Nearly a quarter-century after the fall of the Berlin Wall, historians of science are only beginning to grasp the role of the Cold War in defining our own field. The most suggestive of recent scholarship on this topic has pointed to the shared intellectual currents that pushed Merton, Polanyi, and Kuhn toward interpretations of the scientific process that fit neatly with postwar American conceptions of the liberal democratic society. But—discussions of Polanyi’s involvement with the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom excepted—little of this promising research has focused on the institutional and political work that went into creating these convergences.

Beginning in the mid-1950s, both the United States and the Soviet Union looked to science and technology as key tools for demonstrating the superiority of their respective systems. Communist leaders trumpeted the accomplishments of central planning in transforming agricultural economies into industrial powerhouses. In contrast, the United States offered the very structure of science—supposedly open, international, and free from government interference—as a beacon of freedom to citizens of the world.

In keeping with the Congress’s theme of “Knowledge at Work,” this paper examines the work of solidifying and disseminating Western Cold War ideas on the structure and function of science as a free and objective enterprise best conducted within liberal democracies. Using archival evidence gleaned from the (U.S.) National Archives and Records Administration, the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, the Rockefeller Archives Center, and the American Philosophical Society, this paper traces the emergence of a U.S. foreign policy consensus that saw science, American-style, as a “big idea” that would help the nation win the ideological battle against Communism. U.S. science attachés, State Department science advisors, embassy officials, and other low-level diplomats actively promoted this vision of science to allies—and would-be allies—through lectures, research grants, exchange programs, textbook translations, science clubs, and other similar actions.

Collectively, these documents make clear that science joined art, music, and sport on the Cold War cultural front. If we, as historians, wish to develop a better understanding of the role of culture in the development of scientific ideas, it is critical that we acknowledge the role of a culturally specific ideology in shaping our own field.