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…
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.…
The following essay commented on President Obama’s September 29, 2015, speech at the Leaders Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism, held at the United Nations. It appeared on the former Public Diplomacy Council website as a “Commentary,” but it is no longer available on the web. It is here re-published for reference. Foreign policy…
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…
It was perhaps the largest gathering of public diplomacy advocates and international broadcasters and media scholars ever held in America. The U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) organized a day-long conference May 7 at the U.S. Institute of Peace in an atrium within sight of the Lincoln Memorial. Highlight of the day: an address by…
First published as a Public Diplomacy Council Commentary on March 18, 2014, this essay was addressed the new Secretary of State, John Kerry. Five years later, the threat of al-Qaeda has diminished, and other foreign policy problems compete with the war on terrorism. From the third paragraph, however, the essay reviewed issues that continue to…
It appeared to some to be the end of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) a month ago. That was when its last territorial holding in southeastern Syria, the town of Baghouz, was captured by largely Kurdish units of the Syrian Democratic Forces coalition forces. A network of underground tunnels where ISIS fighters…
As a VOA foreign correspondent reporting from Sudan back in 1969, I recall distinctly a tiny mud hut within a mile or so from the confluence of the Blue and White Niles. Its rough mud bricks were splashed with crude white lettering, a makeshift campaign poster back in the relatively brief period when Sudan had…