Strengthening Diplomatic Ties

U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson titled his iconic autobiographical account of building a new international system at the end of World War II Present at the Creation (1969). International education was present too.

In this reimagined world, while classic government-to-government relations were, of course, the centerpiece of diplomacy, there was a new element too. People-to-people relations, including international education, were also to play a role in avoiding war and building peace. President Harry S. Truman signed the Fulbright-Hays Act in 1946 to launch and fund international education. Two years later, NAFSA was founded to help the administrators who were managing the 25,000 international students who had come to the United States.

Leaders in many countries recognized that education and the sharing of ideas must be part of the foundations of peace. In November 1945, only months after the end of the war, 37 countries signed the Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), declaring:

That since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed;
That ignorance of each other’s ways and lives has been a common cause, throughout the history of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust between the peoples of the world through which their differences have all too often broken into war;
That the wide diffusion of culture, and the education of humanity for justice and liberty and peace are indispensable to the dignity of man…
That a peace