It is said to be the first United States institution employing the term "Southeast Asia".
The Institute was originally organized as the East Indies Institute of America, with Austrian scholar Robert Heine-Geldern playing a lead role in the formation.
Margaret Mead, Claire Holt, Raymond Kennedy, and Arthur Schiller served on its board.
By 1946 the Institute claimed a total of 326 members, and had changed its name by majority vote to make it "clear that the Institute's area of research and study comprises the East Indies, the Philippines, Malaya, Burma, Siam and Indo-China", as recorded in a special issue of the Far Eastern Quarterly (1946).
You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.This article about an organization in the United States is a stub.