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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

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IN ACTION AT WILTON PARK
OCT 9, 2008 - 11:46AM PDT
Posted by Nicholas J. Cull
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Today was the final day of the third Wilton Park conference on public diplomacy in the UK. Those in attendance included a mix of practitioners and academics from large and small nations, including several people associated with the CPD blog – Ashraf Haidari (who spoke brilliantly for Afghanistan), Ali Fisher, Simon Anholt, and myself. Countries represented included Romania, Mozambique, Vietnam, British Virgin Islands, Liechenstein, and Mexico. Nations with teams present included Canada, Denmark, and the USA.

The conference - artfully managed by Julia Purcell - succeeded in palpably moving the PD ball forward, with much discussion of new technology and... FULL TEXT
 
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CASTING THE BALLOT; MOVING THE NEEDLE: PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
FEB 27, 2007 - 3:04PM PDT
Posted by Nicholas J. Cull
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No matter how small their post, every embassy public affairs officer who ever arranged an exchange, distributed a pamphlet, or in the jargon of contemporary public diplomacy fretted over "moving the needle" of foreign public opinion knows that a U.S. presidential election is an opportunity. Traditionally they have been animated quadrennial civics classes, dramatizing America's democratic process and contrasting starkly with the brutality with which power changes hands or not in too much of the world.

Every four years the election is the justification for the a host of special TV programs, radio broadcasts, round table events and assistance for... FULL TEXT
 
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‘PUBLIC DIPLOMACY’ BEFORE GULLION: THE EVOLUTION OF A PHRASE
APR 18, 2006 - 1:16PM PDT
Posted by Nicholas J. Cull
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[Click here to download this report (.pdf).]

Every academic discipline has its certainties, and in the small field of public diplomacy studies it is a truth universally acknowledged that the term "public diplomacy" was coined in 1965 by Edmund Gullion, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a distinguished retired foreign service officer, when he established an Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy. An early Murrow Center brochure provided a convenient summary of Gullion's concept:

Public diplomacy… deals with the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It... FULL TEXT

1956 ALL THAT … U. S. PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AND KHRUSHCHEV’S SECRET SPEECH
MAR 30, 2006 - 1:50AM PDT
Posted by Nicholas J. Cull
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"[T]hrough the press section of USIS that the Communist parties themselves represented at the Moscow Congress have come to know one of the most serious and dramatic documents in the Communist literature of the world."

--Pietro Nenni, Secretary General, Italian Socialist Party, 1957

Given coincidence of the current on-going debate over the future of US public diplomacy and the fiftieth anniversary of Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin, it is a good moment to note the role that the organs of US public diplomacy played in heightening the impact of the speech around the world. The case is yet another set piece... FULL TEXT

THE GHOST UNDER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE
MAR 30, 2006 - 1:45AM PDT
Posted by Nicholas J. Cull
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Via National Geographic

This week workers at the Brooklyn Bridge chanced upon a forgotten room containing supplies stockpiled against a nuclear attack. Dates on the materials were evocative: 1957 - the year of Sputnik; 1962 - the year of the Cuban missile crisis. This discovery is an oddly evocative interruption from the high point last long war into what future historians will doubtless see as the opening phase of the era-defining conflict. It is like a ghost in a Shakespeare play -- reminding us of just how bleak things were in the era of Sputnik and the Cuban missile crisis, and how different... FULL TEXT

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