Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey
Established in 1955, the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, formerly known as the Monterey Institute of International Studies , and the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies , located in Monterey, California, is a graduate institute and satellite campus of Middlebury College. For brevity, it is often referred to as simply the Monterey Institute. The cofounders of the institute were Gaspard Etienne Weiss, Louise Weiss, Dwight Morrow Jr., Remsen Dubois Bird, Enid Hamilton-Fellows, Countess of Kinnoull, Sybil Fearnley, Noël Sullivan, and Frank Elton. The institute offers master's degree programs and certificates.
MIIS has been the official supplier of translators and interpreters to the Olympic Games since the 1984 Summer Olympics. Professors and alumnus have also served as Chief interpreters and Chief translators for Olympic Games around the world since 1984. MIFS was the 2nd-ever school in the United States to establish a training program in Translation and Interpretation, following George Washington University only by 8 years. MIFS was the first, and for over a decade, the only school in the United States with a program in conference interpretation. MIFS was the first-ever school based in the United States to train translators and interpreters for work at the United Nations and the United Nations Interpretation Service, prior to which all were trained abroad. MIIS is today also the last remaining school of conference interpretation for three Asian languages left in the United States. MIIS is presently the only school in the United States under a Memorandum of Understanding with the United Nations to provide training for UN language officials.
In August 2025, Middlebury College President Ian Baucum announced in a video that due to budgetary considerations, MIIS will cease all operations in June 2027. Its self-sustaining research centers will remain in operation under the Middlebury College umbrella.
History
The Creation of the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies (1953-1955)
In the years and months during the planning stages of the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies, the attitudes of the Monterey Peninsula reflected the era: it was the height of the Cold War, and the area was an epicenter of military and espionage activity between the states of the Pacific region and the United States. Only ten years before, the Charter of the United Nations had been signed in the city of San Francisco, attended by several people who would later become affiliated with the Institute throughout the years.The cofounders of the institute came from a wide array of espionage and military backgrounds. MIFS was established as the brainchild of Gaspard Etienne Weiss, who in the early 1950s was employed by the Sixth Army of the United States as the chairman of the French Department at the Army Language School, located at the Presidio of Monterey, which crests a hilltop overlooking the Monterey Peninsula. Weiss, and his wife Louise, were in 1952, involved in an espionage gossip scandal that shook the language school at the time, and the 6th Army Command had to investigate the rumors that they might have fed intelligence to the Nazis during their time serving with as Propagandists for the French Interior Minister during the Second World War. In 1953, they were both transferred to the languages department at Robert Louis Stevenson High School in Pebble Beach, California. Weiss taught Latin, and Louise taught French.
The German teacher at RLSH was Sybil Fearnley, who had graduated shortly before the outbreak of the war from Berlin University, earning certificates in the study of English and teaching German to foreigners. The Weiss's and Sybil Fearnley had many conversations about the development of a post-graduate school on the Peninsula.
Two experts in pedagogy and the development, management, and operations of modern universities involved in establishing the school were Remsen Dubois Bird and Dwight Morrow Jr.. Remsen Bird had been the youngest President of Occidental College, seeing that College through the Great Depression and both of the World Wars. Morrow, aside from his relative infamy as being the only son of the former US Ambassador to Mexico and brother-in-law of Charles Lindbergh, was a world-renowned educator at the time. He had also been the person who had convinced Weiss to move to California, after having met at a different university. Bird became the Founding Chairman of the Board, and there is a bust of him in the main lobby of McCone Hall, in his honor. Morrow served with him on the Board for many years, even while taking a teaching position on the East Coast.
Frank Elton was a South-African-born British diplomat living in Carmel Valley, involved with the British General Consulate in San Francisco. He was also involved in managing the San Francisco chapter of the World Affairs Council, until he oversaw the establishment in 1955 of an entirely new chapter of the organization responsible for the Monterey Bay Area. His position as the head of the British Economic Service in San Francisco allowed the Institute to quickly develop a connection into the business world. He became an educator at MIFS while simultaneously serving as the President of the British American Council for Economic Affairs in San Francisco, and hanging out in elite Men's Clubs in that city.
Although Morrow and Elton had helped with large donations to the school, two people who served as the primary financial backers of the institute were the Countess of Kinnoull and Noël Sullivan. Kinnoull had been heavily involved in the Catholic Nationalist movement during the Spanish Civil War, being the official press photographer not only for the Vatican, but for Francisco Franco himself. She had spied on communists in France for MI6 shortly before fleeing the country in 1940, settling in the United States and becoming a large philanthropic donor throughout the area of Monterey and Carmel. Speaking several languages herself, she was keen on seeing California becoming an epicenter of civilian language instruction. Sullivan, who had also established the Carmel Music Society, died of a heart attack only roughly a year into the success of the first program.
The primary desire of the founders was to create a spinoff of the kinds of language instructions that were being taught at the Presidio, but for a civilian set of students, with a different style of language immersion than any other program before it. They did not want the program to be one where "the book is on the table."
Summer Language Seminars (1955-1961)
When the doors of MIFS opened in on June 9, 1955, there were 13 students, and the only two subjects taught that year were in the languages and cultures of French and German. The initial programs, called "Summer Seminars," were intensive summer language programs, held annually, for students currently attending other universities. What separated this program from those of other similar programs of the era, such as the summer language programs at Middlebury College, was that the programs here were not designed to be only those of language instruction, but were also structured to teach courses on foreign cultures and areas exclusively in that language. By the fourth year of the program in 1958, the languages offered had evolved to include Italian, Spanish, and Russian. Remsen Bird, in a letter to the CIA director Allen Dulles in 1958, wrote that the institute was "directed to the job of teaching languages for use and the understanding of the other civilizations."An advertisement appearing in The Stanford Daily recruiting students for the fourth annual summer session reads:
"The courses are presented exclusively in the language of each country by native-born instructors. In addition, the institute offers a workshop for the teaching of French and Spanish in elementary grades. Comparative History, Comparative Law and Government, and International Economics comprise an integrated approach to understanding the socio-economic and political structure of the Western world. Courses in Asiatic Civilization are also offered."When the institute started these programs, it had no permanently owned buildings, only a post office box, and held its summer courses in buildings in the area of Monterey County. When it began in 1955, it occupied 4 rooms at the Monterey Peninsula College, and lectures that year were held in the Theatre-in-the-Round, in the city of Carmel, located roughly 5 miles away from downtown Monterey, on the other side of the Monterey Peninsula. After its first year, the institute was housed mainly at the Mission of San Carlos Borromeo, also in Carmel. Students lived in small group "dormitories," often in groups as small as 10 students and often with an instructor living in the building. The instructors lived in the buildings to ensure that only the language of instruction was spoken during the length of the summer.
Despite the fact that at this initial stage they had no official campus and were only a summer language program, the vision of the institute founders was indeed that the institute would become a true graduate professional center with a core focus and mission dedicated to programs beyond their core classes of language instruction and cultural understanding. Throughout the second half of the 1950s, as the Chair of the Board, Remsen Bird started forming relationships with other universities and nongovernmental institutions to convince their leadership to start sending students to the summer programs. Included in this relationship were representatives of the Christian Science Monitor and the University of California at Berkeley. By 1960, the institute was offering an 11-week beginners course in languages that lasted 5 hours a day for 6 days a week.
Period of expansion (1961-1979)
1961 saw the introduction of year-round degree programs taught at MIFS. The first building that the institute acquired was the Barnet J. Segal Building, also known as the Old Monterey Carnegie Library building, which was originally the city's public library. The institute was soon accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, categorized as a "Liberal Arts Institution." Samuel Finley Brown Morse was instrumental in the purchase, underwriting the school's loan to buy the building. As President of the Monterey Peninsula Foundation, Morse also arranged for the distribution of major grant funds to the school for investments and expansion.One of the first faculty members brought in around this time, and an instructor in the German language, was Samson Benjamin Knoll. Knoll was born in the Austrian Empire, but spent most of his life in Germany. He was educated at the University of Berlin from 1930 to 1933. Throughout the late 1930's, Knoll had been a language instructor at various universities in the United States. Notably, in 1938, Knoll was quoted as saying that he believed the people of his country would rise up and overthrow Hitler. That didn't happen, and during the Second World War, Knoll was assigned to US Army Intelligence on the Western Front, and it was one of his primary duties to interview Allied prisoners of war that had either escaped or had been released by the Nazis. During the early 1950's, while serving as a language instructor at Stanford, Knoll returned to Europe to lead tours of the music history of Central Europe. By 1968, Knoll was serving as the Chancellor of MIFS.
By the year 1965, the school had developed programs for a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in languages and civilizations, and in the political arts. The summer sessions that year had also expanded to include full 10-week programs for undergraduates, and shorter 7-week programs for only for graduate students.
In 1968, the department of Translation and Interpretation was initiated in order to provide training in written and oral interpretation, both in simultaneous and consecutive. Prior to 1968, all UN translators and those of other related international organizations were trained elsewhere, primarily in Europe. The 200 seat Irvine Auditorium was designed specifically to be modeled after the UN's General Assembly, complete with several booths in the back of the room slotted for translators and interpreters.
In 1968, when Samuel Finley Brown Morse was on his deathbed, he arranged in his will that MIFS would receive a third of his vast fortunes. However, he stipulated that this money would not be distributed until all of his children had died. Most of his children remained involved with the school through the 70's and 80's. The disbursement did not occur until 2018, when the $4.5 million loan was accepted by MIIS Vice President Jeff Dayton-Johnson.
By 1969, MIFS was teaching language and area courses in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. MIFS was also teaching courses in history, international economics, political science, language education, translation and interpretation.
In 1969, Fulton H. Freeman left his post as the US Ambassador to Mexico to become the President of MIFS. He was described by the Associated Press at the time as a "jazz-playing, cigar-smoking extrovert." In his going-away ceremony, he was awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle by the Mexican government. Several years before taking his post, Freeman suggested a program called Training for Service Abroad designed to simulate for business and other professionals the same kinds of courses that were taught to members of the US Foreign Service. After becoming President of the institute, he lobbied heavily and created the program. Freeman held his position until 1974, when he died suddenly at the age of 59.
The major funding model through the 1970s was to push the TSA program on corporate America, and it did indeed draw many students from the professional class. The TSA program had become the centerpiece of MIIS language instruction. This program emphasized grammar and vocabulary, but also stressed education in cultural practices, social etiquette, and professional norms relevant to the student’s corporate assignment abroad. Instruction was highly individualized, often arranged around the student’s corporate schedule, and incorporated immersion techniques such as meals in restaurants and role-playing of social or business situations. Corporate tuition fees for the TSA program were substantial, but many multinational firms supported the training as a safeguard against failed postings abroad, which could cost employers significantly more. The faculty involved in the program declared that language training provided insight into social structures as well as communication skills, with the aim of reducing culture shock and improving the effectiveness of overseas assignments.
In 1970, tuition started suffering from a phenomenon of massive inflation. The price for tuition at 4,000 USD was one of the highest rates in the country, falling just behind the highest tuition in the country, Middlebury College.
In the year 1973, the school had 360 upper division and graduate students with an average age of 29.