Office of the Historian

36. Memorandum From the Deputy Assistant Director for Plans and Programs, Office of Policy and Plans, United States Information Agency (Bardos) to the Deputy Director for Policy and Plans (Weathersby)1

Washington, September 26, 1969

SUBJECT

  • Meeting on Educational and Cultural Affairs at State Department

Barbara White and I represented the Agency at a joint meeting September 12 of the U.S. Advisory Commission on International Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Board of Foreign Scholarships, and the American Council on Education. At the opening session the group discussed the question of organization of the U.S. Government’s educational and cultural programs overseas. Focal point was the proposal, made in recent years by the Advisory Commission and several other academic groups, to create a new quasi-public body akin to the British Council2 for administering these programs (including USIA’s cultural activities). Proponents of this approach decided not to push it at the present time, but to concentrate instead on strengthening CU’s programs within the Department of State. The reasons were: (1) greater confidence in the leadership of CU under the new administration, and (2) realization of the difficulties of getting legislation to set up a new body.

There was also considerable discussion of the purposes of international educational and cultural exchange; several participants felt that a new rationale was necessary. While some feeble pleas were made in favor of individual grants to promote pure scholarship for the sake of scholarship, there was a clear consensus that the thrust of the program should be directed to institution building. Most of those present seemed to feel that university-to-university arrangements should constitute the major part of the exchange program. Though the issue of “relevance” was recognized, there was a clear consensus that the fields of study included in these institution-building programs should be allowed to [Page 83] cover a far broader range than in the project-oriented programs of the AID.

There was an astonishing atmosphere of realism in the discussions regarding the fundamental rationale of the government’s international educational and cultural programs. One of the working papers by Richard A. Humphrey, of the American Council on Education, had stressed that the government could not be expected to finance such programs other than to serve the “public interest in the setting of our relations with other countries.”3 It is reported that Assistant Secretary John Richardson had made the same point before the Board of Foreign Scholarships on the previous day. In any case, the conferees of September 12th clearly accepted this as a basis of their discussion.

In the final session there was quite some discussion on whether the government’s “propaganda agency” ought to be involved in cultural affairs. Beyond some objections to the fact that the exchange program is administered by USIA officers in the field there were also suggestions that libraries should be detached from the Agency and attached to CU. The chairman4 emphasized that the purpose was not to dismantle USIA but entertained with interest the remark that films were no less cultural than libraries. Some of the scholars present clearly had difficulty in understanding the finer points of the organizational status quo and saw the need to have exchanges and libraries both under the CAO an added argument in favor of removing libraries from USIA and attaching them to CU. Ed Gullion, Dean of the Fletcher School, asked me to comment on behalf of USIA, and I tried to clarify some of the misunderstandings and expressed the view that informational and cultural activities are not incompatible. Some of those present nodded sympathetically. Richard H. Heindel, of Pennsylvania State University, formally withdrew some of his reservations about USIA’s role, but Steven Muller, of Cornell, predicted that universities would not cooperate in the more intensive manner now contemplated with a cultural program administered overseas by USIA officers. Still, at the end of the session it appeared that none of the recommendations resulting from the conference would be directed against the role of USIA.

  1. Source: National Archives, RG 306, Office of Policy and Plans, 1963–1969, General Subject Files, 1949–1970, Entry UD–264, Box 311, CUL Culture (GEN). No classification marking. The summary report of the September 12 joint meeting, which Bardos and White attended, is printed as part of an annex to the seventh annual report of the U.S. Advisory Commission on International Educational and Cultural Affairs, entitled A Multitude of Counselors. For an excerpt of the report, see Document 75.↩
  2. Founded during the 1930s and granted a Royal Charter in 1940 in order to promote knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language and develop closer cultural relations with other nations.↩
  3. Not found and not further identified.↩
  4. Babbidge.↩