29 

 While the proponents of these programs make a point of their tentative and 

 experimental nature the procedures adopted are illustrative of the kind of 

 activity envisioned. Mid-career faculty with established research competence 

 are encouraged to travel to Latin American sites for the exclusive purpose 

 of meeting people in their field and assessing research activity already 

 underway. Sometimes the travelers bring along junior men in their field or 

 colleagues from related areas. They give no speeches, participate in no 

 seminars, spend little time in ceremonial protocol. No eyebrows are raised 

 if they come back empty handed. In keeping with research tradition, the 

 plans respect the workings of a highly personal special competency and pro- 

 fessional wisdom. 



Where the juxtaposition of special competency and underdeveloped 

 circumstance does generate professional excitement, the traveler is encouraged 

 to design a program by which the substantive problem may be investigated in 

 terms of his own professional and personal requirements. He selects his 

 own foreign associates, whatever their institutional affiliation. Granted 

 the lead times implicit in scientific research, the chances are that he will 

 select an associate whose immediate work group will be close to critical size 

 needing only the additional impetus that this kind of external association 

 provides or that the associate will have the professional strength and personal 

 stamina to become the nucleus of a new critical-size entity which the inter- 

 national connection will serve to instigate. In either event, no institution- 

 to-institution contract is negotiated. The association is performance based 

 and terminable by either party where output lags. This arrangement enhances 

 the ability of both parties to negotiate the interface conditions that their 

 work requires. Instead of awaiting the conclusion of an institutional con- 

 tract that commits the parties deep into the future, they are in a position 



