The role of public diplomacy in statecraft; professional ethics; organizational principles; arguments for using public diplomacy
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…
Professor Wilfred M. McClay, then holding the SunTrust Chair of Excellence in Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, recalled his experience as a U.S. speaker who visited Turkey under State Department auspices in 2006. His article gave testimony to the value of Public Diplomacy’s speaker programs. It showed how speakers’ willingness to go…
As Americans look back on nearly two decades of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, the experiences and analyses of a junior officer of the U.S. Information Agency during the war in Vietnam, Douglas Pike (1924-2002), deserve to be recovered. This Public Diplomacy legend’s insights into what and how insurgencies communicate reach beyond Vietnam. They offer…
Boxing great Muhammad Ali traveled to Africa in early 1980. President Carter asked him to persuade African leaders to boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow because the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan. Ambassador Lannon Walker was abruptly pulled from negotiations in Angola to accompany The Champ as his diplomatic advisor. This was more than sports…
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…
The opening of a Chinese patriotic film, The Eight Hundred, scheduled for July 5 at the Shanghai Film Festival, has been canceled. Apparently, its portrayal of a Nationalist army unit that stood against the Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1937 was too positive. Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times reports “. . .…
Why were the hopes for development of new African states so disappointed after they attained independence? Former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman J. Cohen took a long view. His conclusions may help Public Diplomacy officers now assigned to Africa think through how best to support the development enterprise. State and USAID officers…
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…
I was surprised and very pleased to be invited to be the commencement speaker this year at Keuka College. I have been working with the College for the past several years on its programs in Viet Nam and elsewhere and came to know several members of the Keuka faculty and administration through our common service…
Eugene Kopp, who served twice as Deputy Director of USIA (1973-1977 and 1989-1992) and as Acting Director in 1976 -1977, died on Monday, May 13, 2019, of cardiac arrest. Mr. Kopp, a political appointee of Republican Presidents, engendered an unusual degree of respect and affection from a generation of government employees working in public diplomacy. …