 In 1948, Miłosz arranged for the Polish government to fund a Department of Polish Studies at Columbia University.Named for Adam Mickiewicz, the department featured lectures by Manfred Kridl, Miłosz's friend who was then on the faculty of Smith College, and produced a scholarly book about Mickiewicz.Mickiewicz's granddaughter wrote a letter to Dwight D. Eisenhower, then the president of Columbia University, to express her approval, but the Polish American Congress, an influential group of Polish émigrés, denounced the arrangement in a letter to Eisenhower that they shared with the press, which alleged a communist infiltration at Columbia.