Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-rnpqb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-29T03:33:42.391Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The New Frontier Meets the White Revolution: The Peace Corps in Iran, 1962‒76

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi
Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi*
Affiliation:
California State University, Fullerton
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Peace Corps brought an estimated 1,800 Americans to Iran from 1962 to 1976, coinciding with the unfolding of Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi’s Enqelāb-e Sefid, or White Revolution. This article surveys Peace Corps Iran’s fourteen-year history by dividing it into three distinct moments defined by changing social and political conditions in Iran and shifting US‒Iranian relations. Initially, the Peace Corps Iran experiment built on earlier American foreign assistance programs, while coinciding with the roll-out of the White Revolution. Second, during its heyday in the mid-1960s, the Peace Corps inevitably became entangled with the White Revolution’s unfolding, both experiencing a phase of expansion and apparent success. Finally, as Iranian social and political conditions moved toward instability by the 1970s, Peace Corps Iran also seemed to have lost its direction and purpose, which ultimately led to a vote by volunteers to terminate the program. Based on accounts by US Peace Corps volunteers and the Iranians with whom they worked, the Peace Corps Agency, and the US State Department, this article argues that, ultimately, the Peace Corps Iran experience left a more lasting legacy on individuals than institutions.

Keywords

Peace CorpsPeace Corps IranWhite RevolutionPahlavi IranUS-Iran relations1960s Iran
Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , July 2018 , pp. 587 - 612
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author thanks Afshin Matin-asgari and the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and ideas for revision.

References

Abrahamian, Ervand. A History of Modern Iran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
ʿAlam, Asadollāh. “Peace Corps in the Past and in the Future.” Peace Corps Volunteer (March 1966): 23–24. http://www.peacecorpsonline.orgGoogle Scholar
Amanat, Abbas. Iran: A Modern History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amin, Julius A. The Peace Corps in Cameroon. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Ansari, Ali M. “The Myth of the White Revolution: Mohammad Reza Shah, ‘Modernization,’ and the Consolidation of Power.” Middle Eastern Studies 37, no. 3 (July 2001): 1–24. doi: 10.1080/714004408CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Behrooz, Maziar. Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran. London: I. B. Tauris, 1999.Google Scholar
Bill, James. The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American‒Iranian Relations. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Coates, Redmon. Come As You Are: The Peace Corps Story. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1986.Google Scholar
Cobbs-Hoffman, Elizabeth. All You Need is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, David. Democracy and the Nature of American Influence in Iran, 1941‒1979 Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Devine, Dave. Persian Mosaic: Getting Back to Iran After 25 Years. Lincoln, NE: Writer’s Showcase, 2001.Google Scholar
Dorman, William A., and Farhang, Mansour. The U.S. Press and Iran: Foreign Policy and the Journalism of Deference. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dorry, Gertrude Nye. Forty-Five Years in Iran: A Memoir. Wareham, MA: n.p., 1998.Google Scholar
Enqelāb-e Sefīd [The White Revolution]. Tehran: Bank-i Mellat, 1966 (1345) [in Persian].Google Scholar
Fischer, Fritz. Making Them Like US: Peace Corps Volunteers in the 1960s. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Sheldon, Fleming. “The Peace Corps Leaves Iran,” KhabarNameh (September 2016): 5–6.Google Scholar
Gasiorowski, Mark. U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah: Building a Client State in Iran. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geidel, Molly. Peace Corps Fantasies: How Development Shaped the Global Sixties. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Goode, James. “Reforming Iran during the Kennedy Years.” Diplomatic History 15, no. 1 (Jan. 1991): 13–29. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7709.1991.tb00117.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, Arlene Elle. Letters from Iran: Memoirs of a Peace Corps Volunteer, 1970‒72. Xlibris Corporation, 2012.Google Scholar
Hamrāz, Vida. “Tahlili bar fa’āliyat-e sepāh-e solh-e Kennedy dar iran 1962‒1976” [An analysis of Kennedy’s Peace Corps in Iran]. <Tarīkh 4, no. 13 (Summer 1388/2009): 97‒114. http://fa.journals.sid.irGoogle Scholar
Hooglund, Eric. Land and Revolution in Iran, 1960‒1980. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Hopkins, Frances Irwin, and Will, A. Irwin. The Early Years of the Peace Corps in Afghanistan: A Promising Time. Oakland, CA: Peace Corps Writers, 2014.Google Scholar
Johns, Andrew L. “The Johnson Administration, the Shah of Iran, and the Changing Pattern of U.S.‒Iranian Relations, 1965‒1967.” Journal of Cold War Studies 9, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 64–94. doi: 10.1162/jcws.2007.9.2.64CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keddie, Nikki. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Klobe, Tom. A Young American in Iran. Oakland, CA: Peace Corps Writers, 2014.Google Scholar
Krauskopf, John. Iran: Stories from the Peace Corps. San Francisco, 2013.Google Scholar
Langley, Chris. “Iran as a Peace Corps Host Country.” Sholuq Nameh 1, no. 1 (Sept. 1968): 2–14.Google Scholar
Latham, Michael E. Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Lorentz, John, dir. Iran Group One Reflections: Colorado Reunion. DVD.Google Scholar
Marks, Mary Dana. Walled In Walled Out: A Young American Woman in Iran. Oakland, CA: Peace Corps Writers, 2017.Google Scholar
Matin-asgari, Afshin. Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2001.Google Scholar
Meisler, Stanley. When the World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and its First Fifty Years. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. Land Reform and Social Change in Iran. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Nemchenok, Victor V. “‘That so Fair a Thing Should Be so Frail’: The Ford Foundation and the Failure of Rural Development in Iran, 1953‒1964.” Middle East Journal 63, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 261–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newton, John K. “The Story of the Peace Corps.” In Cultural Ties Between Iran and the United States, edited by Pasha Saleh, Ali. Tehran: Imperial, 1976.Google Scholar
“North Africa, Near East, South Asia: Iran, Rural Literacy and Community Development,” Peace Corps World: 1966.Google Scholar
Pitzer, Paul C. Hello Mister. Blurb Publishing Company, 2015.Google Scholar
Rice, Gerard. The Bold Experiment: JFK’s Peace Corps. Notre Dame, OH: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Rigsbee, W. Lynn. “The Peace Corps in Oman.” Critique: Journal for Critical Studies of the Middle East, no. 19 (Fall 2001): 31–46.Google Scholar
Jasamin, Rostam-Kolayi. “‘Beautiful Americans’: Peace Corps Iran in the global sixties.” In The Rutledge Handbook of the Global Sixties: Between Protest and Nation-Building, edited by Chen Jian, Martin Klimke, et al., New York: Routledge, 2018, pp. 303–314Google Scholar
Searles, David. The Peace Corps Experience: Challenge and Change, 1969‒1976 Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Shannon, Matthew K. “American‒Iranian Alliances: International Education, Modernization, and Human Rights during the Pahlavi Era.” Diplomatic History 39, no. 4 (2015): 661–688. doi: 10.1093/dh/dhu019CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stein, Morris. Volunteers for Peace. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966.Google Scholar
Summitt, April R. “For a White Revolution: John F. Kennedy and the Shah of Iran.” Middle East Journal 58, no. 4 (Autumn 2004): 560–575. doi: 10.3751/58.4.12CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Viorst, Milton, ed. Making a Difference: The Peace Corps at Twenty-Five. New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986.Google Scholar
Wangsness, Genna Stead. “Historical Reflections: Peace Corps Iran Musicians.” Khabar Nameh 5, no. 1 (Sept. 2016), 7, 14–15.Google Scholar
Warne, Andrew. “Psychoanalyzing Iran: Kennedy’s Iran Task Force and the Modernization of Orientalism.” The International History Review 35, no. 2 (2013): 396–422. doi: 10.1080/07075332.2012.761146CrossRefGoogle Scholar