Tag: cultural diplomacy

To Know Us is to Hate Us?

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 3 Comments

By Emina Vukic

After having spent two years studying in the United States in 1950, Sayyid Qutb, leading Islamic theologian of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood who shaped the ideas of Islamists and terrorist groups including Al Qaeda, wrote an article entitled "The America That I Have Seen". In it he criticized the individual freedoms he had seen exercised, he was appalled at having seen unmarried men and women dancing together, losing themselves in lust, while the band played a revolting song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” He returned to Egypt convinced that the America is evil that had to be stopped. This came to be known as “Sayyid Qutb Syndrome” that seems to be experiencing its revival 60 years later.

When we think of the American culture we primarily think of the culture of the United States or the ethnic melting pot that the US is. The term American has, first and foremost, a nationalist connotation not the geographic one, and refers to the people who live in the US. Dictionary defines culture, among other meanings, as “The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or a group“. Culture is a product of human work and thought-it is our traditions, our language, and our cuisine. It is what our grandma taught us, the way we live, sing and dance, it is the stuff the legends are made of, the stories we tell our children, the way we try to refine, enrich our attitudes and goals through education, travel and contacts with other cultures.

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2010 Cultural Diplomacy Conference: Cultural Diplomacy as a Listening Project?

~ Matt Armstrong

On Monday, 8 November 2010, the International Communication Program of American University’s School of International Service, with sponsorship from the MountainRunner Institute and the Public Diplomacy Council, will host a 1-day conference to consider the extent to which, and how, cultural diplomacy might be a “listening project.”

From 12:00pm to 4:30pm on the AU campus, this conference is an opportunity for productive exchange among key stakeholders in the future of cultural diplomacy, all of whom should be in more regular conversation: the policy community, practitioners in public diplomacy, and academic researchers on the topic. Continue reading “2010 Cultural Diplomacy Conference: Cultural Diplomacy as a Listening Project?
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Event: Aspen Cultural Diplomacy Forum

~ Matt Armstrong

From the Aspen Institute, The Phillips Collection, and the NYU John Brademas Center for the Study of Congress present the Aspen Cultural Diplomacy Forum.

Date: October 4, 2010
Time: 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Location: The Phillips Collection, 1600 21st Street, NW, Washington, DC

How should the United States use culture both to communicate and listen to other nations? The 2010 Aspen Cultural Diplomacy Forum will feature the political and cultural leaders who are now shaping the policies and practices of cultural diplomacy in the public and private sectors.

Keynote Speaker: Madeleine K. Albright, U.S. Secretary of State (1997 – 2001)

Other speakers include:

The Honorable John Brademas, President Emeritus, New York University
Elizabeth Diller, Architect
Eric Fischl, Painter
Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (invited)
Chairman Jim Leach, National Endowment for the Humanities
Congressman Jim Moran, U.S. House of Representatives
Dr. Azar Nafisi, Author of Reading Lolita in Tehran
His Excellency Arturo Sarukhan, Mexican Ambassador to the United States
His Excellency Sameh Shoukry, Egyptian Ambassador to the United States

In Conversations Moderated by: Michael Dirda, Joseph Duffey, Dana Gioia, Frank Hodsoll, Philip Kennicott, Dorothy Kosinski, Eric Motley, and Cynthia Schneider.

Lunch will be served in the Phillips Collection courtyard.

To register for the event, please visit: https://secure.aspeninstitute.org/culturaldiplomacyforum

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Interested in the culture and history of Afghanistan from 1842 to the present day?

~ Matt Armstrong

image Too little is known in the US about the history of Afghanistan. History is something Americans tend to ignore, often to our detriment. We forget our history and ignore the history of others. Precedence is, in the American mind, reserved only for the law and not to the shaping perceptions or forming public opinion. This is a defect in our approach to global affairs. Such is the case with Afghanistan, where we failed to grasp (and ignored sage advice on) the impact of history on modern events.

Enter The Great Game: Afghanistan, an epic 3-part play (nine hours total) from the UK’s Tricycle Theatre, which explores the “culture and history of Afghanistan since Western involvement in 1842 to the present day.” This play begins its US tour in Washington, DC, next month. It then goes to Minneapolis, San Francisco, and New York. (Why no Los Angeles date? SF does not count.) Interestingly, and perhaps not surprisingly, the US tour is sponsored by the British Council in an example of cultural diplomacy.

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Yemeni YES participant discovers “real” America does not correspond to media image

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Written by Lisa Retterath of the Alliance for International Education and Cultural Exchange, where this post originally appeared.

In a recent Huffington Post article, 17-year old Maad Sharaf shares his thoughts about how a year abroad in the United States through the Youth Exchange and Study (YES) program has changed his life. Originally from Aden in the Republic of Yemen, Sharaf came to Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, where he quickly learned that the image he had gotten about the United States, based mainly on media coverage in Yemen, did not correspond to reality:

“I thought America was all about huge buildings, exciting places, drunken people everywhere and going to war with every country. That was what we saw every day on television and in American movies. Unfortunately, we never saw the nice things about it or the very respectful people.”

Sharaf also had to learn that many Americans had negative images of Yemen and the Muslim world in general that they, too, ascribed to the media. When realizing this, he felt he had to become active:

“It was then that I decided I was responsible for teaching the American people in my community who we (Muslims) are as real people, and showing them that we are not the bad people they see in the news. I felt like I was not only representing Yemen, but also the Middle East and all the Islamic countries in the world.”

As Sharaf explains, he never got over the culture shock entirely but nevertheless considers his travel to the U.S. to have changed his life for the better. He discovered “that the best way to reflect a good image of your country, your family and your religion to people who don’t have any idea about where you are coming from is to be who you really are, wherever you are.”

Conflict Resolution and Prevention: The Role for Culture Relations

~ Matt Armstrong

Earlier this year, the British Council co-hosted an event in Brussels with Security Defence Agenda and NATO to discuss how “cultural” projects facilitate dialogue between groups, play a part in preventing conflict, healing post-conflict wounds, and potentially avoid conflicts based on misunderstand or mistrust. The video below are the highlights from this conference that I attended. It includes a post-event interview with British Council Chief Executive Martin Davidson.

I strongly recommend it to those interested in creating and supporting culture-based engagement pathways that to some may be “alternative” but are ultimately fundamental. One cannot hope to successfully engage in a struggle of minds and wills if one does not understand or empower the actors or their solutions to their circumstances.

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America in Alexandria, de Tocqueville in Arab

~ Matt Armstrong

By Amb. Cynthia P. Schneider

"This is the most extraordinary place I have ever seen," exclaimed Sid Ganis, film producer and past President of the Academy of Motion Pictures, about the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the modern day reincarnation of the famous Library of Alexandria. Ganis was in Alexandria to participate in a conference organized by the Library commemorating the one year anniversary of President Obama’s Cairo speech. The brainchild of the Bibliotheca’s founding Director, Dr. Ismail Serageldin, Initiatives in Education, Science and Culture Towards Enhanced US-Muslim Countries Collaborations, aimed to focus on concrete projects and initiatives in those three areas, and not on divisive political issues such the Israeli-Palestine conflict and Iraq.

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Refurbished approach to cultural diplomacy by Martin Rose of the British Council

~ Renee Lee

In a July 2010 issue of Layalina Productions’ Perspectives, British Council officer Martin Rose argues for the West, particularly Europe, to be more “culturally literate” and refurbish its approach to cultural relations. Rose discusses the social and cultural marginalization of immigrant minorities in Europe, who recently have been lumped into the category of “Muslims” to the detriment of their national identities. He argues the need for Europe to be more open-minded and accepting of the “huge multiplicity of rivers that flow into our sea.” Urging non-Muslim Europeans to break the “Us vs. Them” mentality when approaching cultural differences, Rose advocates building trust, understanding and personal relationships to “live well in the 21st century and beyond.”

Rose also says:

  • To focus myopically on our own story as we are used to hearing it told is childish, a yearning for the warm security of the nursery.
  • Our inability to construct a larger Us is damaging and deforming: by its very nature it renders impossible a subtle, nuanced and relatively objective understanding of human culture and human society.

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USA Wins! and other news

~ Matt Armstrong

USA just won its group in the World Cup! Despite more bad referring! USA advances to the next round to play a team to be determined later this morning. Matt Ygelsias unbelievably jokes this is a result of the “failure of Obama public diplomacy” soon before Twitter’s fail whale appears.

Right, and England advances from Group C as well.

In other news:

  • General McChrystal and his staff ironically fail to grasp true and full nature of the information war they are in as they roll their stones into new careers (excluding the oft-repeated highlights, the Rolling Stone article isn’t bad).
  • Psychological Operations gets a necessary name change to Military Information (or possibly Military Information Support… but not Military Information Support Operations as I tweeted on Monday). Perhaps now we can have the necessary shift in Public Affairs to take on some of the proactive and preactive tactics, techniques, and procedures of Military Information Support (MIS) / PSYOP that are required in today’s environment.  
  • And Ann Stock is confirmed as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs while the nominees for the Broadcasting Board of Governors are not.

Posting will remain sporadic as I am still in Hawaii. Next week I’ll be at the European IO Conference presenting on Now Media with attention on Wikileaks. The following week I’ll be in DC to conduct a seminar on Now Media with presentations from Duncan MacInnes, acting Coordinator of the Bureau of International Information Programs (just announced: 2010 Democracy Video Challenge winners), Adam Pearson, and others.

Shanghai’d, or the USA Pavilion as a corporate theme park

~ Matt Armstrong

Below is an excerpt from a must-read post at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy by Cynthia Schneider and Hailey Woldt on America’s “contribution” to the World Expo now underway in China.

Let’s begin with the positive: the United States is present at the World Expo in Shanghai. The Secretary of State deserves praise for making this possible, by launching an eleventh hour fundraising drive, after the previous administration had done virtually nothing (besides rejecting a proposal that included Frank Gehry as architect). The Chinese cared enough about the U.S. presence to have contributed both public and private funds to guarantee that the U.S. showed up for Expo Shanghai 2010.

In this age of globalization and social networking, a World Expo might seem a quaint throwback to a bygone era. But for many countries, including, notably, China, it offers a global platform to present strengths and salient characteristics to the world. For example, Japan, known for its technology, powers its “green” pavilion partly from the footsteps of visitors who are treated to violin-playing robots, a single-person prototype car by Toyota, as well as a historical exhibition on Japan’s envoys to China. In its pavilion, Indonesia highlights cultural diversity; the United Arab Emirates emphasizes sustainability, a key focus of the country, with a recyclable dune shaped pavilion. Almost without exception the pavilions dazzle with innovative architecture, and with unusual shapes, colors, and lighting, as in the case of the United Kingdom’s pavilion— a futuristic display of 60,000 transparent fiberglass rods with different seeds enclosed at the ends, designed by British artist Thomas Heatherwick.

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A Tale from the Field about Religion, Culture, and Perception

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

By Gregory L. Garland

Matt’s blog has become a force to behold in the discussion about strategic communication, public diplomacy, and State/DOD relations. It has shined a light on what largely was a rarified, inside-the-beltway debate symptomatic of the old USIA’s domestic blank spot. What has been lacking are stories from the field outside the U.S. – examples of PD as it actually is conducted by PD professionals. Here’s one from my own experience that in many ways is typical.

I’ve run effective PD programs that didn’t cost Uncle Sam anything except my own time. I’ve run next to useless PD programs so flush that I couldn’t spend all the money Washington showered upon me. And I’ve run just about everything in between those extremes. As every experienced PAO knows, basic human grit, skill, and talent will go far in assembling a program, but a little bit of cash always helps. And it doesn’t have to be much, especially when compared to what other agencies spend.

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Event: Engaging Iran: Challenges and Opportunities for Civil Society

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

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This forum will assess past and current efforts for improved dialogue and exchange and examine the possible roles for civil society. In this time of intensified diplomatic action, what are the opportunities and obstacles for strengthening a citizens’ dialogue and building exchanges and institutional linkages between Iran and America? What do Americans need to understand better about Iran, and vice-versa? What communication pathways and innovations in the digital era could better convey ideas and values and support long term relations? Can civil society here and abroad contribute to the protection of human rights in Iran without endangering Iranian citizens? Are there multi-lateral, as well as bilateral, avenues for contact that might prove more effective in the long run, or possibilities to explore long-term collaboration and institution building?

Wednesday, April 7, 2010
4:00 – 8:00 pm

Meridian International Center
Meridian House
1630 Crescent Place, NW
Washington, DC 20009

RSVP by April 5 to
PDC@publicdiplomacycouncil.org
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The Role of Cultural Relations in Conflict Prevention and Resolution

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Culture is how people think, says Martin Davidson, CEO of the British Council. Thinking of culture in this way creates the necessary intellectual space to conceive of cultural relations and cultural diplomacy as something more than engagement that a payoff that is subtle and decades away. It is a way to create pathways that can be leveraged to prevent or resolve conflict in the short term.

On March 2, 2010, the British Council, with NATO and Security Defence Agenda, hosted a conference in Brussels at the Bibliothèque Solvay titled “Conflict Prevention and Resolution: the Role of Cultural Relations.” The purpose was to discuss the value of building dialogues between groups that can be non-linguistic – such as sport, art, or civic development – to create opportunities for engagement, understanding, with goal of, as the title said, preventing and resolving conflict.

Knowing how people think, how they relate to one another, and how they communicate is essential within and across cultures. Cultural activities may be expressed in terms of exchanges of teachers, students, sports, languages but there is more to it then exchanging art work. We take for granted the vocabulary and points of contact even as understanding culture is ingrained in our daily lives. In corporate America, for example, this can take the form of participating in office betting pools during college basketball finals to playing golf with the boss or clients.

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Culture and conflict: is there a role in conflict prevention, resolution for culture?

~ Matt Armstrong

What role does culture have in conflict prevention and resolution? Recently, the British Council organized an interesting and enlightened discussion on this very question. What made this even more interesting was the British Council’s partners in the venture: NATO and Security Defence Agenda, a European security and defense think tank.

At a time when public diplomats to psychological operators are coming to terms with their lack specific cultural capacities to understand and properly engage audiences, this was a timely discussion.

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The Global Impact of Brown v. Board of Education: Use of the ruling in Cold War foreign relations

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 6 Comments

To those who think public diplomacy is something that done outside America’s borders or that cultural relations do not have a direct impact on foreign relations, I strongly recommend Mary Dudziak’s Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Dudziak documents the impact of domestic policies in the global ideological struggle to US-domestic interventions by the State Department and USIA to affect domestic policy and practice. For an example of this reality unknown or forgotten by too many, see Dudziak’s essay at SCOTUS Blog, a blog on the Supreme Court of the US. An excerpt is below:

In May 1954, Brown v. Board of Education made headlines, not only in American newspapers, but also around the world.  “At Last! Whites and Black in the United States on the same school benches,” was the headline in Afrique Nouvelle, a newspaper in French West Africa (now Senegal).  In India, the Hindustan Times noted that “American democracy stands to gain in strength and prestige from the unanimous ruling” since school segregation “has been a long-standing blot on American life and civilization.”  For the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia, Brown would “go a long way toward dissipating the validity of the Communist contention that Western concepts of democracy are hypocritical.”

The global reaction to Brown was also noted in American news coverage.  The decision would “stun and silence America’s Communist traducers behind the Iron Curtain,” argued the Pittsburgh Courier, an African American newspaper, for it would “effectively impress upon millions of colored people in Asia and Africa the fact that idealism and social morality can and do prevail in the Unites States, regardless of race, creed or color.”

… When major Supreme Court cases are covered in the world press, they inform the understanding of peoples of other nations about the nature of American democracy.

… The Cold War balance of power itself seemed to turn on the faith of other nations in the benefits of democracy.  Yet in the world’s leading democracy, citizens were segregated by race, and African Americans were sometimes brutalized for attempting to exercise basic rights.

The Soviet Union took advantage of this American weakness. …

We may think that sending our legal ideas overseas helps others, but in this example American justice aided American diplomacy.

I strongly recommend you read the whole article at SCOTUS as well as pick up a copy of Dudziak’s book.

Cynthia Schneider on Cultural Diplomacy, including the surprising spread of “Idol” TV

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

Ambassador Cynthia Schneider looks at two international “American Idol”-style shows – one in Afghanistan, and one in the United Arab Emirates – and shows the surprising effect that these reality-TV competitions are creating in their societies.

More required reading on cultural diplomacy from Cynthia:

Cynthia gets it. Public diplomacy is about more than direct engagement and building relationships. The tactical desire to focus on the immediate payback of our policies blinds us to the slow yet enduring benefits of indirect empowerment of others.

See also:

Guest Post: China’s Image Marketing: How Well Can Confucius Do?

~ Matt Armstrong

By Tiger Zhang

Only 35 years ago, Confucius was widely condemned in China’s public rhetoric as a representative of the “corrupt segments of traditional culture” and a reactionary speaker of the hierarchical society that prevailed in China for at least 2 500 years. Not anymore. Today, he’s begun to serve singly as the “cultural diplomat” for China with such new titles as “the great mentor,” “representative of China’s traditional culture” and “advocate of a common faith and social order.” As part of China’s public diplomacy efforts, over 300 Confucius Institutes have been established in more than 80 countries so far. The number is expected to reach 500 by the end of next year and finally around 1 000 in all major cities around the world.

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Event: International Symposium on Cultural Diplomacy

~ Matt Armstrong

International_Symposium_on_Cultural_Diplomacy_2009_brochure_Page_01 An interesting weeklong event on cultural diplomacy will held in Berlin at the end of this month (27-31 July, 2009).

The International Symposium on Cultural Diplomacy: The Role of Soft Power in the International Environment

The International Symposium on Cultural Diplomacy 2009 will bring together a diverse group of participants from across the world for a weeklong program of lectures, social events and panel discussions that will look at the role of soft power in contemporary international relations. The speakers during the week are experts and leading figures from politics, academia, and the private sector.

The following are a selection of the speakers for the Symposium:

  • Jorge Sampaio, UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations, Former President of Portugal (1996-2006)
  • Joaquim Chissano, Former President of Mozambique (1986-2005), Former Chairperson of the African Union (2003-2004)
  • Dr. Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, Former President of Latvia (1999-2007)
  • Cassam Uteem, Former President of the Republic of Mauritius (1992-2002)
  • Dr. Vasile Puşcaş, Romanian Minister for European Affairs
  • Ints Dālderis, Minister of Culture of the Republic of Latvia
  • Borys Tarasyuk, Member of Parliament and Former Foreign Minister of the Ukraine (1998-2000, 2005-2007)
  • Dr. Erkki Tuomioja, Member of Parliament and Former Foreign Minister of Finland (2000-2007)

Further information about the Symposium can be found here.

The program brochure, including the timetable, can be found here (2.12mb PDF).

I’d like to be there but won’t be unless somebody decides to fund my trip. Any takers?

The Case for Cultural Diplomacy: Engaging Foreign Audiences

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

Making the case against the Clash of Civilizations and its wholesale aggregations (see other posts in the Cultural Warfare category), Helena Finn (in 2003) explains the need to engage. From the socio-political perspective this means listening and understanding. From the military-political persepective, this is the groundwork and foundation for Cultural Warfare. Either way, it is necessary to not see a binary world and not to assume that Arab speakers, Muslims, or some other "condition" as some would call it, as inherently defective and antagonistic to "us".

The Case for Cultural Diplomacy: Engaging Foreign Audiences (also at Foreign Affairs) abstract:

In the past few years there has been an alarming rise in anti-American sentiment around the globe, centered in the Middle East. To reverse this tide, the United States must begin working immediately to establish meaningful contact with the silent majority in the Muslim world, in ways other than through military force or traditional diplomacy. The anti-U.S. aggression witnessed today represents the boiling over of intense frustration, exacerbated by a sense that Muslims have somehow fallen behind. Rather than assuming that Islam is inherently more violent than other religions, U.S. policymakers should realize that there are practical causes of the widespread discontent in the Middle East, and try to offer practical solutions. As they do so, they should take inspiration from the successful cultural diplomacy of the Cold War, while tailoring their efforts to the new circumstances and enemies with which they are confronted. Cultural diplomacy is one of the most potent weapons in the United States’ armory, yet its importance has been consistently downplayed in favor of dramatic displays of military might.Like its predecessors during the early Cold War era, the Bush administration must realize that in waging its self-proclaimed war against extremism, winning foreigners’ voluntary allegiance to the American project will be the most important prize of all.