Collection contains the staff subject files Betty Skolnick created during her time in the Ford Foundation's Middle East and Africa Program (MEA). Between 1973 and 1975, Skolnick served in the MEA, first as a Training Associate and then as an Assistant Program Officer. Materials within the collection document her assistance on Foundation projects aimed at supporting language development research. Records such as correspondence, memos, notes, reports, articles, and brochures show the Foundation's interest in engaging and promoting research regarding language in education, language policy and planning, and linguistics. This research primarily concerns language development in African countries such as Nigeria and Tanzania. Some records document the Foundation's grant support to institutions in African countries for development oriented language research and training.

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.

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.