In this issue we concentrate on the dynamics of a single institution, the Institute of International Education. We first ran across the IIE while researching non-profit organizations, such as the Rubicon Foundation, that are conduits for CIA money. We discovered that Mrs. Morris Hadley is an IIE trustee. Her husband is head of the Rubicon Foundation. Another trustee is Mrs. Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., whose husband is president of the Foundation for Youth and Student Affairs (FYSA), principal conduit for CIA funds to the National Student Association.
When we obtained the IIE’s promotional material, we realized the importance of doing this analysis. With programs that extend to dozens of countries, the IIE is one of the prototypes of US cultural imperialism. It emphasizes student exchange because the IIE administrators recognize the political nature of education and are clear about the political intent of the IIE.
In a promotional pamphlet “Services for the International Corporation”, the IIE explains its usefulness to the corporate elite. “In the last decade, U.S. corporations have expanded their direct foreign investments by 60 per cent — to $40 billion at the end of 1963. They recognize — abroad as well as at home — that education offers the best means for stimulating purchasing power, encouraging political stability, and most important of all, developing a reservoir or the trained manpower so necessary to their overseas operations.”
To understand the IIE we must examine the wider context in which it operates. The expansion of the United States’ empire is directly a function of this economy’s need for markets to absorb excess production and its needs for supplies of strategic raw materials. Our economic system, especially after World War II, must produce more than can be consumed domestically in order to sustain profits and maintain high employment. To efficiently administer an empire, the United States needs administrators U.S. officials who are proficient in the native culture — language, mores history — must be posted around the world. Skilled indigenous managerial elites are also necessary because of their contacts and experience. The IIE is the crucial two-way link between students, universities, the Government, corporations, and potential markets and sources of raw materials.
The IIE is the administrative coordinator for a huge array of cultural-educational programs. In this series of articles we have tried to illustrate the political ends of the IIE by describing some of the programs it administers and the political
implications of those specific programs. The article about Michigan State University’s overseas involvement details a great variety of programs. It also illustrates the merger of public and private and lack of distinction between government and large
foundation sponsorship by showing some of the links between the Ford Foundation and the Agency for International Development (AID). Other articles describe a computerized intelligence roster of corporate personnel around the world and an intent to mold Latin American universities into knowledge factories. The series begins with a discussion of the political content of student exchange itself and closes with an analysis of the IIE trustees, people typical of the elite that benefits from what the IIE does. The IIE is an integral part of the U.S. corporate presence overseas.
