Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2016 January 28

= January 28 =

American equivalent of British Council
Does the US government has an equivalent of British Council? --IEditEncyclopedia (talk) 07:35, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Probably the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is the closest equivalent. Tevildo (talk) 10:50, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
 * See United States Information Agency which was shut down in 1998. Alansplodge (talk) 13:30, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I believe its successor is the Broadcasting Board of Governors. -- Jayron 32 18:09, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I saw that, but thought it might be barking up the wrong tree; please correct me if I'm wrong. The British equivalent of that is probably the BBC World Service. The part of the agency which ran the overseas libraries seems to have been done away with (we seem to have lost a contribution to this thread which talked about British and US libraries in Lisbon). Alansplodge (talk) 19:11, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The Bureau of International Information Programs is responsible for "American Spaces" in "embassies, schools, libraries, and other partner institutions", so they might be another candidate. Tevildo (talk) 22:48, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The strictly charitable cultural functions of the US analogous to the British Council, such as awards of academic scholarships for foreign exchange students, occur through various programs in both the private and governmental spheres, with much cultural exchange funded by the US Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. However, Teaching of English as a Foreign Language by US entities is sponsored by many foreign governments, the Peace Corps, and a range of for-profit and not-for-profit US educational institutions. US missionary religious organizations also do some overseas education in English and other languages. All this is in addition to the political and cultural outreach broadcasts of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which include broadcasts to Latin America, North Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe. Currently, the Broadcasting Board of Governors' major non-broadcast activity is campaigning against Internet censorship. No single entity in the US has the comprehensive brief that the British Council does; the Broadcasting Board of Governors seems, of the agencies which have some of those functions, the closest ties to the US intelligence community (most of its broadcasts into Communist countries were formerly covertly funded in part by the Central Intelligence Agency, but current funding's done openly by Congress, now). loupgarous (talk) 04:28, 3 February 2016 (UTC)