A few years ago, Walter Russell Mead, professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College and editor at large of the American Interest, proposed a “strategy to counter democracy’s global retreat.” “Produce inexpensive, good translations of Burke, Locke and other thinkers, and spread the texts widely,” he urged. His call to action should be…
“A lie can travel halfway around the world,” Mark Twain once wrote, “while the truth is putting its shoes on.” In this new media age, one wonders what the famed author might have thought about the truth’s instantaneous global, multimedia reach during the recent ten-day eruption of anti-government protests in Iran. The latest…
As a consequence of President Eisenhower’s historic 1953 UN General Assembly speech, “Atomic Power for Peace’” the world-wide promotion of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy became the young U.S. Information Agency’s first major mission. I had been managing a U.S. Mission-sponsored Atoms-for-Peace exhibition at the Berlin Industrial Fair. It included a huge replica of…
“The last three feet,” according to the late famed journalist and USIA Director Edward R. Murrow, is a classic catchword in public diplomacy statecraft. A common misperception is that U.S.-funded international broadcasters transmit signals from thousands of miles away and are largely removed from their listeners, viewers and online users. Virtually unknown: the extraordinary reach…