U.S. Government Initiatives

AFS had taken its first steps into the field of student exchange in 1919, subsequently handing over the administration of its French Fellowship program to the Institute of International Education (IIE). It was this working relation with IIE which brought AFS back into the exchange field after the war, and kept it appraised of developments elsewhere, particularly regarding official U.S. government initiatives in which IIE was involved and which dwarfed AFS perspectives. It should be added that Stephen Galatti had his own high level State Department connections, developed during the war (and through his Old Boy network).

Almost immediately upon the signing of the armistice the Carnegie Endowment decided to establish an organization which should help develop good will between the American people and the citizens of other countries by promoting the study and understanding of our civilization and culture by them and of their civilization and culture by us. The prime movers in the plan were Elihu Root and Dr. Butler, and I was invited to become the Director of the new organization. I was requested to suggest a name for it and did suggest calling it the Institute of International Relations. My idea was that the Institute should study all aspects of the life of a country---its political, economic, social, and cultural conditions---and distribute the results of these studies widely among the agencies of information in the United States for subsequent dissemination among our people. I then hoped to secure cooperation in the European countries looking to the adoption of a similar program. Mr. Root was an unusually able statesman but a very conservative and cautious man. He vetoed the plan and the name on the ground that it would be encroaching upon the domain of the State Department, of which he had been Secretary only a few years before. Moreover, he stated that such an organization would cost too much. As the Endowment had plenty of money at the time, I had counted on a liberal expenditure to do a first class job. It is interesting to reflect that today Institutes of International Relations are scattered all over our country, some doing excellent work.

The new organization was given the name of the Institute of International Education, and its activities in realizing its objectives were restricted to the use of educational agencies in the narrow academic sense. But I was promised carte blanche in its organization and administration. The Institute was opened with a good-sized office near Columbia University, and as staff an Executive Secretary, a stenographer and typist. I then determined to visit the chief universities and colleges of our own country to acquaint them with my plans in order, if possible, to secure their cooperation. I found practically all enthusiastic about the idea and eager to assist in its realization, for all knew the ignorance of our people in international affairs. To my amazement, the institution where I found students best informed on foreign affairs was on neither the Atlantic nor the Pacific seaboard but in the far interior, at the University of Utah. At that time, 1919, the University though non-sectarian was still controlled by the Mormons, and it was customary for the Mormon students before graduating to spend a year abroad as missionaries.

Stephen P. Duggan. A Professor at Large New York: MacMillan, 1943

U.S. Government sponsored "cultural exchanges" began in 1938:

The bilateral cultural programs outlined in the following pages are of relatively recent origin, dating from the latter part of the nineteenth century. France and Germany had fairly extensive programs of cultural expansion abroad before the First World War. Between 1918 and 1939, such German and French activities were greatly increased and most of the other European Governments were following suit. Great Britain, however, did not recognize the need for "national interpretation" abroad until 1934, when she established the British Council for Relations with Other Countries. The United States Government initiated a program in 1938, with creation of the Interdepartmental Committee on Cooperation with the Other American Republics and of the Division of Cultural Relations in the Department of State.

While the several national programs differ greatly, there seem to be some points common to most.

1. From the beginning, most programs of cultural relations abroad have been initiated and controlled or supervised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Foreign Office, in which budgets a large proportion of the funds for carrying them is placed. In only a few cases were they initiated by the Ministry of Education, although this Ministry usually cooperates closely with the Foreign Office cultural projects abroad. By and large, the programs have become an important arm of foreign policy.

2. Each country has a strong belief in the importance of its own culture and a desire to have other countries know and appreciate this culture.

3. Each country believes that the improvement of cultural relations leads to better economic and political relations.

4. Each country centers much of its effort in the teaching of the national language (French, German, English) in foreign lands as a basis for better cultural and economic relationships.

5. Each country, having decided to develop a program of cultural relations with other nations, has given it strong moral and financial support. All have recognized the need for a permanent program of cultural relations abroad to carry out certain of their foreign policies.

The cultural activities carried on abroad by Governments commonly include the establishment and support of cultural centers or institutes and schools in foreign countries; the interchange of technical experts, professors, teachers, students, and leaders in various fields of intellectual and artistic expression; the exchange of books and other printed materials, lectures, concerts, and exhibitions. The newer media, motion picture and radio, are used increasingly. It is important to note that the cultural relations activities carried on through official channels are planned in the main to encourage and to supplement rather than to displace the international activities of private organizations, institutions, and individuals.

Ruth Emily McMurry & Mona Lee. The Cultural Approach. Another Way in International Relations. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1947.

 

The first government-sponsored exchange program was probably instituted by the French in the latter part of the past century. Its announced objective was "to spread the French language and to increase French commercial influence." Prior to and during World War II, Nazi Germany turned cultural exchanges into a propaganda device and a stratagem to prepare, support, and exploit military aggression. The U.S. Government responded to the challenge at the Pan American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace held in Buenos Aires in 1936. It proposed to the other American Republics a Convention for the Promotion of Inter-American Cultural Relations which provided for the exchange of university professors and students under joint governmental sponsorship. This was the first official U.S. initiative in the field of cultural exchange. The Convention was eventually ratified by 17 Latin American countries.

Triggered by extraneous political developments, the character of U.S.-sponsored exchange programs, though basically and avowedly a cooperative educational and cultural enterprise, thus assumed certain political overtones. It was to accomplish "the purpose of encouraging and strengthening cultural relations and intellectual cooperation between the United States and other countries." Also, the exchange of cultural assets was to serve the purpose of promoting the growth, intensification and consolidation of inter-American relations, and the projection and improvement of the American image abroad. This U.S. initiative, which began on a very modest scale, set the stage for the larger government-wide programs that followed.

A Division of Cultural Relations was established in the Department of State in 1938 to initiate the U.S. Government's new venture in cultural relations. The first director of the Division, Ben M. Cherrington, summarized the principles governing the Department's international educational and cultural exchange program when he wrote:

"Two fundamental principles were established at the out set to guide the developing program: first, cultural relations activities of our country would be reciprocal, there must be no imposition of one people's culture upon another; second, the exchange of cultural interests should involve the participation of people and institutions concerned with those interests in the respective countries, that is, the program should stem from the established centers of culture. "

It was also emphasized from the beginning that the program was essentially long-range, and nonpolitical in purpose. Its basic goal was to promote mutual understanding. This was the philosophy and purpose of the program as established and pronounced by the Department of State in the thirties, and even during the war years, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and other high government officials.

Henry J. Kellermann. Cultural Relations--Instrument of Foreign Policy. U.S.-German Exchange. 1945-54. State Department. 1978.

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In 1945, Hotchkiss graduate Archibald MacLeish had headed up a commission to consider what to do about "reeducating" young Germans after the war.

Actually, JCS Directive 1779 merely reaffirmed and made operative the earlier "Long-Range Policy Statement for German Reeducation" of June 5, 1946, which had been drafted by a group of American educators under the chairmanship of Archibald MacLeish, then Assistant Secretary of State for Public and Cultural Relations, in May 1945. It was released on August 21, 1946, by the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC) as Policy Statement 269/5. The statement placed reeducation squarely within the framework of the total reconstruction effort. It declared that, "the reeducation of the German People can be effective only as it is an integral part of a comprehensive program for their rehabilitation. The cultural and moral reeducation of the nation must, therefore, be related to policies calculated to restore the stability of a peaceful German economy and to hold out hope for the ultimate recovery of national unity and self-respect."

Henry J. Kellermann. Cultural Relations--Instrument of Foreign Policy. U.S.-German Exchange. 1945-54. State Department. 1978.

In the postwar years, from 1945-1949, the OMGUS period in Germany, the role of cultural and educational programs in international relations, along with information programs, including an overseas broadcasting service, was gaining in favor, stature, and support from the Congress and the American people. With the dismantling of the Office of War Information and the information program of the Coordinator's Office, their activities were reconstituted as an information program in the Department of State in 1945, under the direction of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs who also had under his direction the Department's educational and cultural exchange program. With the cold war warming up in the late forties, the educational and cultural exchange program was overshadowed by the much larger information program.

The passage, after much Congressional debate, of the Smith-Mundt Act in January 1948 (Public Law 402, 80th Congress, the Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948) provided authorization for the first time for a worldwide peacetime program of informational and educational exchange. It established two offices under the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, an Office of International Information and an Office of Educational Exchange. The Act defined the purpose of the Office of Information as "to disseminate abroad information about the United States, its people, and the policies promulgated by the Congress, the President, the Secretary of State and other responsible officials of Government having to do with matters affecting foreign affairs." It defined the purpose of the Office of Educational Exchange "to cooperate with other nations in the interchange of persons, knowledge, and skills; the rendering of technical and other services; the interchange of developments in the field of education, the arts and sciences." It included authorization for the expenditure of hard American currencies for these, purposes, thus contrasting with the earlier Fulbright Act of 1946 (Public Law 584, 79th Congress). PL 584 authorized academic exchanges under binational agreements which in the beginning were financed only by foreign currencies paid to the U.S. Government for the purchase of war surplus materials that remained in the various signatory countries after the war. [...]

As our national experience with exchanges matured and as more sophisticated programs evolved with increasing numbers of individual countries in all parts of the world, greater allowance was made for political, social, and cultural differences in fashioning individual exchange programs with them. Beyond this, World War II and postwar reconstruction proved to be major catalysts in clarifying the direction, scope, and variety of exchange programs. Some programs, notably in the occupied countries (Germany, Austria, and Japan), acquired a political and pragmatic quality never before attained in cultural exchanges. To engage in such programs became in fact act a recognized policy of the U.S. Government in foreign affairs. Such was the case in Germany. [...]

The German exchange program, especially under Military Government (OMGUS) and even more pronouncedly under the U.S. High Commissioner (HICOG), had a series of features which made it exceptional and indeed unprecedented in its rationale, the variety of its innovative features, the sophistication of its targets and project-oriented approach, the extent of public and private support, and above all, its sheer size. In each of its peak years of 1951 and 1952, under HICOG, it provided for more than 3,000 participants---Germans, other Europeans, and Americans. All told, under OMGUS and HICOG, a total of 14,000 persons moved between the United States and Germany and an additional 2,228 persons moved between Germany and other European countries under the program from 1948 to 1956.

Henry J. Kellermann. Cultural Relations--Instrument of Foreign Policy. U.S.-German Exchange. 1945-54. State Department. 1978.

With the takeover of the OMGUS exchange program by the Department of State, the ultimate and long-range objectives "to promote better understanding of the United States" and "to increase mutual understanding between the people of the, United States and the people of other countries," which governed all other exchange programs, applied automatically to Germany.

First and foremost, however, the German exchange, program continued to pursue the immediate and short-term objectives set by U.S. policy for Germany, that is, to help achieve the goals of the reorientation program. Those responsible for fashioning the Public Affairs Program realized that cultural and educational exchanges offered the most appropriate and also the most promising instrument for a policy of reform by indirection, namely, an effective do-it-yourself approach to reorientation. Moreover, they believed that the six criteria which determined the scope and method of the Public Affairs Program as a whole (see pp. 83-86) were singularly applicable to the exchange of persons program. The time for a middling, haphazard, trial-and-error effort depending largely on the good will of private contributors had passed. The exchange program had to be placed on a firm and regular basis, and had to involve enough persons moving in each direction to assure broad impact. In short, what was needed was a massive breakthrough sustained by governmental instrumentalities and supported by adequate funds from the Congress. In fact, governmental capabilities had to be tested beyond precedents set by OMGUS and the worldwide exchange program.

The groups in the Department which met under the chairmanship of the author in the fall of 1949 decided to aim at an annual total of 3,500 persons coming and going, the highest figure ever proposed for any country exchange program. To realize this expansion, the budget had to be increased accordingly, i.e., to $6,619,049 in 1950 and to $7,489,686 in 1951, i.e., the equivalent of one-third of the worldwide total for exchanges.

The criteria used in shaping the Reorientation Program as a whole applied with special relevance, to the exchange program. It had to be massive, that is, a multiple of the OMGUS model. To avoid scattering of funds, however, it had to be target oriented, to wit, sharply focused on specific individuals and groups who by virtue, of their position or potential of leadership or in view of their critical role in German society could be expected to use the benefits derived from their exchange experience to maximum advantage.

Henry J. Kellermann. Cultural Relations--Instrument of Foreign Policy. U.S.-German Exchange. 1945-54. State Department. 1978.

Programs for youth below college level started in 1949, when a group of 100 rural teenagers were invited to the United States upon the initiative and with the assistance of the Brethren Service Committee. Within the next few years the total increased substantially. By 1956 a total of 2,283 German youths had participated in the program, their visits financed from public and private funds. The number of teenagers coming under governmental auspices was 2,246 (including 155 tentative openings for fiscal year 1956). Cost estimates foreseen or listed in HICOG budgets for fiscal years 1951 to 1953 ran to $1,113,880 (actual expenditures for 1951 were $383,400). The governmental program peaked in 1950 with a total of 495, then declined gradually through 1953, dropping in 1954 to less than half the 1950 figure (see Appendix III).

Participants in the teenage program were boys and girls of not less than 16 and not more than 18 years of age, generally secondary school students, from both urban and rural areas. Each was expected to spend a year in the United States living with American "foster" families, attending high schools and participating in the programs of local youth groups and community activities. The original purpose of the teenage program had strongly humanitarian as well as practical purposes. The stay in the United States, it was hoped, would "heal the wounds of the war;" but other purposes had specific reorientation aims, namely, "to instill a knowledge of and respect for the democratic way of life in the youth of those countries [Germany and Austria] who had been indoctrinated under the National Socialist regime and were isolated from [indeed had never been exposed to] democratic practices and thought." Subsequently, with the relaxation of Allied control and Germany's gradual return to independence and sovereignty, the program objectives shifted from reorientation to "increasing mutual understanding," with the expectation that life in a typical American environment might help the youngsters correct prejudices and form new views of the United States, thus laying the groundwork for a mutually beneficial relationship between America and Germany.

The teenage program has been widely acclaimed as one of the most successful ventures in the history of exchanges. Whether it was or not (for details on its effectiveness see Chapter VIII), it was by all accounts highly popular. American sponsors, host families, and HICOG officials were enthusiastic, urging continuation from year to year despite the cost. A large part of the latter had to be borne by the "foster" parents and the private sponsors, such as the American Field Service, the Brethren Service Committee, the National Grange, the National 4-H Club Foundation, the, National Catholic Welfare Conference, the Kiwanis Club of Georgia, Rotary International, the Ann Arbor Council of Churches, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and other service oriented organizations. The Department of State accepted what appeared to be a general desire to proceed with the program but eventually proposed a gradual transition from partly governmental to fully private sponsorship, with the Department providing some assistance in the form of temporary grants-in-aid and logistic facilitation.

Admittedly, the teenage program had a number of flaws which were partly technical defects and occurred mostly at the beginning. There were genuine complaints at first about faulty selection and careless placements. Most of these difficulties were eliminated with growing experience on the part of the sponsoring organizations and the "foster" parents. Others, more fundamental, appear to have lingered on. Teenagers were enthusiastic admirers of the United States and equally enthusiastic reporters. They formed friendships and strong affinities to their host country. But their very enthusiasm created problems. For many, readjustment to life in still war-devastated Germany was difficult. The cultural shock of returning home proved too much for some. Of the 217 German participants in the exchange program who emigrated after their return to Germany, one-third were teenagers and two-thirds of the latter came to the United States. Some of those who tried to tell the American story at home found it hard to get it across. Often adopted mannerisms, invidious comparisons, or sheer exuberance exhibited by them in their travel accounts caused misunderstandings and led to accusations that they had become "Americanized." In other instances, the tendency of German adults to put down the young denied them a bona fide audience altogether.

On balance, however, the positive aspects of the program appear to have by far outweighed the negative. The teenagers proved to be good ambassadors of their country. On their return they were, in the judgment of HICOG officers, "constructive forces in their local communities in breaking down and preventing misunderstandings and misconceptions about the United States and its citizens as well as in promoting democratic processes in their own spheres of influence, such as their homes, schools and social organizations."

Henry J. Kellermann. Cultural Relations--Instrument of Foreign Policy. U.S.-German Exchange. 1945-54. State Department. 1978.

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The idea for the Community Ambassador program came, not from within the Experiment, but as an outgrowth of a civic education program for young adults of the New York State Bureau of Adult Education. Through this program, a number of New York cities and towns were attempting to help young people out of school but not yet really part of the organized life of their communities to assume more responsible and effective roles in those communities.

As a group with an especially high stake in world peace, members of young adult civic councils, organized with the help of local boards of education and of the State Bureau, had begun to ask what they could do to help build international understanding as the surest foundation for peace. The Bureau of Adult Education, after studying a number of organizations engaged in international education, turned to the Experiment in the hope of working out a program which would translate this kind of education into personal, human terms in local communities. The Community Ambassador program was the eventual outcome, and in the summer of 1948, four New York communities (Glens Falls, Jamestown, Schenectady and Ithaca), led by their respective young adult civic councils, sent to various countries as members of regular Experiment groups Community Ambassadors selected from applicants in their cities.

William Peters.Passport to Friendship. The Story of The Experiment in International Living. Philadelphia: Lippincott. 1957.

The worldwide binational Fulbright program had originated with the passage of Public Law 584 by the U.S. Congress in 1946, introduced by Senator J. William Fulbright. The purpose of the Act was to strengthen mutual knowledge and understanding between countries, prerequisites for a peaceful world, through the financing of studies, research, instruction, and other educational activities between the United States and participating countries. By 1952, the major countries of Western Europe had signed Fulbright agreements and were engaged in such exchange activities. The program, by bringing the wartorn countries back into the mainstream of international educational and scientific life, had established itself as a symbol of mutual cooperation. Educational exchanges under the Fulbright Act were in operation between the United States and 24 other countries of the world, including 10 countries in Western Europe. The terms of the, various Fulbright agreements, and the policies and procedures established to carry them out, were essentially the same for all programs of binational Commissions wherever they were established.

Henry J. Kellermann. Cultural Relations--Instrument of Foreign Policy. U.S.-German Exchange. 1945-54. State Department. 1978.

 

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3 NOVEMBER 1960. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, a dozen Harvard students file out of a late lecture, turn up coat collars against the cold and trudge off into the centuries-old 'Yard'. Talk turns to the forthcoming Presidential elections. The discussion is desultory. Neither candidate has yet come across as much of an alternative to the last eight years of lethargy. Like hundreds of campuses across America, Harvard has emerged from the silent generation numbed and wary, but ready for international commitment and looking for a cause and spokesman. The elections, it seems, will provide neither.

The students separate and wend their respective ways through the bustling city towards digs and dinner. On the way they idly scan headlines displayed by newsboys. 'Kennedy proposes Youth Peace Corps' leaps out at them. Suddenly the election and the New Frontier mean something to them. Leaving Harvard the next June, some will step into history as members of the first Peace Corps teams.

A fortnight earlier, the Democratic candidate had launched the idea of a people-to-people service programme for the developing countries at a two a.m. Michigan University gathering. Response was enthusiastic and a few days later students travelled to Ohio to present him with a petition from several hundred prospective volunteers. Encouraged, Kennedy made the Peace Corps the theme of a major campaign address delivered on 2 November to a packed San Francisco Cow Palace.

Jealous or sincerely unconvinced, Republicans could do little else than pooh-pooh the project. Kennedy, observed Nixon, proposed 'to send as America's representatives to other nations young men whom he calls volunteers but who, in truth, in many instances would be trying to escape the draft.' President Eisenhower benignly opined that the Corps would be a 'juvenile experiment'.

Youthful adventurousness may not have characterized the administration about to leave Washington, but Kennedy's vision fired the imagination of students and other young people around the country. In Cambridge, for instance, within a few days of the Cow Palace speech Harvard students and their female counterparts at Radcliffe College formed a Committee for the Peace Corps, polled undergraduates and professors on the idea and the election over, forwarded their proposals to the task force charged with translating the Corps from platform plank into plan of operation.

Kennedy electrified internationally-minded American youth because, on the brink of the UN Development Decade, writers and thinkers from the authors of The Ugly American to Barbara Ward and Dag Hammarsjköld. had made it abundantly clear that the race for economic growth and social change in the Third World was being lost. Not enough funds and men were being provided to Africa, Asia and Latin America, and those that were all too often made little or no contribution to development.

Arthur Gillette. One Million Volunteers. The Story of Volunteer Youth Service. London: Pellican, 1968

Congress had recently passed the Peace Corps legislation, and President Kennedy had appointed Sargent Shriver, his brother-in-law, to create it. Wofford was helping him. When he had heard us out, he said, "You simply must talk with Shriver about this, because the Peace Corps has a problem." He took us to Shriver's office, and we told our story again. Shriver's response flabbergasted us. He said, "I want you to start eight Outward Bound schools for the Peace Corps. We'll pump our volunteers through them before they go overseas." We said that was out of the question. That we were struggling with the possibility of starting one school in Colorado. We could not possibly get involved in training the Peace Corps.

Shriver grew very earnest as he explained that the Peace Corps had a serious problem. They were getting a lot of flak from people who did not think it would work. These people just did not believe the government could take young people fresh from college classrooms, still wet behind the ears, and send them out in ambassadorial roles. The Corps' problem was that it just might not get a chance to prove its case. The opposition was so strong that if the Corps should have the same rate of attrition that federal agencies traditionally experienced overseas---losing one out of two---the program would die in its first year. Shriver and his colleagues needed some assurance that if they took a youngster from an air-conditioned college classroom and sent him to Tanganyika, he would stay there long enough to find he could make a go of it. What would happen when the first bug dropped out of the thatch into his soup, or the rains came, or the mails did not come, or people would not work, or he got homesick? "I believe Outward Bound as you describe it could be the answer to our problem," Shriver said. "If you can't start eight schools for us, start one."

Joshua Miner & Joe Boldt. Outward Bound USA. 1992.

The same was true of another set of programs in which The Experiment became involved in 1961---those of the U.S. Peace Corps. Initiated early in the administration of President John Kennedy, the Peace Corps in its early years was directed by R. Sargent Shriver, an American outbound Experimenter in the late 1930s. At the request of Director Shriver the U.S. Experiment undertook to train volunteers bound for East Pakistan (later to be reborn as Bangladesh). The three-month training program, later to be followed by more than fifty other such programs, required the teaching of the host national language, in this case Bengali. It was The Experiment's first intensive language training program. The success of that program was shown by the ability of the Peace Corps volunteers to communicate with their Experiment host families after arrival in Asia. The host families, incidentally, had been recruited by The Experiment's peripatetic founder, Donald Watt.

Not only did The Experiment provide pre-departure training and post-arrival homestays for this Peace Corps group, it had a contract to administer all aspects of the program in East Pakistan. For the historical record, it marked the first time that The Experiment---in this case the U.S. office---had worked closely with government and had derived significant income therefrom. It was a prelude to much which came a quarter century later.

John A. Wallace. The Experiment in International Living. Opening Doors Worldwide. Putney, VT: Whetstone, 1996.

Bibliography Stephen P. Duggan. A Professor at Large New York: MacMillan, 1943 General John J. Carty was President of the General Electric Company in 1920. He was deeply interested in securing memorials of a proper kind to honor the 126 American ambulance drivers who lost their lives in the service of France before the United States entered World War I. The Committee which he formed and of which I was a member decided to solicit funds with which to establish memorial fellowships, each to be named after one of the deceased ambulance drivers. Unfortunately when only half of the large sum necessary to carry out the project had been secured General Carty died. As the Committee did not have sufficient funds to provide a fellowship in honor of each of the ambulance drivers and did not want to discriminate among them, the fellowships were given the title, "American Field Service Fellowships for French Universities." Since their establishment in 1921, 161 American graduate students have been enabled to study in French universities on them. In the spring of 1942, the Institute sent a questionnaire to all these students and the returns from it were published in a booklet. The degree of success secured by the students in their vocations and the splendid literary output mentioned in their replies, which were usually attributed to the possession of the scholarship, have given great satisfaction to the Committee. No grants for fellowships for study in France have been made by the Committee since France entered the war on September 3, 1939. But they will be resumed when France is freed of the invader. Jeanne Watson & Ronald Lippitt. Learning Across Cultures. A Study of Germans Visiting America. Institute for Social Research. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan, 1955. The introduction of political and cultural objectives has greatly modified the old pattern of foreign study. Originally the decision to study abroad was an individual one, made for personal reasons. The student left his home and went to live abroad for a year or so to enjoy special cultural advantages, to broaden his horizon, to experience a change, or even to get over a love affair. This pattern still exists, of course. There are, as well, many larger and more highly organized arrangements. The student now may come as part of an exchange program, in which universities of different countries enter into give-and-take agreements with one another. He may come as a special scholar or fellow selected and financed by a special fund such as those for Rhodes or Fulbright scholars. When he arrives at the foreign university, he will often find an International House or other agency whose purpose is to help him and his fellow visitors find their way around in a strange environment. The biggest change, however, is the establishment of many non-university programs. Thus, the technical assistance program, initiated by the Economic Cooperation Administration and continued by the Mutual Security Agency and the Foreign Operations Administration operates quite independently of the universities. It has brought hundreds of visitors a year to the United States to study conditions in particular industries, and it has sent many American experts abroad to provide on-the-spot technical assistance. This program is directed toward sharing America's technical and industrial knowledge, and operates in the industrial rather than the academic setting. Similarly, the re-education programs, sponsored by the United States Government after World War II for visitors from Germany and Japan, went beyond academic confines. Young people's programs were set up for visitors of high school age and younger, who were carefully placed in American families for one year of participation in the whole range of American life. Specialist programs brought groups of professionals to America for intensive study in their fields of special interest, emphasizing consultations with other professionals rather than academic study. Visitors' programs tried to bridge the gap between the academic and professional worlds. The participants were young men and women at the transition point between academic study and professional careers, and the programs combined study at a university with field travel and professional internships. Ruth Emily McMurry & Mona Lee. The Cultural Approach. Another Way in International Relations. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1947. CULTURAL cooperation with other countries as an official government program was inaugurated by the United States in 1938. Two significant steps were taken in that year. At President Roosevelt's suggestion, the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation was organized to examine methods of cooperating with the other American Republics and prepare a program for making "closer and more efficient" the relationships between them and the United States; and a Division of Cultural Relations was created within the Department of State itself, for the purpose of "encouraging and strengthening cultural relations and intellectual cooperation between the United States and other countries." The Departmental Order of July 27, 1938 creating the Division of Cultural Relations charged it with the Department of State's official international activities of cultural intent, "embracing the exchange of professors, teachers, and students; cooperation in the field of music, art, literature and other intellectual and cultural attainments; the formulation and distribution of libraries of representative works of the United States and suitable translations thereof; the participation by this Government in international radio broadcasts; encouragement of a closer relationship between unofficial organizations of this and of foreign Governments engaged in cultural and intellectual activities; and, generally, the dissemination abroad of the representative intellectual and cultural works of the United States and the improvement and broadening of the scope of our cultural relations with other countries." Henry J. Kellermann. Cultural Relations--Instrument of Foreign Policy. U.S.-German Exchange. 1945-54. State Department. 1978. "This monograph reviews the history of the reestablishment of educational and cultural relations between the United States and Germany after World Wax II. At its peak period it was the largest single U.S. Government-sponsored program with another country either before or since that time. Initiated, as it was, in the wake of the bloodiest conflict in history, moreover, the program was a gesture seldom equaled in international cultural rapprochement and diplomacy. The record of this part of U.S. relations with postwar Germany, as here written, places in perspective a neglected aspect of the basis of our present close friendly relations with the Federal Republic of Germany." Preparation for Tomorrow. A German Boy's Year in America. U.S. State Department Publication, 1951 "The story of Ernst's year in America goes back of his departure from Germany to the Christmas season of 1948 and to some meetings that were being held in Stuttgart between some officials of the United States Military Government and some field-service men of the American Church of the Brethren. The privilege of foreign travel had recently been restored to German nationals, and the Americans in conference at Stuttgart were planning an exchange program to permit groups of carefully selected young Germans to study in American universities or to study and observe American techniques and institutions, such as the operation of a free press, the American legal system, teacher training, health and sanitation, city planning, and agricultural methods" Walter Johnson & Francis J. Colligan. The Fulbright Program: A History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965. The Fulbright Program has a spectacular history. Begun as a tentative enterprise financed by windfalls of foreign currency, it grew into one of the world's greatest programs for educational exchange. That it represents the United States' first major commitment to international cultural relations, worldwide, makes its success even more remarkable. This lively account by two of the Program's "charter" members traces the Program from the Fulbright Act of 1946 to its indorsement by Congress as a permanent feature of United States foreign policy in the Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961. It tells of the struggle for quality in shaping a program for the interchange of American students and teachers at a time when few precedents were available as guideposts. "The educational programs described in this book," writes Senator Fulbright in his Foreword, "embody a large part of America's effort to be both a teacher and a pupil in the world arena." Financial support, sometimes precarious at first, and the need for adjusting American resources for the Program to widely varying conditions among the other participating countries challenged American ingenuity and good will. Brent Ashabranner. A Moment in History. The First Ten Years of the Peace Corps. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. The idea of a Peace Corps did not originate with John Kennedy, and he never suggested that it did. In an early news release on the subject, he mentioned the pioneering legislative work of Congressman Henry S. Reuss and Senator Hubert Humphrey. As early as January 1960, Reuss had proposed a bill in the House of Representatives to study the possibility of establishing a Point Four Youth Corps. Later that month Senator Richard L. Neuberger proposed a similar bill in the Senate. In June 1960, Humphrey proposed a bill for the creation of an agency in which young Americans could serve in missions overseas; he actually used the name "Peace Corps" in proposing the bill. And the idea of some kind of organization to utilize the energy and idealism of American youth had been discussed and written about long before these congressional proposals. In the years immediately following World War II and the formation of the United Nations, the idea of voluntary service to the world on a massive scale was on the minds of many prominent Americans. Thomas J. Scanlon. Waiting for the Snow. The Peace Corps Papers of a Charter Volunteer. Chevy Chase, MD: Posterity Press, 1997. In the days of Tom's youth, some Peace Corps volunteers were motivated by the threat of communism, or the glamour of travel, or the challenge of life overseas among the have-nots. Almost without exception, however, they were also inspired by the unselfish desire to serve the most needy, or forgotten, or rejected on earth. Today the world has grown smaller, but the mission of the Peace Corps is more important than ever. Why? Because today nothing unites all the countries of present-day Europe (all 52 of them), or the nations of Asia, or the Middle East, or Africa, or Latin America. Nothing unites them today, except their common humanity. [...] Tom Scanlon was a creator of the Peace Corps, the real Peace Corps. While his book mentions other founders---President Kennedy, Father Hesburgh, myself and all the usual suspects---it was Tom and a few hundred others who actually created the Peace Corps. He was among the first volunteers to go into the field in 1961. These early groups made the Peace Corps in villages and towns. They defined the programs and projects in the real developing world. They identified the people to be served and the issues to be faced. In the invisible ink of their boundless energy, they wrote the living philosophy of the Peace Corps, and with their sweat they conceived the can-do tradition that made the Peace Corps unprecedented and inspiring. Fritz Fischer. Making Them Like Us. Peace Corps Volunteers in the 1960s. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998. In the case of the Peace Corps, we cannot understand the relations between Americans and the peoples in the rest of the world without exploring the implementation of policy. To study the Peace Corps only as it exists in Washington is to miss the entire point of the agency. As one former Peace Corps staffer put it recently, "The real work of the Peace Corps is centered in the field. Most of what goes on in Washington matters little to the volunteers' daily existence." This book is the first history devoted entirely to the study of the volunteers, those who actually instituted policy. Taking advantage of a huge wealth of previously unexamined primary sources found at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the University of Michigan library, and the National Archives, this book seeks to understand the volunteers as ambassadors of American culture in the 1960s. The Peace Corps volunteers were tasked with putting the policy into practice---they were forced to confront the relationship between American ideas about the world and the reality of the world itself. Dillon Banerjee. So You Want to Join the Peace Corps. Berkeley: Ten Speed. 2000. "For two years I served as an agroforestry volunteer in a small village in Cameroon, West Africa. My life there was amazing and memorable in many ways yet, as I've come to find, most of my experiences were fairly typical for the Peace Corps. Life throughout the developing world shares a surprising number of commonalities when it comes to basics like health, safety, infrastructure, transportation, and so on. The Peace Corps world, too, can be surprisingly uniform when it comes to dealing with administration and policies, technical and language training, and program implementation. And life overseas as an expatriate entails challenging adjustments to culture, society, and environment that cannot be avoided. "