U.S. University Advisors And Education Modernization In Iran, 1951–1967

Abstract

Historians have recently begun to pay more attention to how the United States, during the Cold War, used modernization schemes to court and maintain allies in what was then called the Third World. American social scientists and foreign policy makers understood modernization to be an economic, technological, intellectual, and political process through which nations would shed traditional practices and begin to function like Western societies. In particular, Americans maintained a tremendous faith in their own history of technological and industrial development, which they felt provided the best model for nations to become advanced, democratic societies.1 American foreign-policy makers used modernization programs to influence governments and win the “hearts and minds” of ordinary people in strategically important countries, particularly those that seemed susceptible to Soviet influence. To date, scholars of modernization have paid greatest attention to the most dramatic aspects of American modernization in the developing world, from comprehensive plans for economic growth to capital-intensive projects, such as hydro-electric dams and rural electrification.2