| Summary/Abstract |
This article uncovers the unexplored history of the men and women who used their GI Bill stipends to study at foreign institutions in the years following World War II. The rapid expansion of the GI Bill’s educational subsidies abroad and the numerous challenges that expansion presented highlighted the possibilities and risks of educational exchanges as a diplomatic tool during the Cold War. Moreover, the unanticipated outcomes of the GI program helped shape a framework for subsequent educational exchange initiatives including the most successful government-sponsored exchange, the Fulbright program. Ultimately, this article demonstrates that as a policy for veterans of a world war, the GI Bill was not simply domestic in scope, but rather a program that bridged the domestic and the global in a way that was representative of broader American policy in the postwar years.
|