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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.

IDEAS TO BOLSTER THE WORLD’S KNOWLEDGE OF AMERICA
JUN 5, 2007 - 11:54AM PST
Posted by Mitchell Polman
All posts by this author

Last March I wrote an essay for the Center's "Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review" identifying what I believe to be a key problem with our nation's public diplomacy -- a lack of emphasis on informing people overseas about our nation's history. One thing that makes this an attractive approach is that it can be done for the most part with infrastructure that we already have in place. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. So here are some suggestions on how we can work to improve international understanding of the American experience. Alan Heil, former deputy director of Voice of America, told me in an e-mail that VOA's Special English broadcasts features a program called "Making of a Nation" which is a program on American history from pre-revolutionary days to the present. The Bush Administration's proposal to cut English language broadcasts would not affect the Special English program that broadcasts "Making of a Nation." However, the proposed budget cuts at VOA illustrates the need for consideration to be given to the impact such proposals would have on the ability of foreigners to learn about America's past. Along this line we could require that a minimum percentage of U.S. funded radio and television broadcasts should center on American historical topics. Even a half hour long program a week would be an improvement. The State Department also works with foreign journalists to co-produce television programs on the United States, but most of the programs are on contemporary social problems. Very few co-productions touch on historical themes. Perhaps a special small scale program that is dedicated to that purpose can be established to do just that. (Full disclosure: I have worked as a producer on State sponsored television co-productions.) The State Department recently started the Edward R. Murrow Journalism Fellows Program which brings journalists from around the world to train at leading journalism schools and learn more about the United States. Why not do a similar thing with history teachers? We can bring groups of secondary school level history teachers annually to the U.S. to both learn about America in the classroom and to visit historical sights as well. When they return they can share what they learn with their students and fellow teachers. Perhaps some will start classes on U.S. history. There are already many teachers and educators who come to the U.S. on the International Visitors Leadership Exchange, but there is no mandate on the IVLEP that they learn anything about U.S. history while they are here. The State Department can also create materials in different languages on U.S. history that can be given as gifts to official visitors. This would require modest funding, but you can be sure that visitors will share whatever books or CDs that we provided with others. There also needs to be lines of communication developed between the State Department public diplomacy people and documentary film makers. Producers such Ken Burns and Robert Redford and others can be approached for help in creating foreign language…... FULL TEXT
 
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Read Comments:

observer on June 6, 2007 @ 7:31 am:
It isnt history but you should take note of the series that can be seen on VOA at:
http://www.voanews.com/english/how-america-works.cfm
In addition to being on the web in english, most of VOAs language services are adapting it.

John Rice on June 14, 2007 @ 3:44 pm:
Ahhh, let's teach the world's simpletons our version of history as seen from the sending end of the gun, as opposed to their perspective--the receiving end. Great idea! I’m sure they’ll understand how good-hearted we are.

We'll explain to them how we value human rights as demonstrated by our benign treatment of Native Americans, slaves, the Japanese-Americans of WW2, and our Muslim population after 9-11. Perhaps a tour of Gitmo might be appropriate as well, just to keep things up-to-date.

We’ll explain how our military and economic pressures in almost every country in the world for “regime change” are not for our benefit, but for theirs—honest!

They’ll understand—especially if they’ve lived under Pinochet, the Shah of Iran, or escaped Saddam Hussein’s gassing (using our gas), or the atrocities of countless other toadies all over the world we have helped get in power, or keep in power—for their benefit of course. Always.

I guarantee that most people around the world know our ‘honest’ history better than most Americans do, and that is the real shame. Most Americans have not a clue about what our government does in our names, and the reason is obvious—we wouldn’t stand for it—while chin-deep in denial, we believe we are more moral than that.

What is really needed is a wake-up-course for our history-ignorant American citizenry, not for the ‘foreigners’—they know precisely what our government does and for what reasons and who benefits, and it certainly isn’t them. They see U.S. economic and/or military hegemony, and they fully understand what it means.

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