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 papers focus on the years after World War II and the reconstruction of the Peking Union Medical College, and include reports and correspondence by Loucks from China Medical Board, Inc. sponsored trips to the Far East, 1951-1964. The countries surveyed include: Japan, Hong Kong, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Siam (Thailand), Burma, Ceylon, India, Pakistan, Lebanon, Korea, Vietnam, and the Trust Territory. The reports include information not only about the status of medical education, but also about the social and political climate of each country.