Lincoln P. Bloomfield papers

Lincoln Bloomfield was a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1961 to 1991. Bloomfield first came to MIT in 1957 to direct the U.N. Project at MIT's Center for International Studies. In addition he worked in the U. S. Department of State as well as serving as a consultant for other government, industry, and private groups, dividing his professional life between government service and academia. The materials in his collection are arranged by broad categories reflecting these activities, an arrangement suggested by Professor Bloomfield at the time of a large transfer of his papers in 1998.

Materials in the Biography series; Writings series; and Speeches series provide information about Lincoln Bloomfield's many interests as an author and a scholar, political and personal reflections, and "other doings" (a section of a "literary" bio he composed).

Lincoln Bloomfield worked extensively with various government agencies, serving as a member of the State Department from 1946 to 1957 and as a consultant thereafter, and in the White House in charge of global issues for the National Security Council from 1979 to 1980. Records about his consulting work for the Department of State, the Ford Foundation, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and other organizations are included in the Subject Files, Soviet Union, and Peacekeeping series.

In 1970 Bloomfield was invited to lecture at the Institute for the Study of the USA of the Soviet Academy of Science. He gave a week of talks and met with director of the Institute Georgi Arbatov and deputy director Andrei Kokoshin. On that same trip he also traveled to Bucharest, Romania, invited by the Romanian Institute for International Affairs. Later visits to the USSR were made under the auspices of the UN Association of the USA, specifically the US-Soviet Arms Control and Economics Panel.

Arms control and disarmament were dominant issues of the U.S. government in the 1950s and 1960s, and of strong corresponding interest in academia. Information about Bloomfield's engagement with these issues is gathered into the Arms Control and Disarmanent series in box 8 and include the minutes of the Havard-MIT Joint Arms Control Seminar, which Bloomfield co-chaired from 1960 to 1972.

Bloomfield was a contributer to developing political simulation exercises, and his efforts in political-military gaming are well documented in the Political Gaming series, in boxes 8 to 13. An unpublished essay and accompanying materials from several exercises conducted in the 1960s and 1970s document the development of the political gaming concept. POLEX gaming materials which came out of work at the Rand Corporation and were developed by Bloomfield at MIT are included as well as gaming exercise studies he ran using POLEX with the State Department leaders, and with other groups. Also in this series is good documentation of CASCON (Computer-Aided System for Information on Local Conflicts), a computerized conflict analysis system designed to compare vast amounts of data about conflicts.

Copies of Lincoln Bloomfield's book reviews, articles, and books, as well as supporting notes and correspondence, are included in the Writings series, as research projects and activities documented throughout the collection were most often gathered together in a book or major publication which followed the end of a project or study. Materials can be found in boxes 15 to 21, and are divided by type of publication.

The Speeches series helps document Bloomfield's activities as a global public speaker and commentator, including in television and in other media. There is information relating to his involvement as host of the "Fifty Years Ago Today" radio program on the Christian Science Monitor network for several years. There are also transcripts of television program commentaries done for the WGBH program "The Advocates." Transcripts can be found in box 21.