American Spaces is an umbrella program of the Bureau of International Information Programs, a bureau within the United States Department of State, to provide physical locations and applicable media with which to conduct public diplomacy. Created in the early 20th century for "countering disinformation and influencing international public opinion," these spaces, of various types and sizes, often feature unrestricted internet access as well as the rental of American books, periodicals, and DVDs.
Following World War II, these spaces proliferated in the form of libraries, Binational Centers, standalone American Centers, and America Houses all of which were brought under the "American Spaces" program in 2008. The threat of terrorism directed against these facilities resulted in the transfer of locations into either American Corners within local libraries or Information Resource Centers within US embassies. Each of these spaces exists to spread US soft power abroad.
Overview
The Office of American Spaces, subordinate to the Bureau of International Information Programs, oversees the operation of hundreds of U.S. public diplomacy locations worldwide. American Spaces was created in 2008 by Judith McHale, then the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, as an umbrella program for a host of preexisting public diplomacy initiatives. The American Spaces portfolio includes three groups of entities (American Centers, Bi-national Centers, and American Corners), some of which predate the 1953 establishment of the United States Information Agency with which some of these programs had been associated. Coupled with small literature desks in U.S. embassies called Information Resource Centers (IRCs), these spaces, as tools of public diplomacy, started as large open libraries for mass consumption in the early 20th century but shifted in the 1970s-1980s into smaller public policy-oriented reference desks aimed to influence decision-makers and professionals abroad.
The American Spaces provide physical space to support U.S. priorities through the conduct of the five main public diplomacy activities: the provision of news and information about the U.S., English-language instruction as well as EducationUSA advisement, cultural programming and events, and the continued recruitment of local nationals into U.S. exchange programs with ongoing alumni engagement. A study at American Spaces across East Asia and the Pacific published in 2016 by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions indicated that massive open online courses hosted in those American Spaces " increased open educational engagement with library users."
Paired with increased security concerns Post-9/11, the United States has returned to providing broader content for the mass audience as, some in the U.S. Government have concluded, American culture better carries the message of the nation than its spokespeople do. During fiscal year 2014, the Office of American Spaces operated a US$9 million budget while also directing $15 million in other funding for the renovation of existing spaces. During that year, the 715 American Spaces worldwide received 31.7 million visitors and, not counting bi-national centers, most of those visits were to the 37 standalone American Centers. As of 2017, the American Spaces program consisted of 659 American Centers, 111 Binational Centers, 443 American Corners, and 105 IRCs receiving more than 58.9 million visitors that year. Among public diplomacy programs, only the American Spaces and China's Confucius Institutes utilize a model of cost-sharing with local partners.
World Wars, libraries, and Binational Centers
Binational Centers
Binational Centers are privately founded English-language educational institutes, generally located in Latin America. The oldest of these, the Instituto Cultural Argentino-Norteamericano in Buenos Aires was founded October 17, 1927 by Cupertino del Campo, then the president of the Rotary Club of Buenos Aires. Further centers were established across Argentina including Córdoba, Mendoza, Rosario, Tucumán, Salta, and Santiago del Estero. As of 2016, there are more than a hundred of these centers in the Western Hemisphere which the U.S. Government considers "major hubs for English language learning and cross-cultural dialogue". Binational Centers were spread across many countries; in 1974 there were such centers in Freiberg, Heidelberg, Nuremberg, Saarbrücken, Tübingen.
