Pedagogical offensives: soft power, higher education and foreign policy

ABSTRACT

Nations have for years sought to attain crucial foreign policy goals through programs of higher education. This article, after delineating the psychological dynamics underlying the creation of soft power affect, looks at three conspicuous such programs. They are America’s Fulbright Program, Australia’s Colombo Plan and the Soviet Union’s Patrice Lumumba University. Each of these was designed to promote both broad and specific foreign policy goals in the post-World War II period. Analyzing these cases yields some essential insights into how nations attempt to raise their global influence through the medium of higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• soft power
• culture
• foreign policy
• consistency theory

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The literature emerges from the more general theme of education as social control. Education is the institutionalization of social hegemony. It creates and reinforces dominant social hierarchies. Much of the work of course is inspired by the logic evident in Gramsci’s (1971) work on hegemony. See Tsvekova (2008).

2. This is an adaptation of Nye’s (2005, p. 12) diagram on soft power’s spectrum of affect. The adaptation is also consistent with the canon of political power established by Dahl (1957): i.e., that power has a relational nature involving interplay between two or more actors. Gallarotti (2010, 2011), in keeping with this canon, has interpreted relational power as a bargaining space. Nye's diagram was partially reproduced and adapted with permission of Joseph Nye, Jr. @Joseph Nye , Jr.

3. The relationship defining the convergence of interests and actions is complex. Equally accommodating actions on the part of admiring states may reflect quite different structures of interests among these states and soft-power states. In many cases actions will be driven by a convergence of interests (i.e., actions of deference to a soft power nation may reflect the adoption of similar objectives among soft-power and admiring nations), but accommodating actions by admiring nations may occur without a convergence of interests (i.e., states have different objectives, but admiring nations coalesce to the wishes of soft-power nations out of deference).

4. Lennon (2003) presents a number of essays that discuss the fight against terrorism as a contest over imprinting. (i.e., positive imprinting as a wedge against radicalization). Gallarotti (2010) has discussed the soft power of assimilation under the rubric of emulation.

5. There are a number of these studies. Readers should see Atkinson (2010) for a discussion of their findings and citations.

6. Laifer and Kitchen (2017) have identified a branding scheme for the New Plan that has been designed to augment the positive affect through strategies of product diversification.

7. There was already an educational boom going on outside of the program, as many privately supported Asian students were studying in Australia. In the early years of the program, the ratio favored private over Colombo students at of 5 to 1 (Oakman 2010, p. 179).

8. In fact, the role of cultural programs and equipment supply grew in importance relative to some of the conventional aid programs in the Plan. As time went on, money was increasingly shifted from the latter to the former (Oakman 2010, p. 181).

9. The ‘Trojan horse’ metaphor is especially appropriate for the elite effect of the plan: students returning home as important functionaries in the interests of the host nation (Laifer and Kitchen (2017, p. 818).

10. Lowe (2015, p. 449) sees this ‘vernacular internationalism’ as an essential component of Australian public diplomacy.

11. Lowe (2015, p. 454) refers to the demographic intent of the Plan as being based in a ‘bottom up’ process aimed at ‘disentangling … White Australia policy.’

12. Hence the ‘Trojan horse’ effect (students returning home as functionaries in the interests of the host nations) cited by Laifer and Kitchen (2017, .818) occurred in both demographics.

13. Of course, some take a more critical approach to the achievements of the Plan. See for example (Laifer and Kitchen 2017).

14. U. S. Department of Education official Oliver Caldwell succinctly captured the essence of the academic Cold War when he stated that ‘a principal arena for the contest between the two great ideologies of our generation will be the classrooms around the world’ (Quoted in Kret 2019, p. 242).

15. While the University attended to local training, the Soviet government undertook a vigorous program of academic exportation. During the Cold War some 450 state-sponsored schools and 67 state-sponsored institutions of higher education were established (Tsvekova 2008, p. 205).

16. Katsakioris (2019) offers evidence that, in fact, the reputation and curricular offerings of the University were historically inferior to existing universities in the Soviet Union. The educated community in the country looked disparagingly at the reputation of the University.

17. Quotes for admission were 70–80% from poor and working families, 15% from the middle class and 5% from the upper class (Tsvekova 2008, p. 203).

18. In terms of raw numbers, the Soviets fared comparatively well. During the Cold War Soviet-government-sponsored programs educated some 500,000 students, compared to 600,000 for American counterparts (Tsvekova 2008, p. 208).

19. See for example U.S. White House, National Security Strategy 2006. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued language that is glaringly evident of the official narrative of American national security: ‘every foreign student attending one of our universities represents an opportunity to enhance democracy in America and to strengthen the cause of freedom abroad’ (quoted in Atkinson 2010, p. 3).

20. William Fulbright showed great legislative perspicacity in using creative financing for the program through war debts and selling surplus war material (Jeffrey 1987).

21. On the impact of military exchanges, see especially Atkinson (2010) and Cope (1995).

22. Gallarotti (2010) has developed a formal model of optimal power diversification among hard and soft power.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Giulio M. Gallarotti

Giulio M. Gallarotti is Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. He is Chairman of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) Research Committee on Political Power (RC 36).