Abstract This article describes international educational partnerships developed in the intellectual tradition of John Dewey’s philosophies of pragmatism and progressive education. In his international work in China and Japan, Dewey sought what might be called “collective intelligence” via cross-cultural experiences fostering democracy through international understanding of the multiple “truths” endemic to different cultures. These partnerships provide models for consideration at a time of growing global unease in the wake of contemporary international tensions somewhat reminiscent of what was described in the United States after World War ii as the Cold War. If anything, current tensions are more complex, intractable, and dangerous because they are driven not only by “superpower” rivalries, but also by regional conflicts involving religious ideologies, mass human migrations, urgent environmental problems, and widespread terrorism and violence. Created primarily during the 1970s and 1980s, the described educational partnerships were intended to foster international understanding through exchanges that paralleled the citizen “people to people” movements of the time that provided critical popular support enabling leaders in the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union to bring an end to the Cold War and, for a time, collaborate in the optimistic expectation of creating a new world order of cooperation, understanding, and stability.