Story of International Relations

5 THE POST-WAR DECLINE OF THE INTERNATIONAL STUDIES CONFERENCE 489

been a member of the board of the GRC. Vito underlined the fact that
in terms of its ‘composition and work,’ the ISC differed from IPSA. He
also pointed out that its work was ‘in many aspects closely related to
UNESCO’s programme.’^209 Despite Cassin’s impassioned defence of the
ISC and the support it received from Vito, his proposal was rejected by
sixteen votes to ten with four abstentions.^210
Prior to the UNESCO’s 1952 General Conference, an article written
by Hans J. Morgenthau was published in the International Social Science
Bulletin. In his article, Morgenthau decried the ‘vagueness and eclecti-
cism’ that characterised much of the teaching and research in the field of
international relations. Morgenthau attributed this alleged lack of disci-
plinary coherence to the field’s indiscriminate concern ‘with everything
that is “international”, that is, with everything that transcends the lim-
its of a particular nation’ and the equally unfocussed multidisciplinary
approach to which this gave rise.^211 Although he did not mention it by
name, Morgenthau clearly saw the work of the ISC as exemplary in this
regard. He observed that on reading the ‘voluminous proceedings’ of
the IIIC, which, he claimed, ‘dedicated much of its work to the discus-
sion of international relations as an academic discipline’ in the interwar
years, one cannot not help but be ‘struck by the amorphousness of the
discussion and the vagueness of the results.’^212
Obviously, Morgenthau confused the ISC with the institution
which housed its secretariat.^213 This confusion might be explained by
the fact that in attempting to illustrate the vague and eclectic nature
of interwar international studies, Morgenthau drew on a record
of a discussion of the university teaching of international relations
which took place in tandem with the ISC’s study meeting on collec-
tive security in London in 1935, and on a short memorandum on
the same subject submitted to the ISC’s session in Madrid in 1936

(^209) Ibid., 427.
(^210) Ibid.
(^211) Hans J. Morgenthau, ‘Area Studies and the Study of International Relations,’
International Social Science Bulletin 4, no. 4 (1952): 647–55, 649, 653.
(^212) Ibid., 648.
(^213) Ibid., 648.