Laura Dreyfus-Barney (1897-1974), the International Council of Women and International Intellectual Cooperation at Paris, Geneva, and Rome

Description

In 1927 Alfred Zimmern, then deputy director of the Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC), addressed the Geneva conference of the International Council of Women (ICW) on “The Work of the League of Nations for Intellectual Co-operation and How the International Council of Women and its National Councils Might Cooperate with the League’s Work for Intellectual Co-operation” (ICW, 1927). His lecture was chaired by Laura Dreyfus-Barney, a wealthy American domiciled in Paris, who was ICW liaison officer with the IIIC and an expert member of the League’s Sub-committee of Experts to Make the League known to Young People (League of Nations, 1927), which reported to the League’s International Committee of Intellectual Co-operation (ICIC). At the ICW conference, Dreyfus Barney also convened the ICW’s Cinema Committee and from 1930 would become ICW Liaison officer at the International Institute of Educational Cinematography (IIEC), established in Rome in 1928. This was addition to her links with the League secretariat as vice-convenor (1925-35) and then convenor (1935-7) of the ICW’s Peace Committee and vice-chair of the Peace and Disarmament Committee of the Women’s International Organisations founded to coordinate the campaign for the international petition that was presented to the League of Nations Conference for the Protection and Limitation of Armaments. After the Second World War she acted as the ICW’s liaison officer with the United Nations until 1970 (Goodman, 2018a) . This presentation explores Dreyfus-Barney’s pursuit of intellectual cooperation at the ICW and in League-related institutions. It begins by discussing the endorsement of the principle of the League of Nations by the ICW council at its 1920 congress, when the ICW resigning president, Lady Aberdeen referred to the ICW as the Women’s League of Nations (Aberdeen and Temair, 1920, p.13; see also Rupp 1997; Gubin & von Molle 2005, p.29). It then focuses on three aspects of Dreyfus-Barney’s activities. First, her work to disseminate understanding at the ICW and in the USA of intellectual cooperation along League lines; second Dreyfus-Barney’s role in the foundation of the League’s Liaison Committee of Major International Organisations, which was established to “furnish a point of contact for those of the great international associations which are interested in the education of children and young people in international understanding and world friendship” (League of Nations 1929) and which Dreyfus-Barney notes in correspondence with Marie Butts (general secretary of the International Bureau at Geneva) resulted from a suggestion that she discussed with Inazō Niobé (League undersecretary for intellectual co-operation and international bureaux) (Dreyfus-Barney 1934); and third her engagement with the Rome International Institute for Educational Cinematography, where she became the only female member of the IIEC’s 1934 congress bureau. Prior to 1922, Dreyfus-Barney had travelled extensively, visiting Palestine, Persia, the Caucasus, Russian Turkistan, Egypt, Turkey, China, Indochina, Burma, Korea and India (Khademi 2013) and she spent a month prior to the IIEC congress working on matters related to “film and native races” which would result in a 1935 publication in the IIEC’s journal (Dreyfus-Barney 1935). Much to the Secretariat’s annoyance she also corresponded with them over plans for League representation at the congress. Dreyfus-Barney’s extensive travelling had been undertaken as an emissary for the Bahai faith and the presentation argues that her Bahai beliefs were key to her approach to intellectual cooperation and to her activities in pursuit of peace at the ICW and in League-related institutions. Bahai beliefs included a model of global civilisation and familial humanity that situates all human beings as members of one race and the earth as one household and the land of all humanity (Saiedi, 2013, 69). Bahai’s also held to a vision of peace that saw the League as a progressive but insufficient mechanism to bring about world peace; and they rejected partisan politics and racial identities (Stockman, 2013) in favour of an approach to co-operative methods of working geared to bring about change in a consensual way. The presentation traces links between these aspects of Bahai belief and Dreyfus-Barney’s activities around intellectual co-operation The presentation draws on material from the League of Nations archive in Geneva, the International Bureau of Education at Geneva, the ICW Collection in the CARHIF archive at Brussels, and from the Bahá’í national archive at Willmette, USA. The analytical approach to the presentation is underpin by Herren’s (2014) definition of international organisations as as “a self-declared form of interaction across borders that produces footprints and patterns characteristic of the time frame concerned” (Ibid., p.2). This casts organisations through a view of space as a product of social interrelations and as the sphere of possibility always under construction (Massey, 2005, pp.10-12); and it casts place as a “temporary meeting- up” (Ibid., p.6) and a “meeting of histories” (Ibid., p.141). This analytic approach is used to underpin analysis of Dreyfus-Barney’s activities and the organisations with which she engaged.

Period	13 May 2022
Degree of Recognition	International