UNESCO and the USA: Exploring the Archives

This paper will present and discuss the UNESCO archives and their value as historical evidence, using the complex relationship between the US and UNESCO as an example. The archives of UNESCO include rich and diverse sources revealing how the organization’s ideals and actions were translated into practice. The US played a decisive role in the creation of UNESCO and in setting objectives and priorities. US citizens have profoundly marked the organization. One of these was an African American woman, Ella Griffin, who became one of the pillars of UNESCO’s “fundamental education” programme while Jim Crow still reigned in the Southern states of the US. Tensions and paradoxes of the organization have marked both the history of UNESCO and the relations with the US:

-Idealism versus realism

-Intergovernmental versus civil society

-Universalism versus diversity

The archives of UNESCO-US relations reflect this complexity in a wider global context, in particular the Cold War and decolonization processes. The paper will discuss highlights such as:

-The reinvention of Wilsonian idealism

-McCarthyism and the firing of seven American staff members

-The race issue

-New World Communication and Information Order

-Crises in the 1970s, the 1980s and from 2011