Akbar Ayazi, who emigrated to the U.S. from his native Afghanistan in 1980, served as a distinguished broadcaster and executive for the Voice of America for 27 years and for a decade at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He passed away August 25 after a long battle with lung cancer. Mr. Ayazi is survived by his…
In the 20th century, two distinguished leaders at VOA were indispensable in the growth of the nation’s largest U.S.-funded international broadcaster: former Central News editor in chief and White House correspondent Philomena (Phil) Jurey, 91, and Near East and South Asia director Salman (Sam) M. Hilmy, 89. Their work significantly amplified America’s public diplomacy during…
In a live telecast on C-Span August 5, Radio Free Asia Director Libby Liu addressed a roundtable of public diplomacy specialists and focused on RFA’s U.S. government-funded multimedia network’s broadcasts to the Peoples Republic of China. RFA broadcasts on television, radio, and a variety of online channels to six East Asian countries: Cambodia, China, Laos,…
On July 29, the Voice of America launched one of world’s most unique international broadcast language services: Rohingya. That service now reaches hundreds of thousands of displaced peoples in Bangladesh who for years have fled severe anti-Muslim persecution in neighboring Myanmar, or Burma. The five day a week half-hour program, Lifeline, is broadcast via radio on medium…
Norway is a stunningly beautiful, strikingly picturesque Scandinavian country. Its five and a half million citizens thrive in a land slightly larger than New Mexico. Less well known is Norway’s nearly 120 years of peace building around the globe, in many ways, a triumph of public diplomacy. The Heil family of three generations had a…
As summer heat envelops much of the developing world, the power of street protests is something autocrats fear. Here’s a summary for public diplomacy specialists in free societies to consider: —In Turkey, the June 23 runoff election victory of Ekrem Imamoglu as mayor of Istanbul, the country’s largest city, was a significant setback for the…
As the director of a VOA bureau in Cairo, I can remember hearing Israel’s opening salvo of bombing on airfields just outside the Egyptian capital. It marked the start, at 10 a.m. that sweltering Monday morning of June 5, 1967, of the six-day Arab-Israeli war whose scars even today endanger yet another generation in the perpetually…
A capacity crowd filled a 6th floor lecture hall at George Washington University’s School of International Studies. It was the First Monday Forum on June 3 of public diplomacy specialists and GWU students. They came to hear Dr. Nicholas J. Cull of the University of Southern California, an internationally known scholar and advocate of the…
As a crisis watcher for more than a half century, I’m used to hearing alarm bells as serious conflicts appear in various regions of our planet. Today, the principal crisis-prone area in the world is the Arabian peninsula. One can’t miss noticing in daily headlines the threat of war between Iran and the United States.…
What is public diplomacy? It’s a term used more widely than ever in the 21st century, as a leading scholar of the concept, the University of Southern California’s Professor Nicholas J. Cull explains: “Public diplomacy deals with the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of a nation’s foreign policies.” Dr. Cull adds…