Academic and Professional Files (mainly correspondence)
The Academic and Professional Files series is the largest portion of the collection and offers the richest source of material from which to document Oksenberg's extensive and varied career. This series, consisting mainly of correspondence, but also including memoranda, reports, and other documentation, has been maintained by broad chronological subseries. Because of Oksenberg's many responsibilities and academic commitments and because these files came into the library in several different accessions, there is much overlapping between the several subseries. The researcher is therefore encouraged to examine the container listing carefully for related (though separated) files of interest to his/her research.
Some of the subseries are arranged by name of individuals. Included in these are prominent sinologists such as A. Doak Barnett and John K. Fairbanks; policy makers W. Michael Blumenthal and Zbigniew Brzezinski; and presidents Nixon, Carter, and Bush. Other subseries are arranged by name of organization. Here the researcher will find Oksenberg's files from his activities with the Committee on Scholarly Communications with the PRC (CSCPRC); the Joint Committee on Contemporary China (JCCS); the National Committee on US-China Relations (NCUSCR); the Social Science Research Council (SSRC); and several other Chinese studies organizations. This series provides a sense of the changing concerns and priorities of American sinologists during the 1970s and 1980s.