Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs
U.S. State Department division
The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the United States Department of State fosters mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries around the world. It is responsible for the United States' cultural exchange programs.
As of May 18, 2026, Cate Dillon is the Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs.
History
In 1940, Nelson Rockefeller began the exchange of persons program with Latin America, as the Coordinator of Commercial and Cultural Affairs for the American Republics. This program sent 130 journalists from Latin America to the United States.
In 1942, The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was created out of the United States Government's need for a centralized location for information. OWI was disbanded under the Truman administration, though a small element of the original structure was maintained within the State Department as the Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs (OIC), which was renamed the Office of International Information and Educational Exchange.
In 1948, the Smith–Mundt Act sought to "promote a better understanding of the United States in other countries, and to increase mutual understanding." The educational and cultural exchange aspects of the State Department were removed from the Bureau of Public Affairs and entered the newly created Bureau of Educational and Cultural Relations (CU) in 1959.
In 1961, the 87th United States Congress passed the Fulbright-Hays Act (Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act) to establish a program to "strengthen the ties which unite us with other nations by demonstrating the educational and cultural interests, developments, and achievements of the people of the United States and other nations". In 1978, the United States International Communication Agency (USICA) absorbed the bureau with the understanding that USICA was in charge of United States public diplomacy.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4998368. VIAF identifies the subject as 128354306. The Library of Congress control number is n81120615. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2026, 1940, 1942 and 1948.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.