THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

pro bono humani generis
1230 YORK AVENUE - NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10021-6399

Joshua Lederberg
UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR-emeritus

June 2, 2002

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Dr. Vartan Gregorian
President

The Carnegie Corporation
New York

Dear Vartan

As a matter of common sense, and bolstered by my work on innumerable national security
and defense advisory groups, it is clear that one of our most urgent needs is a deeper
understanding of Islamism, and its broader contexts.

Is this on your programmatic agenda for the Carnegie? There is a modest effort now going
on at US universities -- it would help to have an inventory. But they should be encouraged
and enabled to develop many more -- and imaginably even broader-viewed -- Bernard
Lewis’s.

I’m sure you’ve given this much thought, and I’d be interested to have your views. I even
get some resonance in Washington when I compare 9/11 not to Pearl Harbor, but to Sputnik.
In 1957 we responded energetically with the Defense Education Act, to meet the technical
challenges put in our face by the Soviets. Today we have a more subtle crisis, to know
enough to mobilize our technology and other resources to get resolution across a vast cultural
divide.

I have no personal stake in this proposal (except the lives saved may be our own.) Which
other foundations might be approachable, perhaps for a joint effort?

The topic is way out of the mandate of the Ellison Medical Foundation, which I do help
administer to the tune of about $40MM/year. If you do run into worthy initiatives for
application of cutting edge biological science to global infectious disease, let’s hear about
those.

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Lederberg