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In the 1970s, Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China (ROC),suffered a series of diplomatic setbacks. Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972 preluded the normalization between the United States (US) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), as well as the estrangement between the Republic of China (ROC)and the US. A year before, Taiwan was forced to withdraw from the United Nations (UN). Many countries then ceased to cooperate with Taiwan and turned to the PRC. This made Taiwan the “Orphan of Asia”. To survive and prevent further isolation, Taiwan rallied support from the international community, especially the US, its old ally. It strengthened propaganda in the US and attempted to build a prosperous and democratic image of itself. It sought to appeal to the American public. This thesis investigates Taiwan’s propaganda activities in the US and explores how the Kuomintang (KMT) government built a favorable image of Taiwan during the 1970s. The most notable propaganda organization of the ROC was the Government Information Office (GIO). The GIO’s overseas branch in New York, the Chinese Information Service, launched propaganda campaigns in the US through organizing political, economic and cultural activities. Although the GIO was centrally responsible for propaganda, the execution of the campaigns was a product of collaboration between various government organizations. This thesis analyzes the GIO’s responsibilities within this network of collaboration. The thesis then explores the variety of Taiwan’s propaganda strategies. The KMT tried very hard to solicit support from different sectors in the US. They appealed to the general public by launching advertising campaigns, cultural exhibitions and art performances. Apart from the general public, they also targeted reporters, members of Congress and scholars by offering material benefits including free trips to Taiwan and academic funding. Several public relation firms were also hired to publicize Taiwan in the US media. Some of these publicity campaigns were even illegal. The overseas Chinese formed a large constituent to the Taiwan government’s propaganda efforts. However, the overseas Chinese were not a singular group of people and recognizing this, the GIO tailored their campaigns accordingly. Taiwan wooed Chinatown leaders by giving them financial benefits and educated Chinatown residents through controlling the Chinese media and Chinese language schools. Meanwhile, the KMT threatened and punished Taiwan Independence Movement supporters in American universities. They also made attempts to re-educate these supporters and their families in and out of Taiwan. Through these activities, Taiwan hoped to create an illusion that the KMT supporters were not limited to people in Taiwan, but included the majority of Chinese around the world. By examining Taiwan’s propaganda organizations and strategies in the 1970s, the thesis aims to expand our knowledge of US-PRC-ROC relations in the 1970s, and show how Taiwan adapted to the changing international environment. / published_or_final_version / History / Master / Master of Philosophy

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In the late 1970's and 1980's, education issues formed a pivotal part of the American religious conservative agenda. The issues of school prayer, textbook content and the teaching of evolution in particular inspired lively debate and committed activism on the part of conservative Protestant leaders and activists. Confronting the behemoth of secular humanism, these leaders sought to win converts and to foment action in the converted through two separate modes of rhetoric: the emotional, which used impassioned arguments, and the intellectual, a more phlegmatic approach used to achieve political ends. Finding their roots in the 1920's, conservative Protestants have placed paramount importance on education issues throughout American history, believing that the United States is a fundamentally Christian nation, founded on a normative Protestant world view, and that American children should be taught according to these principles.

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In this thesis I describe a period in the Hubble Space Telescope's history during which a relatively small number of astronomers worked to encourage their colleagues to support the telescope project. I analyze astronomers' behavior in terms of the various problems which they faced. I argue that astronomical community came to support the project in part because the telescope's advocates succeeded in separating technological issues from economic ones. I also suggest that separating these two kinds of issues may have contributed to the circumstances which led to the telescope's well-publicized defects. / Master of Science

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2001. / "February 2001." / Includes bibliographical references (p. 237-248). / Combining aesthetic theory with theories of the public sphere, this dissertation examines the brief appearance of a publicly empathetic civic realm in the United States during the 1940s. The argument begins with a reevaluation of the debate over monumentality initiated in modernist architectural circles, which included such figures as Sigfried Giedion, Lewis Mumford, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, and Philip Johnson. Centering on the city, this debate recast monumentality in terms more progressive than commemorative; it posited open-ended architectural and urban strategies that offered a non-restrictive yet sympathetic public resonance. If empathy is understood as the viewer's physical and psychological engagement with an object, then the 'publicly empathetic' collects and communicates the public 's individualized engagements. The term 'publicly empathetic' underscores the distinction between totalitarian consensus, exemplified by the modernism of Mussolini's fascist Italy, and what Alexis de Tocqueville identified in 1835 as America's collective individualism, which persisted in the 1940s under the umbrella of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Springboarding from Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer's philosophies of symbolic form as unconsummated symbol, I argue that the modernism of this period did not define the public but rather expressed architecture's publicness through the recasting of form, programming, and modernism's public mandate. The chapters of this dissertation examine in turn the texts, projects and urbanism of this empathetic modernism. The projects constituting this realm are both public and private in nature; they include Charles Franklin and ... / by Sarah Whiting. / Ph.D.