Established under a large Ford Foundation grant in 1964, the Committee on International Studies oversaw the distribution of the grant money and other sources of income to various departmental and area programs having to do with international scholarship. Spanning from 1962 to 1978, the records contain details of the committee and various subcommittee's activities during that time.

The collection includes the records of the Committee on International Studies and all area program sub-committees, as well as grant and financial information from 1962 to 1978, with the bulk of the records spanning from 1964-1977. These records are comprised mostly of memoranda, correspondence, financial information, publicity materials, reports, course offerings, symposium and conference proceedings, visiting scholar information, biographical sketches, and minutes of meetings, as well as assorted documents.

Major subcommittees and centers include: African Studies, Canadian Studies, Commonwealth Studies, East Asian Studies, Hispanic Council, Latin American Studies, Middle East Studies, Russian and East European Studies, and South Asian Studies.

Further major subgroupings of note in the collection include: Cooperative Program in International Studies, Ford Foundation materials, Rockefeller Foundation materials, visiting scholar materials, faculty research materials, and US Office of Education materials.