‘Never a Machine for Propaganda’? The Australian-American Fulbright Program and Australia's Cold War

Abstract

Some overlap in personnel between the Australian-American Fulbright board and those advising Menzies on anti-communist legislation and the 1951 referendum, including former Chief Justice J. G. Latham, raises questions about the politicisation of the Fulbright program over this period. A careful reconstruction of the Australian scheme's founding years reveals, however, that the program resisted becoming a simple instrument of Cold War foreign policy. This was thanks to careful groundwork laid by Evatt's Department of External Affairs, ensuring a measure of independence to the Australian board, and board member Latham's strategic defence of the program's educational goals when pressures were felt.

Notes

¹The authors’ research has been supported by an Australian Research Council Linkage grant, with partners the National Library of Australia Oral History Unit and the Australian-American Fulbright Commission.

²‘Quand M. Yvon Delbos se fait contrôler par l'ambassadeur d'Amérique’, L'Humanité, [n.d.] May 1949, cited by Whitney Walton, Internationalism, National Identities, and Study Abroad: France and the United States, 1890–1970 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 234, n. 30.

³Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 63, 62.

⁴US Foreign Service Despatches (FSDs) from Australia over this period, in United States National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (hereafter NARA), State Department Records Series RG 59, support this claim. See also Kenneth A. Osgood, ‘Review Essay: Hearts and Minds: The Unconventional Cold War’, Journal of Cold War Studies 4, no. 2 (2002): 85–107; Paul A. Kramer, ‘Is the World Our Campus? International Students and U.S. Global Power in the Long Twentieth Century’, Diplomatic History 33, no. 5 (2009): 783, 796–7; Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: New Press, 2000); Scott Lucas, ‘Campaigns of Truth: The Psychological Strategy Board and American Ideology, 1951–1953’, The International History Review 18, no. 2 (1996): 279; Giles Scott-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and Post-War American Hegemony (London: Routledge, 2002), 61.

⁵Simona Tobia, ‘Introduction: Europe Americanized? Popular Reception of Western Cold War Propaganda in Europe’, Cold War History 11, no. 1 (2011): 2.

⁶Statement by Assistant Secretary William Benton on the Fulbright Bill, Department of State, press release, 1 August 1946, No. 532. In A9790 8132, National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA), Canberra.

⁷On the Senator's realisation of the need for a Board of Foreign Scholarships ‘to protect the program from political interference and short-term policy considerations’, see Randall Bennett Woods, Fulbright: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 134.

⁸1 April 1947, Cablegram SECRET, I.7027 XM0031, in A9790 8132, NAA.

⁹‘Australia May End Drawn-Out Negotiations’, Canberra Times, 30 April 1949, 1.

¹⁰The Australian press reported regularly on the negotiations, while individual and institutional expressions of interest abound in: A1067 A46/2/4/10, NAA, and A1838 250/9/8/3 Part 1, NAA.

¹¹19 April 1948, ‘External Affairs—For the Secretary—Additional Detailed Comment on U.S. Draft Agreement’ [signed J[ohn]. E. Oldham]. In A1067 A46/2/4/10, NAA. This was in response to US comments of 1 April 1948.

¹²On Evatt's unpopularity with the Americans: Joseph Siracusa and Yeong-Han Cheong, America's Australia, Australia's America: A Guide to Issues and References (Claremont: Regina Books, 1997), 23–5; Laurence Maher, ‘Downunder McCarthyism: The Struggle against Australian Communism 1945–1960 Part One’, Anglo-American Law Review 27, no. 3 (1998): 352–4. On suspicions about External Affairs: Phillip Deery, ‘Decoding the Cold War: Venona, Espionage and “the Communist Threat”’, in Arguing the Cold War, ed. Peter Love and Paul Strangio (Melbourne: Red Rag Publications, 2001), 113–14; on Evatt embarrassing the USA at the United Nations, see 3 February 1950, USIE Country Paper (n. 20). Also Neville Meaney, ‘Australia, the Great Powers and the Coming of the Cold War’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 38, no. 3 (1992): 327–8.

¹³1 April 1947, Cablegram SECRET I.7027 XM0031. A9790 8132, NAA.

¹⁴30 April 1947, Dept of Post-War Reconstruction Minute. To the Minister (from L. F. Crisp). Cover letter for submission by Inter-Departmental Committee on Education, for PM, Coombs and Evatt. A9790 8132, NAA.

¹⁵9 June 1948: Confidential Despatch from American Embassy, Canberra, to Secretary of State. ‘Subj: Proposed Agreement with Australia for the Use of Funds Available under U.S. Public Law 584’, RG 59, CDF 1945 Box 4805, NARA.

¹⁹2 June 1948, Memo of Conversation [CONFIDENTIAL]. To Orsen N. Neilsen. From David C. Cuthell [Foreign Service officer], ‘Subj: Draft Agreement of Fulbright Act’. RG 59 DOS CDF 1945 Box 4805, NARA.

¹⁶16 March 1948: ‘Lend-Lease Cultural Agreement’ (Notes on articles of draft agreement by J. W. C. Cumes). A1067 A46/2/4/10, NAA.

¹⁷10 November 1947: ‘Central News Agency—English Service—Agreement for Estab'g US Educ'l Foundation in China Signed’. A1361 4/7/5 Part 1, NAA.

¹⁸16 March 1948: ‘Lend-Lease Cultural Agreement’ (Cumes).

²⁰14 April 1949, AmEmbassy (Foster) to Sec of State. ‘Re-establishment and rehabilitation in overseas countries—Lend-lease settlement funds—Available for culture (Fulbright bill)’, RG 59 811.42747 Box 4805, NARA.

²¹No date, but estimated as January 1949 going by its position in the files, and reference to dates in a later State Department despatch. A1361 4/7/5 Part 1, NAA.

²²A1067 A46/2/4/10, NAA; and A1838 250/9/8/3 Part 1, NAA.

²³‘Slow Negotiations Disappoint U.S.: Strong Views on Taxation and Student Plan’, The Advertiser, 14 April 1949, 2; ‘Delay in Fulbright Act Negotiations’, The West Australian, 2 May 1949, 14.

²⁴4 October 1949, Telegram Canberra to DOS—Despatch 103. RG 59 811.42747 Box 4805, NARA.

²⁵The descriptor ‘pinkish’ was used by Richard Krygier, founder of the Australian Committee for Cultural Freedom, in a letter to Pearl Kruger of the American Committee, 18 December 1951, in Records of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, MS 2031, Box 2, National Library of Australia (hereafter NLA), Canberra. Also 31 December 1952, FSD, American Consulate Sydney to Department of State. ‘Subject: IIA: Transmitting Combined Evaluation Report’, RG 59 511.43 Box 2359, NARA; and 1 February 1954, FSD, ‘Semi-Annual Report’, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Historical Collection (hereafter CU), University of Arkansas Special Collections (hereafter UoASC), Fayetteville, Arkansas (see n. 21).

²⁶Media across the nation announced the board membership, e.g. ‘Education Plan: Aust.-U.S. Board’, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 February 1950, 5.

²⁷On the complex administrative arrangements for the Fulbright program at the US end, see Walter Johnson and Francis Colligan, The Fulbright Program: A History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), chs 3–5.

²⁸The Board's bylaws were altered to bring the membership to eight on 26 April 1954 (Board minutes of the United States Educational Foundation in Australia (hereafter USEF), in ‘United States of America—Relations with Australia—United States Educational Foundation—General’, A1838, 250/9/8/4/2/ Part 3, NAA.

²⁹The Cold War rationale is plainly stated in ‘Brief for Cabinet for Commonwealth Conference, Colombo’, Canberra, December 1949, reprinted in Australia and the Colombo Plan 1949–1957 (Documents on Australian Foreign Policy), ed. David Lowe and Daniel Oakman (Canberra: Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2004), 22–33. It is possible that the Fulbright program, already operating in several countries, inspired the educational component of the Colombo Plan.

³⁰31 December 1952, FSD from Sydney to Washington DC. ‘Subject: IIA: Transmitting Combined Evaluation Report for the Period Dec 1 1951 to Nov 30 1952’. RG 59 511.43 Box 2359, NARA.

³¹David Lowe, Australian Between Empires: The Life of Percy Spender (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2010), 128, 118. The External Affairs file is at A432, 1950/838, NAA.

³²‘Wrote Seventy-Thousand Word Report in Longhand’, The Advertiser, 1 May 1950, 1.

³³Newman Rosenthal, Sir Charles Lowe: A Biographical Memoir (Melbourne: Robertson and Mullens, 1968), 133–6; and J. R. Poynter, ‘Lowe, Sir Charles John (1880–1969)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, ANU), http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lowe-sir-charles-john-10865/text19285 (accessed 20 July 2012).

³⁴‘May Day’, The Advertiser, 2 May 1950, 2.

³⁵On Latham's career and anti-communism, see Zelman Cowen, Sir John Latham and Other Papers (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1965); and Clem Lloyd, ‘Not Peace but a Sword: The High Court under J.G. Latham’, Adelaide Law Review 11, no. 2 (1987–8): 175–202. Volume 3 of novelist (and Fulbright alumnus) Frank Moorhouse's Edith trilogy puzzles over Latham's High Court dissent in 1951: Cold Light (Sydney: Random House, 2011).

³⁶Fiona Wheeler, ‘Sir John Latham's Extra-Judicial Advising’, Melbourne University Law Review 35, no. 2 (2011): 671–2.

³⁷Casey proposed to Jarman that Latham join the board in November 1952. A1838 250/9/8/4 Part 3, NAA.

³⁸USEF Board minutes, 15 July 1959, Archives of the Australian-American Fulbright Commission (hereafter AAFC), Canberra.

³⁹W. J. Hudson, Casey (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1995), 135.

⁴⁰‘“Nest of Traitors” in Government Service’, Sydney Morning Herald, 28 May 1952, 1; and Hudson, 242.

⁴¹3 February 1950, FSD, Sydney to Department of State: ‘USIE Country Paper—Aims and Objectives of the USIE Program in Australia’. RG 59 511.43 Box 2359, NARA.

⁴²February 1954, FSD, Canberra to Department of State, ‘Semi-Annual Report of the International Educational Exchange Program’, Group XVI Post Reports, MC 468 Box 316 file 316-7, CU, UoASC.

⁴³3 February 1950, ‘USIE Country Paper’. RG 59 511.43 Box 2359, NARA (see n. 41).

⁴⁴2 January 1951, USIE Semi-Evaluation Report, Sydney to Department of State. RG 59 511.43 Box 2359, NARA.

⁴⁵22 January 1952, FSD from USIE Sydney—Semi-Evaluation Report, signed Donald W. Smith, American Consul General. RG 59 Box 2359, NARA.

⁴⁶23 July 1952, FSD, AmConsul Sydney to DOS. Re: Transmitting Advance Narrative Reply, FY-1953 USIS Mission Prospectus. RG 59 Box 2359, NARA. Underlining in original.

⁴⁷3 February 1950, ‘USIE Country Paper’, RG 59 511.43 Box 2359, NARA.

⁴⁸On Australian threats to academic freedom, see Fiona Capp, Writers Defiled: Security Surveillance of Australian Authors and Intellectuals, 1920–1960 (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1993); Phillip Deery, ‘Scientific Freedom and Post-War Politics: Australia, 1945–55’, Historical Records of Australian Science 13, no. 1 (2000): 1–18.

⁴⁹USIE Semi-Evaluation Report, 2 January 1951, Sydney to Department of State. RG 59 511.43 Box 2359, NARA.

⁵⁰‘1,000 Students Hear Professors’, The Argus, 14 September 1951, 5. See also Fay Anderson, An Historian's Life: Max Crawford and the Politics of Academic Freedom (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2005), 232–5; Peter McPhee, 'Pansy’: A Life of Roy Douglas Wright (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1999), 98; and Zelman Cowen, A Public Life: The Memoirs of Zelman Cowen (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2006), 176–8.

⁵¹‘“Hands Off”, Say Students’, The Argus, 6 October 1951, 44. Macmahon Ball, n.d., in ‘Correspondence re referendum on the Communist Party of Australia’, Papers of R. M. Crawford, 1944–70, Box 29, 7/189, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

⁵²‘“Hands Off”, Say Students’.

⁵³Combined Evaluation Report for the Period Dec 1 1951 to Nov 30 1952. RG 59 511.43 Box 2359, NARA.

⁵⁴ Hearing on Overseas Information, part 2, 863, 1046, quoted in Johnson and Colligan, 81.

⁵⁵Richard Arndt, The First Resort of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century (Dulles: Potomac Books, 2005), 261–3. When the USIA was created in June 1953, it did not retain educational exchange on US soil, but in the field its Cultural Affairs officers, attached to US Embassies, were involved in both information and exchange programs. Thus, arguments over the relationship between exchange and information would re-ignite periodically for decades. Johnson and Colligan, 76–81.

⁵⁶Johnson and Colligan, 55–8; Arndt, 257–60; Wilson P. Dizard Jr., Inventing Public Diplomacy: The Story of the U.S. Information Agency (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004), 56–8.

⁵⁷Johnson and Colligan, 102–3; Arndt, 234, 262.

⁵⁸The first two reports are in A1838 250/9/8/4/2 Part 3, NAA, and the last two in A1838 250/9/8/4/2 Part 2, NAA. Only a small number of grantee reports have survived from the early 1950s and 1968. Most were destroyed by the Australian-American Educational Foundation Fulbright (AAEF, the successor to USEF) in 1970. AAEF Board minutes, 5 June 1970, AAFC.

⁵⁹10 August 1959, Christesen to Latham, requesting help for Meanjin, and 15 September 1959, Christesen to Latham, thanking him for having apparently saved Meanjin, in Papers of J. G. Latham, MS 1009, NLA. Fulbrighters Sydney Rubbo and Max Crawford sat on the Meanjin committee at this time.

⁶²Latham to Jarman, 21 May 1953, in ‘Australian-American Relations 1946–63’ file, Papers of Sir J. G. Latham, Series 68 Box 105, NLA.

⁶⁰Latham had publicly advocated the mind-broadening benefits of educational travel for Australians during the war: ‘Education and War’, Professor John Smyth Memorial Lecture (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1943), 19–20.

⁶¹USEF Board minutes, 25 February 1953, AAFC.

⁶³USEF Board minutes, 25 May 1953, AAFC.

⁶⁴Johnson and Colligan, 120. See also Robert Walker, ed., American Studies Abroad (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975), 5, 9, 23.

⁶⁵1 February 1954, FSD, American Embassy, Canberra, to Department of State, CU, UoASC.

⁶⁶USEF Board minutes, 26 October 1953, AAFC.

⁶⁷‘Don't Fall into Smear Trap’, The Argus, 20 November 1953, 6.

⁶⁸Daniel Oakman, ‘The Politics of Foreign Aid: Counter-Subversion and the Colombo Plan, 1950–1970’, Pacifica Review: Peace, Security and Global Change 13, no. 3 (2001): 255–72.

⁶⁹USEF Board minutes, 25 May 1953: ‘in explaining the Foundation's objectives […] the term “project” should be avoided’. AAFC.

⁷⁰Oakman, 268.

⁷¹Oakman, 259.

⁷²Interviews conducted by Alice Garner with Australian Fulbright alumni in ‘Fulbright Scholar Oral History’, NLA. Online survey of 162 American and 185 Australian alumni (2010–11). See also Sally Ninham, A Cohort of Pioneers: Australian Postgraduate Students and American Postgraduates Degrees 1949–1964 (Melbourne: Connor Court, 2011).

⁷³We will explore this personal dimension in our forthcoming book on the Fulbright program.

⁷⁴See, for example, Giles Scott-Smith, Networks of Empire: The US State Department's Foreign Leader Program in the Netherlands, France, and Britain 1950–1970 (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2008); Nicholas Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); and Giles Scott-Smith and Hans Krabbendam, The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945–1960 (London: F. Cass, 2003).

⁷⁵An American Fulbright alumnus recounted that while on his Australian exchange in 1968, he was approached by a ‘CIA guy’ who asked him to ‘rat on’ other Americans; he politely ‘declined’ (private email communication 2011). In 1973, a US national security operational instruction forbade the use of Fulbright grantees for CIA cover, implying it may have been used in this way previously (4 September 1973, ‘Operations-General: Restrictions on Operational Use of Certain Categories of Individuals’, from US Digital National Security Archive online).

⁷⁶Giles Scott-Smith and Hans Krabbendam, ‘Introduction: Boundaries to Freedom’, in Scott-Smith and Krabbendam, 3.