American Outposts: Rethinking U.S. Higher Education Abroad, 1908-1972

The United States has been the global leader in higher education for nearly a century. Even as American higher education faces political and fiscal challenges at home, demand has surged abroad for ‘American-style’ universities. Despite the significant diplomatic and policy ramifications of this expansion, historical analysis of the phenomenon remains scarce. This dissertation examines the domestic history of what scholars term “education diplomacy” and its American development in the twentieth century: the funding and advancement of institutions of higher education in the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia between 1908 and 1972, the majority of which were founded and funded by American Protestants. This dissertation is the first intellectual and political history to analyze the domestic networks whose members founded, funded, and promoted these US-sponsored colleges and universities collectively. It examines as well the ways in which the core features of US-sponsored colleges and universities abroad—American accreditation, English-language instruction, and a liberal arts curriculum—became both an industry standard and an essential component of American cultural diplomacy, furthering both US influence and opposition to it around the world. The domestic structures that sustained these institutions fundamentally shaped the federal government’s commitment to international educational development after World War II. As the United States engaged in nation-building, the federal government built on the educational models and expertise of the very missionary-educators who had already established American institutions on foreign soil. By investigating the network of prominent Protestant missionaries, philanthropists, diplomats, and educators who fostered and sustained American institutions of higher education abroad in the twentieth century, my dissertation reveals the surprising origins of American international education, highlights the important role of education in cultural diplomacy, and analyzes the impact of internationalism on American Protestantism itself.