Outline & Notes for an Oral Presentation, "Should a Hot Potato Be Funded? Governments and Cultural Diplomacy."

Outline and Notes for an Oral Presentation 

"Should a Hot Potato Be Funded? Governments and Cultural Diplomacy." 

(John Brown)

1. There is not a universally accepted definition of the term "cultural diplomacy"

• The first reference to it that I came across in the Library of Congress catalogue is in a State Department publication dated 1959. An early use of the words can also be found in the volume by Harvard scholar, The Soviet Cultural Offensive; the role of Cultural Diplomacy in Soviet Foreign Policy (1960)

2. Is "cultural diplomacy" an oxymoron?

• (Just as "public diplomacy," for some traditional diplomats, cultural diplomacy can also be seen as a contradiction in terms: after all, how can diplomacy, traditionally held behind closed door and carried out by a small number of negotiators, ever be considered "public"?) 
• To some "culture," while a difficult term to define, arguably should not serve in its adjectival form as a  type of diplomacy, as these two words cover arguably very different types of activities.
• While both "culture" and "diplomacy" both involve communications, they are different types of communications.
• To generalize dangerously, culture -- high, popular, even "anthropological" -- is essentially a declaration, whereas diplomacy is at heart negotiations. Culture presents a vision of the world; diplomacy shapes aspects of the world. A declaration  suggests boldness; negotiations suggests caution. 
Diplomacy is the art of letting someone have your way - Daniele Varè
• Example of  artistic declaration: "I want [poetry] to be inconceivably astonishing to me. I want to encounter it as the most threatening and primitive freshness, I want to be so comprehensively confused by it that it takes me forever to learn to live with and to reconcile the world that I already know with whatever this poetry is and does" -- Keston Sutherland, "at the forefront of the experimental movement in contemporary British poetry" (The Times Literary Supplement, April 12, 2013, p. 40)
• This is not the way a diplomat/negotiator talks with his colleagues/audience: "Bureaucrats are rarely celebrated for their aesthetic sensibilities. Indeed, the modern machinery of state seems to suffocate the creative spirit by design" -- Michael K Busch. 

3. Art and government are often at odds.

• Art -- high or low -- is an expression of culture.  Diplomacy is a function of government.  
• Since time immemorial art and goverment have been in a state of tension.  Plato wanted to expel poets from his Republic. History is rampant with examples of conflict between artists and the political elite.

4. American cultural diplomacy became an increasingly important part of U.S. government overseas outreach in the late 1930s, with the creation of the State Department's Division of Cultural Relations (1938), established to offset Nazi/fascist propaganda in Latin America.

• While used by the USG in times of war, "cultural diplomacy" is at odds with traditional American suspicions/dismissal of government-sponsored "national culture."
• No Ministry of Culture in the U.S.
• Hollywood does the job
• American identity based on political ideals, not high culture "achievements."
• Nelson Rockefeller can be considered a father of American cultural diplomacy, thanks to his leadership as coordinator of the Office of Inter-American Affairs (appointed in 1940)
• During the Cold War, cultural diplomacy became a key part of U.S. "public diplomacy" to offset Soviet propaganda depicting the U.S. as nekul'turnyi (not cultured; e.g., loud people in Hawaian shirts chewing gum)
• Today, USG "cultural diplomacy," as implemented by the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, remains an part of American PD

5.  Thoughout its history as an instrument ("tool")  of U.S. diplomacy, cultural diplomacy at times "clashed" with diplomacy, both traditional and public. Examples:

• Advancing American Art exhibit: pulled out of Europe because of its controversial display of modern art
• Jazz Ambassadors: At odds with State Department "decorum"/scheduling/"target audiences 
• Hip Hop artists: Sanitized versions sent overseas
• During the early Cold War, cultural diplomacy was funded not only by the State Department and the United States Information Agency, but also covertly by the Central Intelligence Agency, in part to keep Congress in the dark about its potentially embarrassing, "shocking" artistic activities.

6. Governments must recognize that culture will not always serve its purposes.  It is a hot potato: 
"L'amour est enfant de bohème: Il n'a jamais, jamais, connu de loi." While it can enlighten and delight, it also questions, challenges, clashes with other cultures. 

• Take, as an example of the disruptive nature of art, modernist painting/music, which shocked, and continues to shock, publics.

7. Only when cultural diplomacy presents culture as an activity of value in and of itself, rather than as an instrument of policy, will its support of it be worthwhile.

• Consider "culinary diplomacy" (also known as gastrodiplomacy): What's most important to its "audience" is the quality of the food, not its being used as a "tool" of negotiations or persuasion. If it's a bad meal, it's a bad meal.
• Goverments must take a risk with this hot potato -- otherwise it ceases to be himself and fails as a form of communication.
• “Audiences are like dogs — they can smell what’s underneath the material, and that’s something you can’t plan or fake." Comedian Sarah Silverman

8. Art can masquerade as propaganda, but propaganda can't masquerade as art.

DOCUMENTATION RELEVANT QUOTATIONS/TEXTS

FROM: John Brown, "On Cultural Exchange," Notes and Essays

"No commodity is quite so strange/As this thing called cultural exchange."

--So wrote Dave and Iola Brubeck in their musical with Louis Armstrong, The Real Ambassadors.

***

Below a comment by yours truly to the following article: "Cultural Exchange and the Politics of Suspicion" - Robert Albro, PD News–CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy:

Bob, Thank you for your article. In my view, what is particularly hard for congressional decision makers to accept is that cultural exchanges -- in and of themselves -- are worthwhile. Cultural exchanges are all too often seen by those in elected positions of influence as merely a "tool" for another, more "important" purpose, e.g., fight terrorism, convert the world to American "values," etc.

In other words, policy makers, concerned that the public could accuse them of wasting hard-earned tax dollars, are unwilling to "take the risk" that cultural exchanges, per se, are worth taking a risk, so these exchanges have to be "justified" politically by invoking a purpose other than themselves (see my piece at).

As Frank Ninkovich, U.S. Information and Cultural Diplomacy (1996) p. 58, puts it: "[C]ultural or informational programs cannot effectively promote narrow national interests (of which the United States has many). That sort of thing must be left to the traditional instruments of foreign policy. The programs themselves, like internationalism more generally, are based at bottom on an act of faith."  

"Act of faith" are the key words here, in my opinion; indeed, studying the liberal arts (and taking them seriously because what, in themselves, they have to offer) is "an act of faith."

(Of course, for all his good intentions, Ninkovich himself could be accused of seeing cultural diplomacy as a "vehicle" for promoting an agenda beyond cultural diplomacy -- laudatory "internationalism").

Still, his heart is in the right place, in my view -- that, as he puts it (pp. 58-59) "an open and human world can be constructed through dialogue. Without that assumption, there would be no need for such programs except as outright propaganda. But in that case Washington would be left with power as the only reliable medium for promoting U.S. national interests."

Image from

FROM: John Brown, "New Initiatives in Cultural Diplomacy: A Comment," Notes and Essays

Yesterday (January 7) I had the privilege to attend a one-hour forum, "New Initiatives in Cultural Diplomacy," presented by the University of Southern California Annenberg Center on Communications Policy and Leadership, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, and the Public Diplomacy Council. The event's venue was the American Foreign Service Association in Washington D.C. Among the 80-person audience were key individuals from the diplomatic, media, and academic world.

The elegant and brilliant Adam C. Powell III, Senior Fellow, USC Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, and the equally charismatic Morris "Bud" Jacobs, President, Public Diplomacy Council, gave brief introductory remarks. Jacobs noted, quite astutely, that cultural diplomacy's importance was inversely related to the funding it received.

Speakers were (in order of their ten/fifteen minute presentations): Aluwani Museisi, First Secretary, Socio-Economic and Development, Embassy of the Republic of South Africa to the United States; Roger J. Whyte II, Director of Special Events, Washington Performing Arts Society; Anita Maynard-Losh, Director of Community Engagement, Arena Stage; Pennie Ojeda, Director, International Activities, National Endowment for the Arts. The moderator was Susan Clampitt, a consultant to nonprofit and foundations in organizational capacity.

Museisi said that although he, as a diplomat, was "paid" to speak, he personally strongly believed that cultural programs brought people together and thus underscored our common humanity. He outlined some of his embassy's cultural current and future initiatives. Whyte, whose bio includes "producing the logistics of the First Lady's trip to Haiti," spoke about his collaboration with the South African Embassy. Maynard-Losh, who (among her many activities) conceived and directed an Alaska Native-inspired production of MacBeth, summarized her cultural outreach activities in India. Ojeda, who provides expertise and guidance on international cultural policy issues with the U.S. Department of State, power-pointed the international activities of the National Endowment for the Arts, focusing on "Southern Exposure," a program to introduce North Americans to Latin American culture. (I am citing from the hand-out at the meeting).

The speakers admirably demonstrated their deep commitment to culture. But as they spoke I could not quite agree with what they perceive culture to be. Essentially, for them, it is an instrument for a purpose other than itself. At the risk of simplifying, their views on culture seemed to me to be, in a nutshell:

• A tool in an embassy's efforts to present a positive image of a country (e.g., South Africa) as multicultural and diverse (Museisi)
• Yet another "program" that has to be organized efficiently (Whyte)
• A kind of social/political therapy that gives the oppressed/underprivileged (e.g.. young women in India), a chance to "speak out" (Maynard-Losh)
• An activity -- gentle social engineering with international dimensions -- that constantly needs funding (Ojeda)

"Engagement" and "listening" were key words in the compelling speakers' presentations. I'm not quite sure what "engagement" exactly means; it reminds me of an over-priced ring for someone you might never marry. As for "listening," thank God Picasso created while not waiting for anyone to "listen."

Distant from the distinguished speakers' minds seemed that culture:

• Provides a magic moment, in and of itself, that goes beyond national/state/bureaucratic/political/gender-focused interests
• Is not merely about social events that from a PR perspective have to "look great"
• Doesn't necessarily mean making discriminated-against persons in poverty-stricken countries feel good about themselves, an attitude reflecting a kind of missionary condescension from citizens in a "homeland" where children get murdered in an elementary school
• Is not a state/corporate program, needing millions of taxpayers' dollars to administer, that supposedly "brings people together"

In response to such utilitarian views on culture, I could not help but think of La Fontaine:

Ô douce Volupté, sans qui, dès notre enfance,/ Le vivre et le mourir nous deviendraient égaux.

But, as the flip side of the same "pleasurable" coin, the unique treasures of culture (please, please don't call them "new initiatives" -- since when do "initiatives" need the adjective "new"?) can be terrifying and unsettling, produced by often thank-God mad outsiders who question everything, including culture itself.

This "dark" side of culture (think of Burroughs or Céline) -- part of our human condition here on planet earth -- was totally missing from our speakers' memorable wonder bread presentations.

FROM: John Brown, “Arts Diplomacy: The Neglected Aspect of  Cultural Diplomacy,” in   William P. Kiehl, ed.  America’s Dialogue with the World

http://www.everydayarchive.org/art500/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/arts-diplomacy_brown.pdf

The  neglect of arts diplomacy by the U.S. government reflects certain  long-term traits of the American national character: it is puritanical, democratic, void of a national culture, yet it influences the world through  its mass entertainment. It is, of course, an oversimplification to reduce  America’s national character to being “puritanical.” But it is undeniable,  as the respected art historian Lloyd Goodrich noted, that in America,  thanks to “a survival from our pioneer and puritan past,” art has been  “considered a luxury and non-essential—an attitude that still persists.” Hard work, not arts appreciation, is the Puritan’s priority, even if he did  tolerate church music.

A second element in our national character that makes our government historically disinclined towards arts diplomacy is the political—specifically, democratic—nature of American society, for which culture—specifically, the high arts—is far less important as a means of national self definition than in countries with older, more established cultures in continental Europe or Asia (France and China immediately come to mind). To  be sure, from its very first days the Republic included citizens who had  an admiration for the finer things in life (John Adams and Thomas  Jefferson among them), and by the end of the nineteenth century wealthy  American industrialists were well on their way to accumulating great  art collections.

But, despite this minority interest in the high arts, it  was not artistic achievements or standards, but universal political ideals  stressing the dignity of the common man, which made the United States  what Americans consider it to be: “democratic,” not “cultured.” “We the  people” see little need for a unique national high culture that should be promoted at home or abroad; as Sumner Welles, the under secretary of state during the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration, remarked,  “The concept of an ‘official culture’ is alien to us.” We are e pluribus unum, as reading Tocqueville’s Democracy in America suggests, by our sense of  belonging to a community or communities, often local, ephemeral ones  that do not have the range, permanence, or country-wide magnetism of a state-supported “national culture.” !is is true today more than ever. “We live in a multicultural nation, and no scholar would think of writing as confidently about a single ‘American mind’ or ‘American culture’ as did  the postwar historians,” Professor David S. Brown recently noted.

But if we Americans, like the British, do not feel we have a national  culture that should be promoted abroad as France did with its mission  civilisatrice or Germany with its Kultur, we certainly have a superficially ever-changing popular culture that has seduced (some critics of cultural  imperialism would say violated) the world since WorldWarI: our B-films, pop music, fashion, best-sellers. This culture—essentially entertainment or “relaxation” that provides biological rather than aesthetic satisfaction—is the product of the profit-seeking private sector, and its global expansion provides intellectual ammunition to American citizens, both inside and outside of government, who see no reason to promote arts diplomacy abroad at the taxpayer’s expense. The planetary dominance of Hollywood—while increasingly under challenge—is a third long-term reason why the American government neglects arts diplomacy. ...

With this kind of meager legal authority for the promotion of American  high art abroad, the U.S. government became haphazardly and often  reluctantly involved, as the Cold War unfolded in its zigzag fashion, in  promoting American high culture overseas, largely in reaction to what  it perceived as Soviet cultural attacks showcasing the USSR’s artistic

achievements, mostly in classical ballet and music. “Cultural,” however, did not entirely vanish from the vocabulary of American foreign policy. In 1958, the U.S. government signed a “cultural” agreement with the  USSR, but the agreement focused on educational exchanges.

In 1961,  during the administration of John F. Kennedy (a White House interest in high culture is what helps set JFK’s tenure apart from other presidencies in American history), an act consolidating various exchanges, the Fulbright-Hays Act (Public Law 87-256), was passed by Congress under the title of the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchanges Act.

But  this occasional resurfacing of the “cultural” label during various periods of the Cold War did not mean that the U.S. government had overcome its traditional discomfort with using the arts as a tool of foreign policy.  Indeed, Kennedy’s appointee to the new post of assistant secretary of  state for educational and cultural affairs, Philip H. Coombs, had this to say about his uneasiness regarding “cultural” as a way to describe his operations:

It is, for one, even more ambiguous in English than the word “educational,”  meaning for some the fine and performing arts alone; and meaning for others,  among them the sociologists, all the folkways, techniques and values of a given  society. Secondly, the term “cultural relations” has long been used to connote an  aspect of diplomacy practiced by European nations which is considerably narrower  in outlook than the educational component … and I should like to differentiate  the two. Finally, there is the unhappy fact that in our society this excellent word  “culture” is in some quarters its own worst enemy, as anyone will agree who  has ever sought funds for “cultural affairs” from a  congressional appropriations  committee. There are still those who find it a less than manly word and deride the  notion that anything wearing the label could possibly have important bearing on  the serious business of foreign policy. (Even the British have their troubles with it. The  London Times in 1934 congratulated the founders of the British Council for avoiding “culture” in its title. It was a word, the Times observed, which “comes clumsily and shyly off the Englishman’s tongue.”)

Despite the State Department’s reservations about culture as a tool of  foreign policy, a small minority of officials, together with their allies in the  private sector, were of the strong opinion that high American art could  play an important role in foreign policy, and particularly in winning the  hearts and minds of the intelligentsia in Cold War Europe. Among these  true believers, as recent studies have pointed out, were cultivated elitist agents in the Central Intelligence Agency, who for some fifteen years from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s covertly used agency funds to promote American high culture abroad supposedly without the Congress knowing about it. This considerable CIA support was not limited to the display  of avant-garde exhibitions with paintings by groundbreaking artists like  Jackson Pollock, but to music and literature as well. The CIA’s secretly underwritten high-brow operations were facilitated in large part by the agency’s front organization, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, many of whose distinguished members, intellectuals from Western Europe and the United States, later claimed they had no idea their freedom-loving organization was subsidized by art-admiring agents well connected with  eastern establishment types like Nelson Rockefeller. The credo of these  culture vultures is perhaps best summarized by the Cold War guru George Kennan, who noted that “[t]his country has no Ministry of Culture, and

the CIA was obliged to do what it could to try to fill this gap. It should  be praised for having done so.”

But the CIA’s game—it is not unfair to call it that—was up by 1967, when its covertly funded arts diplomacy was  disclosed by the media and then liquidated by Congress, thereby leading  to the continuing neglect of cultural diplomacy.

T.S. Eliot defined culture as “that which makes life worth living.” Cited in Robert Taylor, “Cultural Diplomacy: The Future” (n.d.), http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/

vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&requesttimeout=500&folder=7&paper=364.

FROM: Cultural Diplomacy: The Linchpin of Public Diplomacy Report of the Advisory Committee on Cultural Diplomacy U.S. Department of State September 2005

http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/54374.pdf

Cultural diplomacy is the linchpin of public diplomacy; for it is in cultural activities that a nation’s idea of itself is best represented. And cultural diplomacy can enhance our national security in subtle, wide-ranging, and sustainable ways. Indeed history may record that America’s cultural riches played no less a role than military action in shaping our international leadership, including the war on terror. For the values embedded in our artistic and intellectual traditions form a bulwark against the forces of darkness. The ideals of the Founding Fathers, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and the Bill of Rights, take on new life in the vibrant traditions of American art, dance, film, jazz, and literature, which continue to inspire people the world over despite our political differences. But in the wake of the invasion of Iraq, the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, and the controversy over the handling of detainees at Bagram and Guantánamo Bay, America is viewed in much of the world less as a beacon of hope than as a dangerous force to be countered. This view diminishes our ability to champion freedom, democracy, and individual dignity—ideas that continue to fuel hope for oppressed peoples everywhere. The erosion of our trust and credibility within the international community must be reversed if we hope to use more than our military and economic might in the shaping of world opinion. Culture matters. Cultural diplomacy reveals the soul of a nation, which may explain its complicated history in American political life: when our nation is at war, every tool in the diplomatic

kit bag is employed, including the promotion of cultural activities. But when peace returns, culture gets short shrift, because of our traditional lack of public support for the arts. Now that we are at war again, interest in cultural diplomacy is on the rise. Perhaps this time we can create enduring structures within which to practice effective cultural diplomacy and articulate a sustaining vision of the role that culture can play in enhancing the security of this country. And if, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggests, America’s involvement in Iraq requires “a generational commitment,” then our cultural diplomacy efforts require a similar commitment of funds, expertise, courage, and time.

Cultural diplomacy:

• Helps create “a foundation of trust” with other peoples, which policy makers can build on to reach political, economic, and military agreements;

• Encourages other peoples to give the United States the benefit of the doubt on specific policy issues or requests for collaboration, since there is a presumption of shared interests;

• Demonstrates our values, and our interest in values, and combats the popular notion that Americans are shallow, violent, and godless;

• Affirms that we have such values as family, faith, and the desire for education in common with others;

• Creates relationships with peoples, which endure beyond changes in government;
 • Can reach influential members of foreign societies, who cannot be reached through traditional embassy functions;

• Provides a positive agenda for cooperation in spite of policy differences;

• Creates a neutral platform for people-to-people contact;

• Serves as a flexible, universally acceptable vehicle for rapprochement with

countries where diplomatic relations have been strained or are absent;

• Is uniquely able to reach out to young people, to non-elites, to broad audiences with a much reduced language barrier;

• Fosters the growth of civil society;

• Educates Americans on the values and sensitivities of other societies, helping us to avoid gaffes and missteps;

• Counterbalances misunderstanding, hatred, and terrorism;

• Can leaven foreign internal cultural debates on the side of openness and tolerance.

John Brown, “The Backlash against Cultural Diplomacy,” Huffington Post (November 8, 2009)

As I compile, for my sins (which are many), the Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review, I have noticed, in recent weeks, a backlash against what is known as "cultural diplomacy," often defined as government-supported promotion of a country's artistic achievements overseas.

These critical reactions are, in my view, worthy of serious consideration, as they underscore the importance of not turning art into propaganda.

But I would not go so far as to say the US government should not, openly and visibly, sponsor cultural events overseas.

The initial salvo in the recent anti-cultural diplomacy mood came from Michael Kaiser, President of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in a posting in the Huffington Post. He asks:

But does traditional cultural diplomacy work? Do we need state-supported tours by American performing arts groups when without federal funding so many of our performers and performing arts groups are appearing all over the world?

Instead of traditional cultural diplomacy, Mr. Kaiser suggests:

We can teach how we use marketing to expand the reach of our arts organizations. We can teach the importance of long-term program planning for building new sources of support.

The distinguished intellectual Benjamin R. Barber, in an article for the British Independent, writes:

[C]ultural diplomacy cannot pretend to change how countries do business and probably should not even try.

From across the pond, the most convincing, articulate case against cultural diplomacy is made by Tiffany Jenkins, in her thoughtful, but factually inaccurate, article "Artists: resist this propagandist agenda":

[T]he arts have been used by leaders throughout history to bolster their status and authority, and to lend weight to concepts such as 'the nation'. Artists, in turn, have used their talents to promote different agendas and to take sides in conflicts and revolutions. But, in recent times, this relationship has been formalised, made more explicit and prescriptive.

Cultural Diplomacy was recently the object of a spoof, The Embassy, a multi-disciplinary group show being held during Frieze Art Fair [in October in London]. A parody of outmoded cultural diplomacy, The Embassy is that of an anonymous country, a dystopia whose tyrannical government has tested the patience of its people and brought them to tipping point. ... Globalisation has rendered the sometime patronising kind of cultural exchange once conducted by embassies dated.

Critics of cultural diplomacy (and there are others) are, and good for them, questioning its suppositions.

But, based on my experience as an American diplomat for more than twenty years, an indispensable way for the U.S. to reach foreign audiences is to present who we Americans are by means of USG-supported cultural presentations -- you name it: concerts, exhibits, poetry readings (and, of course, spoofs on cultural diplomacy). While it can always use rejuvenation and must avoid becoming propagandistic, cultural diplomacy remains as important as ever.

TIBITS

• These three delightfully deranging books offer alternatives to your staid biographies. They’re a bit dangerous, a bit rude — free from the tyranny of good taste   htttp://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/writers-and-the-women-they-worship/
• The philosopher Immanuel Kant said that the core of morality lay in treating others not simply as means but also as ends in themselves.
• Оказывается Путин подписал указ, что 2014 год - год культуры. А как же Олимпиада? Непорядок. Ksenia Turkova А остальные годы бескультурья?
• Alastair Brotchie, Alfred Jarrr: "One of the undoubted achievements of Ubu Roi was that it upset almost everyone who saw it." (TLS, April 10, 2012), p. 7