Shortly after World War I, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, gave Mortimer Graves a mandate to develop Chinese studies.
[1] Kenneth Scott Latourette would recall in 1955 the "people of the United States and those who led them knew little of the peoples and cultures of the Far East" and that was "in spite of political, commercial and cultural commitments in the region and of events which already were hurrying them on into ever more intimate relations.
The Ford Foundation provided money and co-ordination to area studies centers, which, in turn, supported the AAS.
Bruce Cumings, writing in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, charged that for the AAS to participate in this way of funding scholarship on Asia led to confusing academic research and government intelligence work.
AAS President William Theodore de Bary called for the organization to take a position on the war that was "nonpolitical but not unconcerned."
[11] Each spring, the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) holds a four-day conference devoted to planned programs of scholarly papers, roundtable discussions, workshops, and panel sessions on a wide range of issues in research and teaching, and on Asian affairs in general.