During his career, George Gallup (1901-1984), the pioneer of opinion surveys and founder of the Gallup Poll, frequently commented on issues relating to Public Diplomacy. He was a member of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Information from 1973 to 1978. In a 1963 essay, he focused on the Soviet Union, but the principles Gallup advocated…
In 1988, the U.S. Information Agency’s Division for the Study of the United States published An Early American Reader for scholars outside the U.S. It was compiled and edited by Professor J. A. Leo Lemay (1935-2008), the du Pont Winterthur Professor at the University of Delaware. Lemay — also known as the “Ambassador of Early…
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 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…
Cultural interchange is “fundamentally reciprocal” and “a matter of give and take. It means influencing and being influenced.” These were themes in a speech to the Public Affairs Institute of the University of Virginia on July 8, 1939, by the Assistant Chief of the Division of Cultural Relations of the Department of State, Charles A.…
The United Nations Educational, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has, in recent years, become controversial. According to a State Department summary, “The United States joined UNESCO at its founding but later withdrew in 1984 because of a growing disparity between U.S. foreign policy and UNESCO goals. After an almost twenty-year absence from the organization, the…
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…