The most productive years of the language-and-area training program at Beirut were between 1957 and 1975. In this period the program was expanded, received more funding and trained the majority of the Middle East hands. Foreign Service officers (FSOs) who completed the Middle East Area Program (MEAP) possessed the credential that promised career advancement to the top posts. In a frantic effort to fill the expanding need from Morocco to Iran, the Beirut school developed new methods to train specialists who would report and advise on a region deemed vital in the Cold War. Its goals were simple; as the school's director told students, after two years they would have “the ability to read newspapers and a certain modest fluency in everyday conversation”. Earle Russell aimed to learn enough “to talk to them in their own language,” and his rationale in 1955 was simple: “The US can no longer afford to rely solely on French and English speaking contacts in the Middle East”. Furthermore, Russell argued politics had changed: “The Arab states are independent and extremely touchy about anything that could be mistaken for imperialism. We need to build up good personal relationships with the new leaders of the Arab world, and to do that the Department needs men who can speak Arabic”.

The MEAP's new director, Dr. Ernest McCarus, developed a new curriculum based upon Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and forged close links to the American University of Beirut (AUB) that resulted in the MEAP. The establishment of the MEAP at Beirut was central to the development of the worldview of these American diplomatic professionals. The object of the program was twofold: first, teach diplomats to speak enough Arabic to communicate and, second, provide them with area studies training so they could function effectively as political and economic reporting officers.

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI), inside Embassy Beirut, was at the center of the American diplomatic community, as well as in the city that was the commercial and financial center of the Middle East. The embassy was adjacent to the most visible symbol of American goodwill for a century: the AUB. The language students found themselves at the nexus of the intellectual, economic and political currents of the Middle East.