In 1951, Columbia University’s Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR) produced a series of assessments of Voice of America Broadcasts (VOA) in the Near and Middle East. These studies served as the baseline for Michael Lerner’s seminal book, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. Drawing on research at university and national archives, my paper examines the influence of the BASR reports on the development of modernization theory and its relationship to the U.S. national security establishment. I argue that Lerner's emphasis on mass media consumption offered an essentialized and derogatory view of Arab society during the early Cold War period. Modernization theory’s depiction of “traditional society,” I contend, was an ideational construct adopted by U.S. policy makers and academics as well as regional elites. I demonstrate how this construct was essential to furthering U.S. foreign policy goals in the Middle East as well as those of regional allies, who sought and received American technical expertise as well as foreign and military aid. I conclude that the works of Lerner and other modernization theorists continued to inform American foreign policy and the actions of the U.S. military in the region in the late and post-Cold War periods.