Losing hearts and minds : American-Iranian relations and international education during the Cold War / Matthew K. Shannon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shannon, Matthew K., 1983- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Iranian students--United States--History--20th century.

Iranian students.

Educational exchanges--Iran--History--20th century.

Educational exchanges.

Educational exchanges--United States--History--20th century.

United States--Relations--Iran.

United States.

Iran--Relations--United States.

Iran.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (pages cm)

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2017.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Matthew K. Shannon provides readers with a reminder of a brief and congenial phase of the relationship between the United States and Iran. In Losing Hearts and Minds, Shannon tells the story of an influx of Iranian students to American college campuses between 1950 and 1979 that globalized U.S. institutions of higher education and produced alliances between Iranian youths and progressive Americans. Losing Hearts and Minds is a narrative rife with historical ironies. Because of its superpower competition with the USSR, the U.S. government worked with nongovernmental organizations to create the means for Iranians to train and study in the United States. The stated goal of this initiative was to establish a cultural foundation for the official relationship and to provide Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi with educated elites to administer an ambitious program of socioeconomic development. Despite these goals, Shannon locates the incubation of at least one possible version of the Iranian Revolution on American college campuses, which provided a space for a large and vocal community of dissident Iranian students to organize against the Pahlavi regime and earn the support of empathetic Americans. Together they rejected the Shah's authoritarian model of development and called for civil and political rights in Iran, giving unwitting support to the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: EDUCATION BETWEEN IRAN AND THE WEST

1 THE FOUNDATION

2 THE WINDOW

3 THE YOUTH

4 THE BOOM

5 THE RECKONING

Conclusion: THE INTERNATIONALISMS OF THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2017.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781501709708

1501709704

OCLC:

978295441