The collection contains department correspondence sent by Ford Foundation staff in the International Affairs Program as well as reports, grant status reports, and grant program action forms. The correspondence is typically notices of grant approvals or grant declinations on projects related to international law and the environment, international peace and security, international human rights, international economics and development, U.S. foreign policy, and relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Collection contains the staff subject files of Peter Ruof who worked as a Program Officer in the Ford Foundation's European and International Affairs Program (EIA) between 1973 and 1981 and then as an international consultant for the Foundation's International Affairs Program (IAP) for a brief period after that. The EIA was situated within the Foundation's International Division. Materials in the collection relate how it was replaced by the IAP in the early 1980s. Ruof's records are comprised of chronological files that were created between 1973 and 1978 and between 1981 and 1982. Files originating from the period between November 1978 and September 1981 are missing from the collection.

Robert H. (Hazard) Edwards joined the Ford Foundation as a program officer for the International Division in 1965. In 1968, Mr. Edwards served as the Foundation's Representative in Pakistan. He later transferred to the Middle East and Africa (MEA) Program in the early 1970s where he would serve as Deputy Head under William Fredericks. In 1973, he succeeded Fredericks as MEA Head. Mr. Edwards left the Foundation in 1977 to accept an appointment as President of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. The Office Files of Robert H. Edwards span from 1968 to 1977 and comprise the files that Mr. Edwards kept as Head of the International Division's MEA Program. The collection is organized into three series: program management files, subject files, and chronological files. The program management files primarily consist of memoranda but also correspondence, notes, reports, and papers relating to the work of Mr. Edwards's program officer Lowell S. Hardin. Mr. Edwards's subject files contain memoranda, correspondence, papers, speeches, reports, meeting materials, and background primarily pertaining to the Foundation's programs in the Middle East and Africa. His chronological files of correspondence and memoranda from the year 1968 and the years between 1972 and 1977 are also available.

The collection includes transcripts of 12 sessions of the Proceedings of the Survey Committee on Program Review of the Ford Foundation (also known as the McCloy Committee or the Special Committee on Program Review of the Ford Foundation). The McCloy Committee met in March and April 1962 to discuss potential program goals in Education, Economics, International Relations, Science and Technology, and the Arts.

Collection contains the office Files Natalia Kanem created and organized when she served as Deputy Vice President of the Ford Foundation's Peace and Social Justice Program (PSJ). It consists of one series of briefing books, reports, and various kinds of publications. The briefing books document Kanem's participation at different PSJ and larger Foundation meetings she attended between 2000 and 2004. Materials within the collection chiefly concern the state and development of civil society and peace and international cooperation throughout the world as well as the Foundation's support of research and programs focusing on those areas.

Collection contains different types of press materials from 1951 to 2002 that document the Ford Foundation's efforts to both publicize itself in the news and acquire documentation of media commentary on its ventures. Within the collection, press releases appear as the most used publicity tool for promoting the Foundation, while press clippings appear as the primary means for collecting media commentary on the Foundation's activities. Most of the press clippings found within the collection were submitted to the Foundation's Office of Communications by press clipping service providers Burrelle's Information Services and Luce Press Clippings in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Collection contains the office files of Ford Foundation program executive Enid C.B. (Curtis Bok) Schoettle. From 1976 to 1993, Schoettle occupied a number of positions in the Foundation's International Affairs Program (IAP), a unit that was once organized under the Foundation's United States and International Affairs Program (USIAP). Schoettle served as Program Officer, Program Officer in Charge, and Director of IAP. Her work primarily focused on managing grants for international security and arms control research and initiatives.

This collection holds the papers of Peter F. Geithner who served as Regional Director of Asia Programs for the Ford Foundation between 1990 and 1996. It contains both professional and personal material, and although it chiefly consists of records created during the course of Geithner's long career in philanthropy, it was maintained by Geithner as an individual person and stored at his home in Orleans, Massachusetts. See the Other Finding Aids note to locate Ford Foundation records created by Geithner during his time as Regional Director of Asia Programs.

The collection contains photographs, correspondence, monthly calendars, and notebooks filled with trip reports and travel notes related to Shepard Forman's career at the Ford Foundation and transition to Director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.