Educational Internationalism in the Cold War Plural Visions, Global Experiences

Foreword

Joëlle Droux and Rita Hofstetter

Introduction: Internationalism, Education, and the Global Cold War

Damiano Matasci and Raphaëlle Ruppen Coutaz

Part 1: Rethinking Educational Exchanges and Encounters

1. British European University Interchange Policy (1945–1956): Constructing a European Identity?

Alice Byrne

2. North Korean Orphans in Poland: Experiences and Legacies of Education in Socialist Internationalism, 1953–1962

Intaek Hong

3. The France-GDR Friendship Association: An Instrument of the East German Education Diplomacy in France?

Franck Schmidt

4. Building the Bridge: Chinese Immigrant Scholars in American Universities, 1950s–1970s

Qing Liu

Part 2: Shaping Minds and Societies

5. Knowledge for Free? Why Two US American “Mobile Radioisotope Training Laboratories” Embarked on a World Tour in 1958

Barbara Hof

6. Assessing the Role of Subnational Actors in Educational Cooperation and Development Aid: The Case of Bavaria

Larissa Wagner

7. Fighting Communism with Political Education: The Schweizerische Aufklärungsdienst and the Anti-Communist Network People and Defence, 1965–1985

Bettina Blatter

Part 3: Competing Models and Counter-Models

8. American Fairs and Soviet Olympiads: Scientific Youth Competitions as Elite Fostering and Cold War Internationalism

Daniel Lövheim 

9. UNESCO and the Question of Early Childhood Education During the Cold War

Michel Christian

10. Envisioning Egalitarian Education: The OECD Perspective on Japanese Education in 1970

Jamyung Choi

Part 4: Views From the Global South

11. From “Mutual Understanding” to Anti-Communist Propaganda? The Institute of International Education and Chile (1919–1961)

Juliette Dumont and Manuel Suzarte 

12. Fond Hopes and Vital Needs: Abiva Publishing, the UN, and the Philippines’ Internationalist Moment

Hana Qugana

13. Journalism Training in 1960s East Africa, or the Transferability of a Stapler

Ismay Milford

14. “It Was the Time of Utopias, of Turbulence, the Time of Africa”: Algerian Students and French Coopérants in the Global 1960s

Andrea Brazzoduro

15. South-South Development Aid and Collaboration: the “Internationalist Schools” of the Isla de la Juventud in Cuba

Dayana Murguia Mendez

Conclusion: Sites of Exchange: Locating Mobility in Cold War Internationalisms

Giles Scott-Smith

Biography

Damiano Matasci is a senior research associate at the University of Geneva. His research explores the history of Europe and colonial Africa in a transnational and transimperial perspective, with a focus on education, childhood, and science. He is the author of Internationaliser l’éducation. La France, l’UNESCO et la fin des empires coloniaux en Afrique, 1945–1961 (2023) and L’école républicaine et l’étranger. Une histoire internationale des réformes scolaires en France, 1870–1914 (2015).

Raphaëlle Ruppen Coutaz is a senior lecturer at the History Department of the University of Lausanne. Her research focuses on the history of international cultural relations and draws on a variety of fields and approaches: history of the media, history of European integration, and digital history. She is the author of La voix de la Suisse à l’étranger. Radio et relations culturelles internationales (1932–1949). She is currently conducting research on the pro-European educational networks during the Cold War. She was a visiting fellow at the Department of History and Civilization of the European University Institute in Florence and a visiting professor at the Research Center of Excellence “Écrire une histoire nouvelle de l’Europe” (LabEx EHNE) in Paris.