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Journal of Transatlantic Studies

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Ambassadors unaware: the Fulbright Program andAmerican public diplomacy

Molly Bettie

To cite this article: Molly Bettie (2015) Ambassadors unaware: the Fulbright Programand American public diplomacy, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 13:4, 358-372, DOI:10.1080/14794012.2015.1088326

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14794012.2015.1088326

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Ambassadors unaware: the Fulbright Program and American publicdiplomacy

Molly Bettie*

School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

The Fulbright Program, America’s flagship educational and cultural exchangeactivity, has been a much celebrated part of US public diplomacy since 1946.This study examines a tension that has persisted throughout the history of theFulbright Program between America’s information activities and educational–cultural activities. The crisis moments of three bureaucratic reorganisationsillustrate this debate: the 1953 establishment of the US Information Agency(USIA), the 1978 creation of the US International Communication Agency andthe 1999 closure of the USIA. At each of these moments, the purpose andnature of the Fulbright Program came under scrutiny. An analysis of archivaland secondary material reveal the mutually reinforcing relationship between thediplomatic and educational–cultural elements of the programme.

Keywords: educational exchange; public diplomacy; Fulbright Program;intercultural communication

1. Introduction

When American Fulbright grantees embark on their academic sojourns, they leavehome with quite heavy expectations on their shoulders. They are expected to act asambassadors, engaging with foreign publics, representing their home country welland immersing themselves in the host country culture. All of this is, of course, inaddition to carrying out the research for which the grant was given. The FulbrightProgram sends students, researchers, lecturers and others abroad to contribute tothe cause of mutual understanding between the participants’ home and host countries.The extent to which the grantees themselves are aware of these expectations, however,varies. Some may pursue a Fulbright grant simply to fund a year abroad, without anyaccompanying desire to contribute towards international understanding. Others mayinitially be unaware of the programme’s aim, but come to appreciate it while abroad.The title of this piece is drawn from such a grantee’s reflective essay. During her time asa student in Mexico, she writes, ‘I became an ambassador unaware, an ambassadoralmost in spite of myself and of the purely pragmatic goals I had originally set. Onus, the ambassadors unaware, the strength and success of the Fulbright Program ulti-mately depends’.1

Whether they are aware of their unofficial diplomatic role or they simply want toadvance their own careers, their mere presence abroad will have some impact as an actof cross-cultural contact. When individuals from different cultures come into contact

© 2015 Board of Transatlantic Studies

*Email: molly.bettie@yahoo.com

Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 2015Vol. 13, No. 4, 358–372, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14794012.2015.1088326

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with each other, they become culture carriers and their interaction is a learning experi-ence.2 Those host nationals with whom a Fulbrighter interacts will gain an impressionof the grantee’s home country. Moreover, because American participants are spon-sored by the US government, some peers abroad might assume that the Fulbrighter’sviews are endorsed by the state, while others will expect grantees to freely express theirown views. Unlike conventional diplomats, these unofficial ambassadors have noforeign policy briefing, no intercultural communication training or similar prep-aration. Their unprompted views may be all the more credible for it, and perceivedas more sincere or genuine by foreign audiences than a diplomat’s carefully craftedstatements might be.

In the context of public diplomacy, the practice of educational exchange is basedon the premise that ordinary citizens are accurate, capable representatives of theircountry. Senator Fulbright believed in the capacity of educational exchange to ‘turnnations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the huma-nizing of international relations’.3 When Americans travel abroad, they present a sideof the country that goes beyond what Hollywood or Washington might project. Forbetter or worse, they can influence local opinions about the USA when they interactwith locals. On the one hand, there is the stereotypical American tourist image,who speaks English slowly and loudly in an effort to be understood. On the otherhand, there is the Fulbright grantee, communicating respectfully, articulately and flu-ently in the local language.

The value of exchange of persons programmes is not always obvious. It is difficultto measure intangible results like an increase in mutual understanding, or to assigncredit for an individual’s change in attitude. There are many factors that can influenceour views of foreign nations and cultures. While returned grantees express positive atti-tudes of their hosts, quantifying such outcomes and linking causality to the exchangeprogramme is fraught with complications. As Giles Scott-Smith asserts, exchanges are‘a form of private international relations, a diffuse interchange of people, ideas andopinions that are generally so lost in the myriad of global social contact that theirworth is often questioned’.4

Early research on educational exchange took a holistic approach, assessingimpacts on a wide range of stakeholders in the host and home communities, inaddition to the exchange participants themselves. In their study of educationalexchanges covered by the 1948 US Information and Educational Exchange Act,Niefeld and Mendelsohn surveyed administrators at participating US higher edu-cation institutions.5 Mendelsohn and Orenstein’s 1955 study, the first to assess theFulbright Program exclusively, included a post-sojourn questionnaire that consideredeffects on both the individual grantee and on his or her community upon returninghome. They found that teacher grantees had organised international pen-pals fortheir students through contacts that they had made in the host country, supportingthe Fulbright Program’s aim of generating mutual understanding in both the homeand host communities.6

In recent years, research on the Fulbright Program and other exchanges has pri-marily focused on the experience of the individual participant. Scholars haveattempted to measure the impact of the exchange experience on a participant’scareer and life trajectory. They have examined pre- and post-sojourn attitudechanges, and the ways in which grantees act as cultural mediators while abroad.7

The tendency for scholars to focus on the individual is due to the centrality of

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participants in determining programme outcomes. This approach often fails to con-sider other contributing factors, however, which can shape the exchange experienceand its ultimate impact on international relations. In her review of the exchange litera-ture, Deborah K. Sell noted the limited scope of previous studies. She recommendsthat future researchers expand the remit of their studies to include ‘attitudes, beha-viors, preconceptions, motivations, country visited, and length of stay… the entirerange of contributing factors… ’8 Taking a more holistic approach, she argues, willenable us to better understand the effects of study abroad. One contributing factoroften overlooked is the institutional context in which the exchanges take place: thesponsors, the stakeholders, the alumni, and the home and host institutions of highereducation. The context will shape the exchange experience at every level, for it is ulti-mately the institution which determines factors such as who goes where, why, and forhow long. A deeper understanding of the institution allows us to better interpret thewidely reported ‘life-changing’ impacts of the Fulbright Program. This holisticapproach frames the question of impact in a new way, offering new insights into thestudent exchange phenomenon.

Academic studies of the Fulbright Program have often overlooked the institutionitself and its bureaucratic environment, focusing instead on the personal and pro-fessional impacts of the Fulbright experience on grantees. There is often simply anintroductory paragraph about its post-Second World War beginnings, or a brief bio-graphical sketch of its founder, Senator J. William Fulbright. There has been no com-prehensive study of the programme itself since Johnson and Colligan’s 1965 work, TheFulbright Program: A History. Of course, many changes in the geopolitical context ofthe programme have taken place since this seminal account of its beginnings. Majorworld events spark questions related to the role and impact of the FulbrightProgram. For example, we might ask how the programme has changed since theend of the Cold War. Has its focus shifted to reflect changing foreign policy priorities,and how have grantee flows changed over time? How has the programme managed toremain relevant and to receive continued funding? There is a dearth of research onrecent developments that might answer such questions.

2. Negotiations: information versus education and culture

Since the earliest days of US-sponsored exchanges, there has been a recurring debateover the appropriate bureaucratic home for educational and cultural exchange inWashington. Do international educational and cultural exchanges belong in thedepartment that deals with foreign affairs, or the department that deals with inter-national communication? Or perhaps exchanges should be kept out of the federal gov-ernment altogether, becoming the responsibility of an independent institution, such asthe Library of Congress or the Smithsonian Institute. Time and time again, commit-tees have been formed, experts have been consulted, recommendations have been con-sidered and compromises have been made in an attempt to settle the debate.Resolution has often been temporary, however, and questions of the true purpose ofthe Fulbright Program keep coming up again.

The debate over where educational exchange activities belong in Washington pre-dates the creation of the Fulbright Program, and has continued throughout its history.It involves many different viewpoints and stakeholders, which can be roughly brokendown into two opposing camps: The information perspective and the educational–cultural

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perspective. The information perspective sees the Fulbright Program as part of America’spublic diplomacy toolbox. It is one among many different public diplomacy resources,such as Voice of America radio broadcasting, American-sponsored schools andlibraries abroad, and the International Visitor Leader Program exchanges. In thisline of thought, Fulbright grantees become another type of ‘media’ through whichthe government can communicate with target foreign audiences. As Fulbright partici-pants are sponsored by the government, those who agree with the information perspectivewould expect the participants to act as ambassadors while abroad. ‘Internationaleducational and cultural activities would have little legitimacy to receive Congress’ssupport unless they were put in political service’.9 Due to the fact that participantsare supported by taxpayer dollars, the information camp argues, it is only right thatthe American public should reap some benefit from their investment. The mechanismof sponsorship suggests that a grant has some strings attached, whether they areimplied or explicit.

The opposing point of view argues that educational and cultural exchange activi-ties ought to be conducted for their own sake and remain free from the influence ofAmerica’s foreign policy agenda. They are inherently valuable activities, and do nothave to be strategic. Indeed, using them strategically may actually undermine theirpurpose and compromise the programme’s academic integrity. If exchange studentscame to be viewed as government mouthpieces or spies, they would no longer be effec-tive practitioners of public diplomacy. Unsurprisingly, the strongest advocates for thisposition are the academics themselves. Amongst educators, ‘exchanges are seen asprivate people-to-people transactions that should not be attached directly to the imme-diacies of day-to-day formal policy considerations or efforts to restore a nation’s imagein a host country or region’.10 Some advocates of the educational–cultural approachlook to the models of other nations, such as Germany or the UK, as models of bestpractice. ‘Academics, in particular have expressed their preference for foreignmediation through autonomous bodies such as the DAAD [Deutscher AkademischerAustausch Dienst, German Academic Exchange Service] and the British Councilrather than through ministries or embassies’.11

This preference for autonomy has been reflected in a number of policy recommen-dations throughout the Fulbright Program’s history. A 1953 Senate Foreign RelationsCommittee report kept educational and cultural activities out of the newly establishedUS Information Agency (USIA). In 1975, the US Advisory Commission on Edu-cational and Cultural Affairs recommended that both information and educationaland cultural activities be placed in an agency ‘under, but not in’ the State Department.In 1987, Senator Claiborne Pell proposed a plan that would dismantle the USIA andmove the Fulbright Program into the Smithsonian Institute.12 These examples rep-resent a few of the ways that policy-makers have approached autonomy in the past.

For his part, the programme’s founder and strongest advocate Senator J. WilliamFulbright was adamant that exchanges should be conducted independently fromAmerica’s foreign policy agenda.

I utterly reject any suggestion that our educational and cultural exchange programs areweapons or instruments with which to do combat…There is no room, and there mustnot be any room, for an interpretation of these programs as propaganda, even recognizingthat the term covers some very worthwhile and respectable activities.13

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The late Senator Fulbright remains a controversial figure. His liberal internationalistviews and opposition to the Vietnam War are counterbalanced by his conservativedomestic positions on racial desegregation. His mixed voting record draws criticismfrom both liberals and conservatives, but his legacy remains the educational exchangeprogramme. Throughout his career he expressed his firm belief that the strength of hisprogramme lay in its openness, and that the American citizen abroad was the best,most credible ambassador available.

In the earliest days of the Fulbright Program, there was a great deal of discussionabout its true nature and the future direction that it might take. Some members ofCongress and publicity officers expressed their concerns about the long-term natureof the programme, and asked instead for more immediate observable effects. Theslow, long-range process of education does not make for good headlines that willimpress constituents. One proposal asked the Board of Foreign Scholarships, theadministrative body of the Fulbright Program in Washington, to ‘require that allAmerican student grantees in France conduct aweekly public opinion poll to ascertainreactions to the Voice of America’.14 This proposal, like others demanding similaroutput, was rejected by the Executive Committee of the Board. Members of theBoard of Foreign Scholarships agreed that the Fulbright Program should certainlycontribute to the national interest, but if it were to evolve into a ‘propaganda’ pro-gramme, it ‘would become self-defeating and should be abandoned’.15 Administratorsstruggled to strike the appropriate balance between supporting US foreign policyinterests and maintaining integrity and credibility.

In the more than 155 countries that participate in the Fulbright Program,exchanges are carried out by bi-national commissions, or by the local US Embassyin countries that have not established a commission. These overseas counterparts tothe programme’s Washington-based administrators have generally supported the edu-cational–cultural approach rather than informational applications of the programme.As many members of the bi-national commissions are university lecturers, professorsand administrators, the preference for an academic emphasis is not surprising. Fortheir part, the bi-national commissions have seen academic integrity as a prerequisitefor any further diplomatic gains that might be sought by the Fulbright Program’sadministrators in Washington. Without the solid foundation of academic integrity,the programmewould fail to be respected or valued by partner nations and institutionsof higher education. The commission in the UK, for example, saw academic prestigeas an important factor in the development of mutual respect and understanding.

As a general policy the Commission has supported and will continue to support allmeasures that enhance the academic prestige of the scheme, not because it believes thatacademic success is in itself the entire justification for an international educationalexchange program, but because from it alone will grow the respect both here and inAmerica that will produce broader results in the sphere of mutual understanding.16

The history of the Fulbright Program is plagued by what Richard Arndt succinctlycalls a ‘built-in tension’ between the cultural and the propagandistic aims of suchactivities.17 In the following, three moments of crisis will serve to illustrate thistension and how it was resolved in the past. First, the early days of the Cold Warshow how the creation of the USIA brought the purposes of the budding exchangesinto question. The Cold War provided an excellent opportunity for exchanges, as

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they could be utilised to persuade foreign audiences to favour capitalism over com-munism in the ideological struggle, but it also presented a challenge, as exchangesmight be misused for political purposes. Second, the story moves ahead twodecades to a moment of Cold War thaw, when the question of the appropriatebureaucratic home for exchanges came under scrutiny. A US Advisory Commission,chaired by Frank Stanton, reviewed the state of affairs and issued its 1975 reportInternational Information, Education and Cultural Relations: Recommendations forthe Future, more commonly known as the Stanton Report. The commission’s rec-ommendations were not followed, however, during the subsequent reorganisationunder President Jimmy Carter. His short-lived US International CommunicationAgency (ICA) directed both information and educational/cultural activities.Finally, the state of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in the firstdecade of the twenty-first century deserves special attention, particularly in view ofthe closure of the USIA in 1999. During each of these illustrative crisis moments,we can see the various institutional factors at play, and take note of the underlyingdeterminants behind bureaucratic developments in the history of the FulbrightProgram.

3. The Cold War and the Fulbright Program

The Fulbright Program was born in the aftermath of the Second World War. SenatorJ. William Fulbright asked for surplus war property to be used to fund his educationalexchange programme. It was an effort to ‘turn swords into plowshares’, an attempt totransform tokens of conflict into a means of preventing future war. The programmestarted in a post-war atmosphere of recovery and peace-building, but the advent ofthe Cold War caused Fulbright Program administrators to examine the potentialrole of educational and cultural exchange in the new international conflict. Chief ofthe Division of Exchange of Persons and member of the Board of Foreign Scholar-ships Francis J. Colligan observed a wariness of propaganda on a 1951 tour of parti-cipating nations in Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East. The impressions fromthis trip convinced him that in order to accomplish the programme’s objectives,administrators must guard against giving the impression of propagandising. In areport to the Board of Foreign Scholarships following the tour, Colligan warns his col-leagues about foreign perceptions of information activities.

An indirect, subtle approach is required. This is because of a general sensitivity in all thecountries visited to out-and-out foreign propaganda in the popular sense, especially in aneducational program established by executive agreement on a long-term and relativelylarge-scale basis.18

Recognising this sensitivity, Colligan goes on to suggest how the programme mightreach its goals while avoiding accusations of propaganda.

This objective can best be accomplished:(1) by including a maximum number of well thought out projects,(2) by providing for efficient selection, orientation, guidance and follow-up,(3) by making maximum use of grantees in terms of the fields of specialization which theyrepresent and in terms of personality, personal contacts and incidental activities, and

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(4) by streamlining policies and procedures, for example, by awarding short-term grants andrecruiting seniorpersonnel directly. In sodoingwe shall help increase thenumberof friendsofthe United States in key circles in foreign countries. This is our basic ultimate objective.19

There is a distinct emphasis on quantity and competition in this plan – maximumnumbers, maximum personal contacts, more short-term grants rather than fewer long-term grants. These priorities reflect the competitive Cold War mindset of contempor-ary policy-makers and programme administrators. It illustrates the widely held beliefthat the world consisted of potential Democratic allies of the USA and potential Com-munist allies of the Soviet Union. Colligan and other administrators of the FulbrightProgram viewed engaging with opinion leaders in ‘key circles’ as a means of translat-ing personal friendships into geopolitical alliances. This is illustrated most strikingly inthe case of the Federal Republic of Germany, where educational and culturalexchanges played a prominent role in the post-war re-education and reorientationproject. Between 1947 and 1953, over ten thousand German leaders, trainees, univer-sity students and teenagers participated in exchange programmes in the USA.20 Manyof these participants went on to occupy leadership positions in West Germany’s pol-itical, economic and cultural life. By 1955, 25% of the Bundestag (Federal Diet) and17% of the Bundesrat (Federal Council) were former exchange participants.21

The use of the Fulbright Program in the Cold War was relatively limited in scope,however. The use of surplus war property funds meant that exchanges were conductedonly in the two theatres of the Second World War: The North Atlantic and the SouthPacific worlds. Exchanges were also limited to the ‘free world’, the community of non-Communist, democratic nations. The Board of Foreign Scholarships wanted toconduct cultural exchanges in Eastern Europe, but the State Department initiallyrefused to support them.22Exchange agreements with these countries were eventuallyreached during the 1960s and 1970s, a period of Cold War thaw and programmeexpansion. During the early years of the Cold War, however, the Fulbright Programwas unable to reach beyond the Iron Curtain. It focused instead upon creatingstrong relationships with allies and the non-aligned countries. Administrators feltthe exchange programme had an important role to play in the Cold War, namely‘to bulwark the free and democratic areas against the erosion of revolution and tota-litarianism’.23 Thus, educational exchange played a largely indirect role in the conflict,underscoring alliances rather than confronting ideological foes.

When the USIA was established in 1953, the question arose as to whether edu-cational and cultural exchanges should remain within the Department of State or ifthey should be moved to the USIA, the new home of other public diplomacy activities.Senator J. William Fulbright was adamant that his namesake programme be kept sep-arate from information activities, or as he referred to them, propaganda. Speaking tothe Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Fulbright argued against any inter-ference with the Board of Foreign Scholarships. He had originally made provisionsfor the Board in order to ensure that an autonomous, apolitical body would administerthe exchange programme. Placing the Board under the USIA’s remit would defeat thepurpose entirely, in Senator Fulbright’s opinion.

If you seek to coordinate them in any degree – make them subordinate or direct them aspart of a government propaganda agency – I think that by that act you will have destroyedtheir principal usefulness, and destroyed their incentive to function.24

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The usefulness of the Boardwas their independence and autonomy, features which lentthe members a degree of credibility and integrity. If it were to be placed under theUSIA, there was a risk that the programme would be adversely influenced by the pro-paganda-dominated environment. Senator Fulbright and his like-minded colleagues,Senators Karl Mundt and Bourke Hickenlooper, managed to keep the FulbrightProgram in the State Department, for the time being. A compromise was reachedthat distributed educational and cultural activities between the newly formed USIAand the State Department. ‘Books, libraries, cultural centers, English-teaching andexhibits went to USIA, while exchange-of-persons programs, support of American-sponsored schools, the UNESCO National Commission secretariat and a few oddsand ends were left behind in the State Department’.25 The two categories were labelled‘cultural information’ and ‘cultural relations’, though Coombs notes that this was‘regarded by some at the time as a distinction without a difference’.26

4. The Stanton Report

Ten years later, in 1975, the concerns about the proper bureaucratic organisation ofoverseas information, educational and cultural activities were revisited by a specialUS Advisory Commission. The idea for a panel review into these activities was theresult of a chance meeting of Leo Cherne, a member of the Advisory Commissionon Educational and Cultural Affairs, and CBS broadcasting executive FrankStanton. Seated next to each other on a flight, they discussed the state of Americanpublic diplomacy and its organisation.27 Stanton agreed to chair a panel that wouldexamine the matter further. The members of the panel represented both the infor-mation perspective and the education and cultural perspective, with academics andmembers of advisory bodies. The panel consisted of Peter Krogh and WalterR. Roberts of Georgetown University; W. Phillips Davison of Columbia University;Edmund A. Gullion of Tufts University; Leo Cherne, Thomas Curtis, David Derge,Harry Flemming, Lawrence Y. Goldberg, Rita Hanser, Hobart Lewis, WilliamTurner, William French Smith and Leonard Marks, members of the US AdvisoryCommission on International Educational and Cultural Affairs; James Michener,J. Leonard Reinsch, John Shaheen and George Gallup, members of the US AdvisoryCommission on Information; Andrew Berding of the USIA and Kenneth Thompsonof the International Council for Educational Development.

The panel’s resulting report emphasised the long-term nature of exchanges and rec-ommended that they be conducted with long-term objectives, rather than short-termforeign policy goals, in mind. A short-term strategy, for example, might be the desire togain favour with promising young pro-Western political leaders, while a long-termstrategy would be to show friendship towards non-aligned countries, in the hopethat they might align themselves with the USA in the future. Indeed, the conceptsof friendship and mutual understanding appear frequently throughout the StantonReport. The report contended that these

programs, both cultural and educational, support the ultimate goals of U.S. policy by pro-moting the exposure of Americans and people of other nationalities and cultures to eachother. Their objectives are thus to build mutual understanding in areas most important topreserving friendly and peaceful U.S. relations worldwide and to help develop a reservoirof people who can exchange ideas easily, can identify common objectives, and can worktogether in achieving these objectives. Their operations should, therefore, be directed with

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careful attention to long range policy interests. Close connection with the day-to-daypolicy process is not required.28

The Stanton Report proposed the creation of a new entity, combining overseas infor-mation and exchange-of-persons activities in an autonomous position under the StateDepartment, rather than the current state of separation between the USIA and theState Department. Uniting the two activities was a controversial step, defyingSenator Fulbright’s express wishes to keep exchanges away from the influence ofAmerica’s overseas information activities. The commission arrived at this decision,however, because they felt that the fear of USIA influence in exchanges wasunfounded. In practice, exchanges were already politicised in their current home atthe State Department. Exchange-of-persons programmes were administered overseasby officials who answered to both the State Department and USIA. In Washington,the Fulbright Program operated out of the State Department, but in the field, itbecame the responsibility of the Cultural Affairs Officer (CAO) of each USEmbassy. The CAO answered to both State and USIA, as their responsibilities alsoincluded information activities that were under the remit of USIA.

This state of affairs, a result of overlapping duties and bureaucratic complexities,undermined the debate between the information perspective and the educationaland cultural perspective. The report notes this in its argument for their consolidationinto a single entity. ‘The separation never made much sense, since both programs wereexecuted in the field by the same agency, and educational and cultural exchangeremained subject to political currents flowing through the Department of State’.29Theproposal to combine information activities with educational and cultural affairs wouldhave streamlined the CAO role. The officer in the fieldwould have received instructionsfrom a single entity in Washington. Such changes would have, according to the report,increased efficiency and decreased instances of miscommunication.

The Information and Cultural Affairs Agency proposed by the Stanton Reportwas to be autonomous, located under the State Department umbrella but operatingwith its own budget and administration.30 The commission acknowledged the chal-lenges inherent in the plan.

It must be close enough to policy makers to respond to long-range policy needs and thenational interest without being so close that it is subject to pressures of diplomatic crisesor political expediency. The distinction drawn here is admittedly a fine one, failure to drawit, however, leaves only the alternatives of a program that is irrelevant to the nationalinterest in foreign policy and unworthy of government support, or one consisting of ablatant propaganda and politicized culture which has almost no chance of effectiveness.31

The commission’s proposed Information and Cultural Affairs Agency was an attemptto strike the right balance between these two extreme alternatives. In order to remainboth relevant and effective, exchanges must not be too far removed from, or tooclosely tied to, the foreign affairs apparatus.

The story of the Stanton Commission, however, had a disappointing ending for itsmembers, as their recommendations failed to be implemented. One year after thereport was published, a change in the political atmosphere in Washington took thereorganisation plans in a new direction. The 1976 election of President JimmyCarter brought with it a new approach towards information activities and educationaland cultural affairs. Carter and his administration emphasised mutuality in their ‘two-

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way mandate’, believing that the USA had as much to gain from other nations as theyhad to gain from the USA.32 This was a departure from the one-way communicationpractice of the information-based approach. It reflected Carter’s personal view ofinternational affairs, and his own experiences on a cultural exchange to LatinAmerica while serving as Governor of the state of Georgia.33 President Carter feltthat ‘it is in our national interest to encourage sharing of ideas and cultural activitiesamong the people of the United States and the peoples of other nations’.34 Believing asstrongly as he did in the possibilities of educational exchange and public diplomacy,President Carter took an interest in restructuring the country’s activities in that area.

Under the Carter administration, the USIA was re-branded as the United StatesInternational Communication Agency (USICA or ICA). Information was replacedby communication, emphasising the concept of two-way engagement acrossborders, rather than a unidirectional flow of propaganda. Instead of ‘telling America’sstory to the world', the new agency’s mission was

to tell the world about our society and policies in particular our commitment to culturaldiversity and individual liberty. To tell ourselves about the world, so as to enrich our ownculture as well as give us the understanding to deal effectively with problems amongnations.35

The emphasis on culture and understanding aligned the new agency with the activitiesof the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Restructuring was a complex task and many changes were made in the process ofmoving the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs into the rebranded USIA. Itwas a large undertaking, involving thousands of staff members and posts scatteredaround the world. According to Richard Arndt, some feared that the USIA’s propa-gandists would overpower their new colleagues. ‘A small bureau of the Departmentof State, employing approximately 270, was to be swallowed by an agency of 5,000,with admonitions to the shark to behave’.36 This discrepancy in size necessarily putthe Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at a disadvantage. While othervarious programme cuts and consolidations took place, however, the FulbrightProgram was less affected by the move to ICA. Arndt asserts that the FulbrightProgram was viewed as off-limits, given its constituency of alumni and the legacy offormer Senator Fulbright. ‘Only the Office of Academic Programs stood roughly asit was, suggesting that the Fulbright Program’s sacrosanctity still exerted a protectivescreen’.37 Exchanges and cultural activities were actively promoted and agreementswere established in new areas. ICA made significant progress in Hungary, Bulgaria,Yugoslavia, China and the Middle East during the late 1970s.38 Despite beingheavily outnumbered by former USIA staff, employees of the former Bureau of Edu-cational and Cultural Affairs managed to achieve a great deal in their new home atICA. The Hubert H. Humphrey Programme was launched, bringing mid-levelpublic sector professionals to the USA for one year of study. Its stated aim was tosupport ‘career development of the next leadership generation in the developingnations’.39 A new private sector agreement was created with Spain’s Bank of Bilbaoto sponsor forty new Fulbright grants, resulting in the first privately funded scholar-ships programme in post-Franco Spain.40 In addition to these achievements, FulbrightStudent grants also rose significantly over the period. The number of grants increasedby nearly one-third between 1978 and 1980, from 4081 to 5248.41

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The ICAwas short-lived, however. Just as President Carter had changed USIA toreflect his worldview, his successor President Ronald Reagan was quick to make hismark on the country’s information and educational affairs. Under the Reagan admin-istration, the ICA’s name and mission soon reverted back to its previous state as theUSIA. President Reagan appointed his friend Charles Z. Wick as USIA director,and they chose to focus on media-based information activities in their vision of USpublic diplomacy. Wick secured increased funding for the agency, but the fundswere channelled towards Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty andthe newly founded Radio Martí, a broadcasting service that was directed at Cubanaudiences.42 Despite the renewed emphasis on information activities at the restoredUSIA, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs remained in the USIA untilit was eventually closed and reintegrated into the State Department in 1999.

5. The end of the USIA

After the end of the Cold War, the American public diplomacy community struggledto remain relevant in the eyes of policy-makers. The task of ‘Telling America’s Story tothe World’ no longer seemed to be necessary after the end of the ideological struggle,the outcome of which was considered by many to have been an American victory. His-torian Nicholas Cull points out how the success of public diplomacy also contributed,ironically, to its demise.

Success in the Cold War and in broadcasting to China lifted the self-confidence of thealways independently minded VOA to an all-time high, while the same victory promptedCongress to search for the peace dividend by pressing hard on the budget.43

The ‘peace dividend’ came in the form of trimming away any programmes that wereno longer deemed important in the post-Cold War world. Cutting back public diplo-macy activities was seen as an easy way to make savings.

Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina was among those most determined to findthat peace dividend. A fiscally conservative Republican, Senator Helms served asChairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he argued for areform of American’s foreign affairs structure. Observers in the media noted that hewas an unlikely member of the committee, as his background dies not suggest an inter-est in foreign relations.

Helms has seemed miscast as a leading figure in international affairs. By his own admis-sion, he doesn’t like to travel abroad, and he has little faith in international institutions.He is openly disdainful of an American diplomatic community that he sees as dominatedby the Eastern Establishment.44

This disdain extended to the bureaucratic structure of foreign affairs in Washington.Senator Helms felt that there was too much overlap of duties across the various inde-pendent agencies, resulting in wasteful spending. During a debate on the bill, he laidout to his colleagues that ‘the responsibilities of just one of these agencies is [sic] dupli-cated by about 42 other entities in the Federal Government’.45 Consolidating foreignaffairs would eliminate the problem of duplication by placing all such responsibilitiesinto the care of the State Department.

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The reform bill also contained provisions for repayment of American debts to theUnited Nations (UN), a feature that made Secretary of State Madeleine Albrightsupport the reforms in her hopes to gain favour with the UN. Helms felt that theUN had become a ‘bureaucratic nightmare’, and made UN reform the conditionfor America’s repayment of funds owed to the UN.46 When the bill was sent to theRepublican-controlled House of Representatives, however, a small conservativefaction attached a controversial amendment. They added a measure that preventedAmerican foreign-aid funds from being used to lobby foreign governments on theissue of abortion. The bill’s co-sponsor Senator Joe Biden lamented that it had beenderailed for the sake of this unrelated and extremely divisive issue. Senator PatrickLeahy’s comments summarised the Democratic position succinctly:

This bill is about how many Assistant Secretaries of State there will be, the bureaus, howthey are set up, and so on. It is not about running Planned Parenthood. The House sawthings differently. Unfortunately, a minority in the House saw yet another opportunity toold hostage important foreign policy legislation, and they did, like funding for the UnitedNations and the reorganization of the State Department.47

The bill had become a political football, passed between the Republicans in the Houseand the Democratic Clinton administration. ‘The USIA merger with [the Departmentof] State was not about policy but politics’, and the future of American public diplo-macy was almost an afterthought.48

When the USIAwas dismantled by the Foreign Affairs Reform and RestructuringAct of 1998, the bureaucratic home of the Fulbright Program once again had to be re-negotiated. Prior to the reorganisation, theUSIA included two distinct offices for infor-mation and educational–cultural affairs. The Bureau of Educational and CulturalAffairs managed the Fulbright Program and other exchanges, while the InformationBureau handled media and information activities. Secretary of State Madeleine Alb-right initially planned to merge the two divisions into a single entity, to be known asthe Bureau of Information Programs and International Exchanges. Academics andexchange advocates, such as the Association of International Educators and the Alli-ance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange, lobbied Congress toreject this proposed merger. Following consultation with these groups and their alliesin Congress, Secretary Albright modified the plan to reflect their views. After themove to the Department of State, exchanges remained in the Bureau of Educationaland Cultural Affairs, and information activities were placed in a dedicated Office ofInternational Information Programs within the State Department. The original planhadbeenmotivated byadesire tomake savings by streamliningpublic diplomacyactivi-ties that were seen as less vital in the post-ColdWar environment. The newarrangementwas still intended to make savings, but only through ‘consolidating personnel andpayroll activities and other back-room functions’.49 Funding for the exchanges them-selves was not diminished by the move, as some had feared.

The exchange community and programme administrators were pleased with theoutcome, and the lobbying effort demonstrated a great deal of support for exchanges,both in academia and in Congress. Former USIA Educational and Cultural Affairsassociate director William B. Bader observed that, in the restructuring effort, ‘it isnot the address of the organization that matters, it is the attitude of the landlord’.50

The new landlords at the Department of State had a high regard for international

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engagement and educational exchange. The 1999 restructuring did not have the nega-tive impact that some in the exchange community had feared, at least in terms of theFulbright Program’s activities. Public diplomacy in general did suffer after the move.

It is difficult to overestimate what was lost with the merger of the USIA into [the Depart-ment of] State. Agency hands with decades of field experience took early retirement,young people with an eye to career prospects avoided public diplomacy work; budgetswithered and skills grew rusty.51

6. Conclusion

Nearly 70 years after the Fulbright Program’s establishment, there is still some disagree-ment over the true purpose of the programmeand its proper home inWashington. Somehave turned to public diplomacy and educational exchange in hopes of restoring Amer-ica’s reputation abroad. As part of the American public diplomacy efforts in Iraq andAfghanistan, for example, Fulbright exchanges with these two countries wererenewed in 2003 after many years of suspension. Others see educational exchangesimply as a means of increasing international academic cooperation and furtheringresearch in areas of global concern. The Fulbright Nexus Scholar programme wasinitiated in 2010 to bring scholars together in order to address transnational issuessuch as public health, sustainable energy, climate change and food security. In recentyears, short-term exchange programmes have been created to respond to pressing pol-itical concerns. This move has reignited old debates about the link between America’sforeign policy agenda and exchange activities, and the need to balance this with long-term strategies that foster genuine, lasting relationships.52

There is room for both the information perspective and the educational–culturalperspective in the administration of educational and cultural exchange. Former Fulb-right Association President Leonard Sussman argues that both of these viewpoints arevalid and necessary for the programme’s continued success. ‘All aspects of the Fulb-right Program – domestic and foreign, academics and diplomats – may conceivablyneed one another’.53 Striking the right balance between these aspects is vital for thecontinued development of the Fulbright Program, because the two elements supporteach other. The informational, diplomatic side gives it a purpose that distinguishesthe Fulbright Program from private educational exchange activities and gives addedstrength to the programme’s funding appeals. The educational–cultural, academicside, in turn, gives the programme a sense of neutrality and legitimacy, and makesits participants more credible unofficial ambassadors. This symbiotic relationshipbetween the two elements ultimately makes the Fulbright Program a more effectiveform of diplomacy.

Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes1. Jeanne J. Smoot, ‘Ambassador Unaware’, in The Fulbright Experience, 1946–1986: Encoun-

ters and Transformations, eds. Arthur Power Dudden and Russell Rowe Dynes (New Bruns-wick, NJ: Transaction, 1987), 302.

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2. Ingrid Eide, ed. Students as Links between Cultures (Paris: Unesco, 1970).3. J. William Fulbright, ‘International Education and the Hope for a Better World’. Speech

given at Tenth Anniversary of the Fulbright Program in Reykjavik, Iceland, February22, 1967. J. William Fulbright Papers, Special Collections, University of ArkansasLibrary. Series 72, Box 28, File 4.

4. Giles Scott-Smith, ‘Exchange Programs and Public Diplomacy’, in Routledge Handbook ofPublic Diplomacy, eds. Nancy Snow and Philip M. Taylor (London: Routledge 2009), 51.

5. S.J. Niefeld and Harold Mendelsohn, ‘How Effective is our Student-exchange Program?’,Educational Research Bulletin 33, no. 2 (1954): 29–37.

6. HaroldMendelsohn and Frank Orenstein, ‘A Survey of Fulbright Award Recipients: Cross-cultural Education and its Impacts’, Public Opinion Quarterly 19, no. 4 (1955): 401–7.

7. Deborah K. Sell, ‘Research on Attitude Change in U.S. Students Who Participate inForeign Study Experiences: Past Findings and Suggestions for Future Research’, Inter-national Journal of Intercultural Relations 7, no. 1 (1983): 131–47 and Nancy Snow, ‘Fulb-right Scholars as Cultural Mediators’ (PhD thesis, The American University, 1992).

8. Sell, ‘Research on Attitude Change’, 144.9. Liping Bu, ‘Educational Exchange and Cultural Diplomacy in the Cold War’, Journal of

American Studies 33, no. 3 (1999): 415.10. Snow and Taylor, Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, 236.11. J.M. Mitchell, International Cultural Relations (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986), 68.12. Nancy Snow, Propaganda, Inc: Selling America’s Culture to the World, 3rd ed. (New York:

Seven Stories, 2010), 89.13. Philip H. Coombs, The Fourth Dimension of Foreign Policy: Educational and Cultural

Affairs (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, Harper and Row, 1964), 52.14. Johnson and Colligan, The Fulbright Program, 75.15. Ibid., 72.16. UK–US Fulbright Commission, The Second Annual Report of the Fulbright Program in the

United Kingdom (1951), 6.17. Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., Rhetoric and Public Diplomacy: The Stanton Report Revisited

(Lantham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), 88.18. Francis James Colligan, The Fulbright Program and Other Exchange of Persons Matters in

13 Countries of Europe, the Near and Middle East, and the Far East (College Park, MD:National Archives, 1951), Record Group 59, Series MLRUD 100H, Box 1, 2.

19. Ibid., 3.20. Henry Kellermann, Cultural Relations as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy: The Edu-

cational Exchange Program Between the United States and Germany, 1945–1954 (Washing-ton, DC: U.S. Department of State, 1978), 261.

21. Ibid., 243.22. Frank A. Ninkovich, The Diplomacy of Ideas: U.S. Foreign Policy and Cultural Relations

1938–1950 (Chicago, IL: Imprint, 1995), 147.23. Ibid., 148.24. Charles Frankel, The Neglected Aspect of Foreign Affairs: American Educational and Cul-

tural Policy Abroad (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute, 1965), 27.25. Coombs, The Fourth Dimension of Foreign Policy, 33–4.26. Ibid., 34.27. Thompson, Rhetoric and Public Diplomacy, 55.28. Frank Stanton (Chair), U.S. Advisory Commission, International Information, Education

and Cultural Relations: Recommendations for the Future (Washington, DC: Center for Stra-tegic and International Studies, 1975), 6.

29. Ibid., 15.30. Ibid., 20.31. Ibid., 17.32. Nicholas John Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2008), 361.33. Ibid.34. Hans N. Tuch,Communicating with theWorld: U.S. Public Diplomacy Overseas (NewYork:

St. Martin’s, 1990), 32.

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35. Jimmy Carter: ‘Agency for International Communication –Message to the Congress Trans-mitting Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1977’, October 11, 1977. Online by Gerhard Petersand John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=6779 (accessed August 5, 2013).

36. Richard Arndt, ‘Public Diplomacy, Cultural Diplomacy: The Stanton CommissionRevisited’, in Rhetoric and Public Diplomacy: The Stanton Report Revisited, ed. KennethW. Thompson (Lantham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), 94.

37. Ibid., 6.38. Cull, The Cold War, 382–3.39. Board of Foreign Scholarships, Fulbright Program Exchanges 1979: Seventeenth Annual

Report (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1979), 7.40. Ibid., 3.41. Board of Foreign Scholarships, Report on Exchanges: Sixteenth Annual Report (Washing-

ton, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1978), 4–5 and Board of Foreign Scholarships,Fulbright Program Exchanges 1980: Eighteenth Annual Report (Washington, DC: US Gov-ernment Printing Office, 1980), 2–3.

42. Richard T. Arndt, The First Resort of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy in the TwentiethCentury (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2005), 527–8.

43. Nicholas John Cull, ‘Speeding the Strange Death of American Public Diplomacy’, Diplo-matic History 34, no. 1 (2010): 65.

44. James Kitfield, ‘Jousting with Jesse’, Foreign Policy 29, no. 39 (1997): 1886.45. Jesse Helms, Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act – Conference Report. Congres-

sional Record. April 24, 1998, http://thomas.loc.gov/ (accessed August 12, 2012), S3563.46. Ibid.47. Ibid.48. Snow, Propaganda, Inc., 63.49. Paul Desruisseaux, ‘State Department, in Reversal, Backs Separate Bureau to Oversee Aca-

demic Exchanges’, The Chronicle of Higher Education 45, no. 32 (1999): A52.50. Ibid.51. Cull, The Cold War, 484.52. U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, 2014 Comprehensive Annual Report on

Public Diplomacy and International Broadcasting Activities (Washington, DC: U.S. Depart-ment of State, 2014), http://www.state.gov/pdcommission/ (accessed February 12, 2015).

53. Leonard Sussman, The Culture of Freedom: the Small World of Fulbright Scholars(Lantham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992), 105.

Notes on contributorMolly Bettie is a recent PhD graduate of the School of Media and Communication at the Uni-versity of Leeds. She also holds a BA in European Studies from the University of Washingtonand an MA in Political Communication from the University of Leeds. Her work explores thenature and purpose of exchange diplomacy, and how it has been used by the US governmentsince the end of the Second World War. She is currently revising her dissertation for publicationas a monograph. Other forthcoming publications include an article in Caliban (University ofToulouse), a conference paper on women in the Fulbright Program, and a book chapter on aca-demic soft power.

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