By: KENNETH MAXWELL

Folha de São Paulo - Op-ed section - page A2     

Next week in New York City, the Americas Society will award its prestigious gold medal to Martha T. Muse, the founding president of the Tinker Foundation. This public recognition is long overdue. I am not a neutral party as I serve on the Tinker Foundation's board. Yet, by any objective account, her achievements are extraordinary. Latin America comes and goes on the U.S. agenda. But the Tinker Foundation has been consistently engaged; since 1968 awarding US$75 million in 1400 grants.

Martha Muse's decisions have been attentive to quality and character not ideology. She supported a scientific institute in Chile headed by the son of the leader of the Chilean communist party, and made it clear to General Pinochet in person that this was her project. In Asunción she walked into the presidential palace one morning, past the startled jackbooted presidential guard, and was ushered into see the no less startled General Stroessner. Needless to say, this small indomitable American woman got precisely what she wanted: no interference with the projects her foundation was supporting in Paraguay.

The Tinker Chairs she funded at 5 major U.S. universities have brought more than 350 scholars to teach in the United States. The Brazilians have included Celso Furtado, Roberto da Matta, Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos, Antonio Callado, Marilena Chauí, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, Fernando Novais, Maria Herminia Tavares de Almeida, and Laura de Mello e Souza.
Thousands of American students have experienced their first encounter with Latin America by means of Tinker summer field research grants.

Martha was one of the first women elected a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the first woman on the board of the New York Stock Exchange, the first woman to be a trustee of Columbia University. As a pioneer in these positions she preferred effectiveness to fame. But to misread her reticence and charm for lack of toughness was a grave error, as many men found. Martha knew where power resided. She knew which committees to chair, and her meticulous homework and formidable memory meant any argument with her was lost before it had begun. Martha said to me on more than one occasion: "never assume". She never does. It is very good advice.

KENNETH MAXWELL is a weekly op-ed columnist (every Thursday) for Folha de São Paulo, Brazil's leading newspaper.