The Cold War In Universities

As the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated in the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government directed billions of dollars to American universities to promote higher enrollments, studies of foreign languages and cultures, and, especially, scientific research. In Cold War University, Matthew Levin traces the paradox that developed: higher education became increasingly enmeshed in the Cold War struggle even as university campuses became centers of opposition to Cold War policies. The partnerships between the federal government and major research universities sparked a campus backlash that provided the foundation, Levin argues, for much of the student dissent that followed. At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, one of the hubs of student political activism in the 1950s and 1960s, the protests reached their flashpoint with the 1967 demonstrations against campus recruiters from Dow Chemical, the manufacturers of napalm. Levin documents the development of student political organizations in Madison in the 1950s and the emergence of a mass movement in the decade that followed, adding texture to the history of national youth protests of the time. He shows how the University of Wisconsin tolerated political dissent even at the height of McCarthyism, an era named for Wisconsin's own virulently anti-Communist senator, and charts the emergence of an intellectual community of students and professors that encouraged new directions in radical politics. Some of the events in Madison—especially the 1966 draft protests, the 1967 sit-in against Dow Chemical, and the 1970 Sterling Hall bombing—have become part of the fabric of "The Sixties," touchstones in an era that continues to resonate in contemporary culture and politics.

The "cold war university" is the academic component of the military-industrial-academic complex, and its archetype, according to Rebecca Lowen, is Stanford University. Her book challenges the conventional wisdom that the post-World War II "multiversity" was created by military patrons on the one hand and academic scientists on the other and points instead to the crucial role played by university administrators in making their universities dependent upon military, foundation, and industrial patronage. Contesting the view that the "federal grant university" originated with the outpouring of federal support for science after the war, Lowen shows how the Depression had put financial pressure on universities and pushed administrators to seek new modes of funding. She also details the ways that Stanford administrators transformed their institution to attract patronage. With the end of the cold war and the tightening of federal budgets, universities again face pressures not unlike those of the 1930s. Lowen's analysis of how the university became dependent on the State is essential reading for anyone concerned about the future of higher education in the post-cold war era.

Explores what happened to the university in the postwar years and why these changes occurred

In Cold War in Universities: U.S. and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy, 1945–1990 Natalia Tsvetkova offers an account of how professors and students restrained the Americanization or Sovietization of their national universities around the world during the Cold War.

Examines the politics of intellectual life during the Cold War, and the effects of U.S. intelligence and propaganda agencies on academic culture and intellectual life

In Cold War in Universities: U.S. and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy, 1945-1990 Natalia Tsvetkova offers an account of how professors and students restrained the Americanization or Sovietization of their national universities around the world during the Cold War.

"The most complete and intensiveanalysis of what [Lewis defines as the Cold War or what might be described as the inquisitionalonslaught by federal and state 'un-American' committees on the integrity and independence of theAmerican professorate during 1946-56." -Edward C. McDonagh, The American Journal ofEducation "Lewis's work reinforces a fundamental point.Administrators at over one hundred institutions share responsibility for actions that helpedstrike a tragic blow to academic freedom and intellectual culture during the 1950s. They wereparticipants in a campaign of political expedience and aggression-along with thousands ofnational leaders." -David R. Homes, Journal of HigherEducation

"Transforming American Science documents the ways in which federal funds catalyzed or accelerated changes in both university culture and in the broader system of American higher education during the post-World War II decades. The events of the book lie within the context of the Cold War, when pressure to maintain parity with the Soviet Union impelled more generous government spending and a willingness of some universities to reorient their missions in the service of country and of science. The book draws upon a substantial amount of archival research conducted in various university archives (MIT, Berkeley, Stanford) as well as at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and various presidential libraries. Author Jonathan Engel considers the re-purposing of the wartime Manhattan Engineering District and the Office of Naval Research to robust peacetime roles in supporting the nation's expanding research efforts, along with the birth of the National Science Foundation, space exploration, and atoms for peace amongst other topics. This volume is the perfect resource for all those interested in Cold War history and in the history of American science and technology policy"--