Integrating International Education and Public Diplomacy: Creative Partnerships or Ingenious Propaganda?

Abstract

Receiving a Fulbright senior scholar's grant is regarded as a laudatory achievement by most in the scholarly and research communities. To some it portrays the apex of an academic career built on years of sound scholarship that will then be shared with international colleagues and students. Such views are not universally shared as substantially different perspectives of the senior Fulbright and other international education and cultural programs are vividly discussed in the Chronicle of Higher Education.' Fundamental questions are raised regarding the soundness and feasibility of operating Fulbright programs within the United States Information Agency (USIA), a federal unit charged with promoting the American government's viewpoints-what some call propaganda-throughout the world. For me, the introduction to diverse perspectives occurred several years earlier when I accepted a position as a scholar-in-residence and administrative appointee in the USIA. Academic colleagues asked, How could you accept a position in a propaganda agency? Often I replied, Why wouldn't I accept a position designing and developing a Fulbright-funded program that focuses on mathematics, science, and English education? Wouldn't you accept a Fulbright assignment? My colleagues' queries and the article in the Chronicle highlight a recurrent half-century debate concerning the purposes and roles of educational and cultural programs in international or foreign affairs. Indeed, components of the debate were lucidly articulated in the mid-1960s in two seminal works: The Fourth Dimension of Foreign Policy: Educational and Cultural Affairs, written by Charles Frankel, and The Neglected Aspect of Foreign Affairs: American Educational and Cultural Policy Abroad by Philip Coombs.2 Both works asserted that various sociopolitical dimensions and institutional structures-including educational and cultural affairs-were fundamental and, in some instances, indispensable to American foreign policy. Their views were reflected in Department of State policies when