Collection consists of correspondence, memoranda, minutes, annual reports, financial papers, photographs, and other materials with biographical and bibliographical information about the migration of European scholars to America in the 1930s and 1940s. Grantees and fellows series contains correspondence with referees, university officials, and refugee and Jewish welfare organizations. Non-grantees series consists of correspondence (and some photographs) with scholars who were not funded by the Committee. Colleges and universities series includes correspondence with presidents, deans of faculty and faculty members of academic institutions in the U.S., England and Palestine, and learned societies. Correspondence concerns placement and funding of scholars, the awarding of grants and fellowships and their extension. Refugee organizations series has correspondence with refugee aid organizations and persons concerned with aid to refugees, reports, memoranda, and printed matter. Subjects file series contains correspondence of various sub-committees, memoranda, and reports; annual reports series has typescript drafts and page proofs of annual reports for 1934 through 1942, and some correspondence; administrative records include lists of refugee scholars, grantees and fellows, and applicants; also, financial records and personnel records.

Source materials series consists of documents selected by Stephen Duggan and Betty Drury for their book The Rescue of Science and Learning; publications by scholars series contains reprints of articles and monographs; and unsorted papers include correspondence, lists of refugees, copies of memoranda and minutes, financial records, office calendars, and pamphlets.