The Foreign Service Journal, October 2006

cultural officers, but most of the important programs were funded and directed by CU. In the field, CU-funded exchanges and cultural pro- grams took up at least two-thirds of the daily labors of a U.S. Information Service post, depending on the coun- try. Cultural channels provided the substance that fed the reorientation of postwar Germany and Japan; light focused through cultural lenses finally ignited the Soviet implosion. From the outset, U.S. cultural diplomacy carried its own propaganda, the less trumpeted the better. Firewalls of academic integrity were put in place between 1938 and 1947 by Welles, Laurence Duggan, Ben Cherrington, Archibald MacLeish, Fulbright and the U.S. universities, but they slowly eroded. After the birth of USIA in 1953, educational and cul- tural exchanges were dubbed one of USIA’s “media” by its theoreticians and planners. With the 1977 merger of CU into USIA, the decline of vestigial cultural indepen- dence accelerated and staff quality slumped. In 1999, the haphazard absorption of USIA by State further diminished education and culture, both in terms of pro- gram output and field staff. As in 1977, the long-expect- ed reorganization of 1999 added up to considerably less than the sum of its parts. Refilling the Reservoirs After World War II, the U.S. could count on tapping “reservoirs of good will” filled over a century and a half by mythic diplomats like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, articulate activists like Tom Paine, authors like James Fenimore Cooper and Harriet Beecher Stowe, intellectual citizen-diplomats, mission- ary-educators, enlightened military leaders, far-seeing merchants, philanthropists and humanitarians. Water for the reservoirs came from individuals and all sorts of institutions: those who extended the U.S. university beyond America’s shores; the wise legislators who allowed the U.S. to import and maintain a level of over half a million resident foreign students a year; educators F O C U S O C T O B E R 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 41 Interim Accommodations for Corporate and Government Markets Apartments, Townhouses & Single Family Homes “FOR THE EXECUTIVE ON THE MOVE” finder5@IX.netcom.com Locations throughout Northern Virginia and D.C. Units fully furnished, equipped and accessorized Many “Walk to Metro” locations Pet Friendly 5105-L Backlick Road, Annandale, Virginia Tel: (703) 354-4070 Fax: (703) 642-3619 Executive Lodging Alternatives