Mission for Development: Utah Universities and the Point Four Program in Iran - Softcover

Garlitz, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1607327538 ISBN 13: 9781607327530

Verlag: Univ of Chicago behalf of UP Colorado, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

A Mission for Development tells the remarkable story of faculty from three Utah universities who lived and worked in Iran as part of the Point Four Program. Using the experience of these advisors, the book reexamines the rise and fall of the US-Iranian alliance and explores the roles that American universities played in international development during the Cold War.

The Point Four Program sponsored American technical assistance for developing countries during the 1950s-an American Cold War strategy to cultivate friendly governments and economic development in countries purportedly susceptible to Communist influence. Between 1951 and 1964, advisors from Brigham Young University sought to modernize Iranian public education, experts from Utah State University worked to improve agricultural production, and doctors and nurses from the University of Utah helped with the Iranian government's rural health initiatives. In A Mission for Development, author Richard Garlitz offers a critical and clear-eyed assessment of the challenges the Utahns faced and the contributions they made to Iranian development.

The book also reexamines the Iranian political crisis of the early 1950s and the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh through the eyes of the Utah advisors. A Mission for Development provides rare insight into the university role in international development and will be of interest to historians and policy makers.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Richard Garlitz is associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee at Martin, where he teaches courses on the history of United States foreign relations and the Middle East. He is coeditor of Teaching America to the World and the World to America: Education and Foreign Relations since 1870.

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A Mission for Development

Utah Universities and the Point Four Program in Iran

By Richard Garlitz

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2018 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-753-0

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
Note on Usage, 
Introduction, 
1 Forging a Partnership for Development: Point Four and American Universities, 
2 Utahns in Iran, 
3 Point Four and the Iranian Political Crisis of 1951-1953, 
4 To Make the Iranian Desert Bloom, 
5 Modernizing Iranian Education, 
6 Legacies, 
Afterword, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
About the Author, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

FORGING A PARTNERSHIP FOR DEVELOPMENT

Point Four and American Universities

We cannot hope to be rid of human tyrants, until we wipe out the impersonal tyranny of hunger, misery and despair on which human tyrannies thrive.

Henry Bennett, Point Four Program director, 1951

The principal currency of Point 4 is not the American dollar, but American know-how.

Benjamin Hardy, "Point IV: Dynamic Democracy"

President Harry S. Truman wanted his January 20, 1949, inaugural address to reinvigorate American foreign policy in a time of increasing Cold War tensions. The president celebrated American diplomatic and economic leadership in the wake of the cataclysmic world war. "Our efforts," he declared, "have brought new hope to all mankind." Having "beaten back despair and defeatism," the United States now stood ready to "build an even stronger structure of international order and justice" and "to improve the standards of living of all people." To accomplish this lofty goal, Truman outlined four main priorities. The first two, support for the United Nations and European recovery, reaffirmed existing US policies. The third, participation in the collective security of the "free world," was about to become reality in the form of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But the fourth point, which the president talked about as much as the other three combined, was new to most Americans. "We must embark on a bold new program," he said, "for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas."

Truman presented international economic development as a significant component of the country's Cold War strategy. He reminded his listeners that most of the world's population lived in or near poverty. Inadequate food, lack of clean water, insufficient access to education, poor healthcare, and little upward mobility — these were the conditions that sparked violent revolution and made the "false philosophy" of communism deceptively attractive to millions of people. But the middle of the twentieth century offered new hope because, the president declared, "humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of these people." Furthermore, Truman boasted that "the United States is preeminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques." Americans should, in conjunction with suitable international partners, provide technical assistance and promote investment in poor countries to help them produce more and better food, improve education and housing, and expand industrial activity. The result would be "the achievement of peace, plenty, and freedom."

The resulting program, popularly called Point Four in reference to Truman's speech, became a modest but consistent part of US foreign policy during the 1950s. American universities soon emerged as attractive partners in this venture for international development. The 1950s and 1960s marked great expansion and internationalization of American higher education. Enrollments soared, research programs proliferated, and more professors and students went abroad than ever before. Thousands of foreign students also flocked to the United States to study, especially in fields such as engineering, agriculture, education, and medicine that were at the heart of national development. Early forays into overseas technical aid raised hopes that members of the academic community would "make both competent and selfless ambassadors — better, on average, than protocol-minded diplomats and bureaucratic civil servants."

This chapter traces the origins of the Point Four Program and discusses how and why universities became involved. The Point Four Program was a contested piece of US foreign policy that encountered turbulence as it went through major reorganizations and corresponding policy changes during the 1950s. The partnership for international development that emerged between the US government and universities also produced difficulties that are illustrated in the Utah universities' work in Iran, especially between 1951 and 1955.

TRUMAN'S BOLD NEW PROGRAM

Harry Truman felt he needed something big to capture the public's imagination following his unexpected victory in the 1948 presidential election. The three-and-a-half years since he had inherited the presidency upon the death of Franklin Roosevelt had been filled with ominous international crises. While the Allies emerged victorious from World War II during his first year in office, the Grand Alliance fell apart over the next three years. The Soviet Union tightened its grip on Eastern Europe, attempted to starve its erstwhile allies out of Berlin, and sought strategic advantages in the straits of Istanbul and in northern Iran. Farther east, Chinese communists under Mao Zedong pushed toward victory in a long and bloody civil war. All along the Eurasian periphery of these two behemoths, from Turkey to Korea, poor and weak nations appeared susceptible to communist expansion. Meanwhile, the United States and its partners struggled to contain that expansion and to rebuild Western European economies shattered by fifteen years of depression and war. Truman attacked these grave challenges with steadfast resolve despite having assumed the presidency with little foreign policy experience.

The American public, however, showed only lukewarm confidence in his presidential leadership. Plainspoken and occasionally given to frank self-deprecation, Truman lacked his predecessor's charisma and towering prestige. Roy Roberts, a longtime acquaintance and managing editor of the Kansas City Star, once described him as "the average man"; Time more bluntly called him "a man of distinct limitations, especially ... in high level politics." His political prospects appeared to dwindle during three tumultuous years in office. Roosevelt loyalists blamed him for the Republican sweep of the US Congress in the 1946 midterm elections; former interior secretary and New Deal stalwart Harold Ickes even suggested that he should resign. Public opinion polls in the spring of 1948 predicted that Truman would lose to any of the leading Republican challengers in the upcoming election. Liberal publications such as The Nation and New Republic called on him to step aside; Roosevelt's sons lobbied Dwight Eisenhower to run for the Democratic Party nomination. Throughout the fall campaign, the press seemed more enamored with the crisp and confident Republican candidate, Governor Thomas Dewey of New York. The conservative Chicago Daily Tribune declared "Dewey Defeats Truman" in the early morning hours after the election. The actual results, however, showed Truman to be the winner in one of the most dramatic presidential elections in modern American history.

Emboldened by the victory and adamant that the United States must...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Univ of Chicago behalf of UP Colorado
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1607327538
• ISBN 13: 9781607327530
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 246
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland