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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

Posts by Nicholas J. Cull

JEFFERSON ON SOFT POWER: BEHIND OBAMA’S CAIRO QUOTE
JUN 12, 2009 - 3:18PM PDT
Posted by Nicholas J. Cull
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Like many great orators President Obama knows how to quote scripture to maximum impact. His Cairo speech included passages from the Holy Koran, which his audience applauded. His conclusion also mustered words from the Talmud and a final quote from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount – "Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called the Children of God" which received no less applause. But some of his scriptures are those of America’s Civic Religion, as with his allusion to Tom Paine’s first issue of The Crisis in his inaugural address: "Let it be told to the future world...that in... FULL TEXT
 
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ENGAGEMENT IS THE NEW PUBLIC DIPLOMACY OR THE ADVENTURES OF A EUPHEMISM OF A EUPHEMISM
JUN 5, 2009 - 3:33PM PDT
Posted by Nicholas J. Cull
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President Barack Obama inherited two major public diplomacy problems. The first was the obvious crisis in America's communication with the world and the attendant decline in America's global standing. The second was the identification of the process of public diplomacy with the administration of George W. Bush. It was a paradox. The administration could not summon the cure without reminding people of one of the causes of the disease. The linking of Bush with Public Diplomacy was not wholly fair. The term was brought into its modern use in the U.S. in 1965, and moved into global currency during the... FULL TEXT
 
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LUGAR TO THE RESCUE: SENATE COMMITTEE BACKS ‘SCIENCE ENVOY’ PLAN
MAY 5, 2009 - 5:03PM PDT
Posted by Nicholas J. Cull
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Ralph Waldo Emerson famously lamented "How much of human life is lost in waiting" and observers of U.S. public diplomacy these last few months could be forgiven for saying the same thing. While other areas of government have something to show for the first one-hundred days of the Obama administration, formal public diplomacy initiatives have been hard to find. The president himself has led the way admirably with his interview on Al Arabiya, a Nowruz message to Iran and public rejection of landmark Bush excesses, but the Department of State has been slow to follow up. This stands in stark... FULL TEXT
 
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MY CULTURE + YOUR CULTURE =?
MAR 20, 2009 - 1:39PM PDT
Posted by Nicholas J. Cull
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In the last couple of years the U.S. Department of State has stepped boldly into the world of new technology. In his brief tenure as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy James Glassman seemed eager to try all manner of Web 2.0 approaches to engage the global public. Some efforts have been praised, as with the contributions of State Department diplomats to blogs in the Middle East. Others have raised eye-brows, like Deputy Assistant Secretary Coleen Graffy's excursions into the realm of Twitter. Perhaps the boldest initiative was to move the Department of State directly into the social networking... FULL TEXT
 
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MEXICO AT THE CROSS ROADS
FEB 21, 2009 - 6:51PM PDT
Posted by Nicholas J. Cull
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“Poor Mexico“ the nation’s nineteenth century dictator Porfirio Díaz supposedly remarked, “so far from God and so close to the United States!” His lament continues to strike a chord today. Mexico remains fundamentally connected to its neighbor to the North both by economic and cultural ties. A substantial number of Mexicans work in the United States and the remittances that they send home play a significant role in the Mexican economy. American brands and popular culture are everywhere in Mexico. Hollywood films are released simultaneously here and in the USA, and the country is considered a prime market. Mexican TV... FULL TEXT
 
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