Democratic Morality and the Freedom Academy Debate: A Conflict about Institutionalizing Propaganda in America, 1954–1968

Abstract

Controversy in America over propaganda's compatibility with democratic traditions and institutions has endured throughout the twentieth century While some scholars have examined how that controversy manifested in media and as an academic issue, scant work has documented how the conflict unfolded within government itself. This article traces and analyzes one debate in government about propaganda involving the proposed contractions of a “Freedom Academy”—an institute that, if built, would have distributed domestic government propaganda and trained private American citizens to use propaganda themselves in fighting the cold war. The article places opposition between critics and enthusiasts of the Freedom Academy within the larger context of an enduring debate in American intellectual history about propaganda and democratic morality. It argues that the issue has deep significance for both media history and broader social and political history involving America's search for national identity