring competition, to be used during the subsequent academic year. (The 2009-2010 competition has concluded. Supported events will appear on the CIS website as they are announced.) Funding preference is given to those events that are multi-disciplinary in nature and open to the general public. The proposed activity may be a single event or a series of events. Preference is also given to projects that are either ineligible for other sources of support or that require and are seeking multiple sources of support (i.e. projects requiring more than $3,000). The Norman Wait Harris Fund does not support individual research projects or travel by University of Chicago students and faculty, nor events held outside Chicago.