The Auburn Conference on International Affairs

In a November 1957 issue of The Auburn Plainsman, a front-page story heralded the beginning of what would become a landmark event for the student body of Alabama Polytechnic Institute, and later Auburn University.

“Stewart McKnight and Don Meadows are working to promote more student interest in world affairs,” the story said. “One proposed method was to get some dignitary from off campus to lecture on what is happening in the world today.”

Four months later, the first Auburn Conference on International Affairs (ACOIA) was held, chaired by McKnight and Meadows and featuring speeches by three dignitaries: U.S. Sen. John Sparkman, Newsweek editor Frank Gibney and John Correll, president of the Foreign Trade Association of Atlanta.

The Plainsman called the conference—modeled after the Student Conference on National Affairs at Texas A&M University—a “tremendous success,” and for about a dozen more years, the conference featured speeches and small-group sessions with an international flavor on Auburn’s campus. Two- or three-day conferences would have anywhere from three to 10 speakers.

“It was strictly a student-run affair,” said George McMillan ’66, student government president in 1966. “The administration had no say in who the speakers were. That was important. We were trying to expose Auburn students to what was happening in other parts of the world.”

Each year, the student body president would appoint a chair of ACOIA, who would seek out speakers in government, politics, the press and other arenas.

“We got some pretty high-level speakers who people knew about and might have been surprised they’d take the time to come to Auburn,” said Mark Marsh ’70, who chaired ACOIA in 1970 and brought in Arthur Schlesinger, a former adviser to President John F. Kennedy and Pulitzer Prize-winning author; CBS’ “Face the Nation” moderator Martin Agronsky; and U.S. Rep. Allard Lowenstein of New York.

Marsh’s overarching conference topic was communication. Other themes throughout the years included human rights, international trade, and Mexico and the Caribbean.

There were more controversial topics, too, such as the Vietnam War. Speakers in 1965 included Alaska Sen. Ernest Gruening and Vietnamese Ambassador to the United Nations Dr. Tran Van Chuong, with The Plainsman noting “a showdown between East and West on America’s future role in the South Vietnamese War.”

Gerald Rutberg ’66 chaired the 1966 conference, which had a theme of “Subversion in the Sixties.” That included Fred J. Baumgardner, chief of the FBI’s internal security division, speaking on “Communist Subversion in the United States.”

Though the speakers were top-notch, the “substance” of the event often came from question-and-answer sessions following the speeches, Rutberg said.

“The speakers might have come with a canned speech, so the real value was when you got them into a Q&A and got them off script,” he said. “Students would ask probing questions—we tried to make the Q&A valuable to people. You wanted it to have substance. The whole purpose of ACOIA was the substance of the material.”

Charles Majors ’67 chaired the conference in 1967, a year that brought Admiral Thomas Moorer, then the supreme allied commander of NATO and later the chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, to campus.

“It was great to get him,” Majors said.

Not everyone accepted invitations to Auburn. The Auburn University archives has rejection letters from Sen. Barry Goldwater and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and there were other big names who got away.

“One person we didn’t get was [U.S. senator] Ed Kennedy,” Marsh recalled. “We went to Washington and talked to him a couple of times. He indicated he would try to come, but at the last minute, he said he had other commitments.”

Those trips to Washington, as well as to New York, were key in landing speakers, said David Hill ’70, who was student body president.

“There was something called a speakers’ bureau, and we didn’t use that,” said Hill. “We tried to speak with them face-to-face. We delivered the invitations in person. I thought that was quaint and wonderful.”

Majors called ACOIA “a great experience all the way around.”

“I learned a lot about communicating with people about topics, particularly topics that didn’t have unanimity around them,” he said. “It was interesting, fascinating, something I really enjoyed. I look back on it with a sense of accomplishment.”

ACOIA was canceled once, in 1963. The Plainsman, calling it “the only student-sponsored event of its kind in the U.S.,” cited lack of funding.

Other than that, it was held every spring, with standing-room crowds for some speakers, especially during the early years.

By the early 1970s, though, attendance at ACOIA was waning.

“For college students, international affairs was not exactly top of mind,” said Hill. “It was somewhere behind beers and girls. The Rolling Stones sold out the Coliseum twice, and we couldn’t get students to come to our conference.”

After 1970’s conference, ACOIA was changed to the Horizons Conference, broadening the scope of speakers to include some entertainment figures. The 1972 Horizons series became even more entertainment oriented.

ACOIA was no more, but it left a legacy.

“I thought it was such a valuable thing,” McMillan said. “It permitted students and other people to learn what I guess they could learn on television or in print today. It presented different viewpoints on current issues.”

By Alec Harvey ’84