The Center’s activities are among the enduring legacies of comparative and international educator Dr. Gerald H. Read, whose vision and generosity facilitated its establishment in 1987. A distinguished emeritus professor at Kent State University’s College and Graduate School of Education, Dr. Read was known worldwide as a co-founder of the Comparative International Education Society (CIES) and its prestigious journal, Comparative Education Review.  

Beyond the ‘Iron Curtain’: During his tenure as CIES secretary/treasurer (1956-1966), Dr. Read established valuable contacts with educators in the Soviet Union; and in 1958, he worked closely with scholar William Brickman to facilitate the first academic exchange agreement between the United States and Soviet Union. The pair went on, despite opposition from some U.S.organizations, to conduct a groundbreaking seminar held in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and Tashkent.

he seminar became the basis for the book, The Changing Soviet School, which Dr. Read co-authored with Brickman and George Bereday. Consistent with Dr. Read’s later work, the book included perceptive, often empathetic, analyses of the challenges faced by Soviet educators—challenges that frequently mirrored those encountered by their U.S. counterparts.

Dr. Read’s enduring interest in Eastern Europe’s educational systems became apparent 36 years later, in the wake of then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of Perestroika, when he co-authored the book, Russian Education: Tradition and Transition, with Brian Holmes of the University of London and Natalyia Voskrensenskaya of the Russian Academy of Education.

Commitment to educational travel: A deeply rooted conviction that travel is an invaluable way to expose educators to international trends led Dr. Read, in 1964, to invite an Ohio superintendent of schools “to get a firsthand look at a socialist educational system,” says Marion Korllos, a longtime assistant and personal friend who served as director of international travel programs at the Center from 1987 to 2002. “Subsequent visits to schools in the Soviet Union drew large, enthusiastic groups of U.S.educators, despite the prevalence of Cold War sentiment,” she recalls.

Such overwhelming interest in Soviet education among U.S.educators fueled Dr. Read’s decision to establish the Center for the Study of Socialist Education (CSSE), which was housed at Kent State University from 1969 to 1986. “But travel to the Soviet Union was not enough for Gerald,” says Dr. Kenneth Cushner, Associate Dean for Student Life and Intercultural Affairs, College and Graduate School of Education. “After opening doors for us in the Soviet Union, he went on to negotiate a number of other exchange agreements and to organize a number of international travel seminars.”

The travel programs were expanded to include visits to other socialist countries such as Poland, Rumania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and, in 1973, the People’s Republic of China. Eventually, Dr. Read also encouraged visits to classrooms in the socialist countries of Scandinavia.

In step with Dr. Read’s efforts to promote understanding among educators who operated within opposed political systems were his steps to break down racial barriers. In 1962, for instance, he organized a tour of several African countries, including South Africa. Faced with South Africa’s official policy of denying visas to non-white foreigners, Dr. Read persuaded the Apartheid government to provide documents to an African-American educator from Canton,Ohio. 

Investing in a global future: When Dr. Read retired from Kent State University in 1976, after more than 30 years as a professor of comparative and international education, he left behind a generous endowment to the College of Education. Funds from the endowment were used to establish the Gerald H. Read Distinguished Lecturer Series and, in 1987, the Gerald H. Read Center for International and Intercultural Education. Today, the Center continues its efforts to preserve and promote the spirit of international openness and exchange exemplified by Dr. Read’s remarkable career.