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Yes.
Oh, sure. Certainly. Careers were changed, in some instances. Books were written that would not have been written except for the year at the Center. There were only a couple of rotten eggs out of the first fifteen years of the Center, that I recall. We had -- if anyone's ever interested and the directors of the Center are still living -- I think a really interesting story could be written about --
Well, it's fascinating considering the kind of debates that are happening about the humanities right now, and about linking up different areas of specialization, because academia has become so specialized. It's a fascinating story.
No, it's to the Ford Foundation's credit and to Rowan Gaither's credit that they put the money together for this project. I went back to them for more money and got it. In fact, I think after the second or third year, Rowan said, “We're so pleased. Don't you need some more money?” And Don Cook when he came on -- he didn't come on until, I guess, the second five years -- Don helped us on handling our money. We got money from various foundations who wanted to sponsor fellows at the Center.
The projects that -- I shouldn't even use the word “projects” -- but the areas of selection at various times were predetermined so that we got fellows that we knew in advance could work well with each other. For example, if we identified somebody very strong, it wasn't unusual for the director to say, “Is there somebody that you would like to work with during that particular year?” The chances are pretty good if a superstar at, say, Harvard, said there was somebody at Chicago they'd like to work with for a year -- if we went out and saw that person
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