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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.

AMERICAN HISTORY IS MISSING FROM OUR PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
MAR 15, 2007 - 2:11PM PST
Posted by Mitchell Polman
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Since the events of September 11, 2001 the foreign policy establishment of Washington has exhausted much energy debating America's public diplomacy efforts. I've watched this debate with interest because I work on a contract basis for State Department public diplomacy programs. I have also tried to create private sector public diplomacy projects. I've traveled with foreign journalists, politicians, and other notable figures all over the United States. You might say that I'm a "foot soldier" in the public diplomacy battle. From my vantage point America's biggest public diplomacy problem is one that receives scant attention from the myriads of commissions and focus groups and discussion panels that seek to explain America's supposed faded image in the world. Our biggest problem is that foreigners really don't know much of anything about us. They may know our movies, our music, our literature, and even some of our food, but our nation's history is something that few of the foreigners that I've worked with know anything about. The people I have accompanied around America are usually well educated and well traveled. Many of them have studied outside of their countries. Some have been to America before. They are usually very interested in our history, but they've never really managed to learn anything about it until they come here. If the educated and influential have no understanding of how America was created and how it has developed as a country then how can we expect them to understand our values? What are our chances of being understood by people who are even less educated? Here are just a few examples of what I have experienced in my work: One day in Boston I was with a government official from an Asian country. We were looking at the monument to the victims of the Irish potato famine when he asked me who settled in Boston before the Irish. I explained to him that English Puritans were the first settlers. He was puzzled as to how that could be when the American Revolution was fought against the British. "Why would English people fight English people?" he asked me. I eventually came to the realization that he was unaware of the fact that America started as a group of thirteen British colonies. Twice in San Antonio I have had visitors who were thrilled to be in the city of the San Antonio Spurs basketball team. Neither of them had ever heard of the Alamo or understood initially why we were going there. In all of my time in historic San Antonio the only foreigners I've seen amongst the huge throngs of American tourists was a pair of young Japanese ladies. I was with a television journalist from a Central Asian country and her crew in Cerillos, New Mexico when a local resident pointed out a house that Thomas Edison had worked in while developing new gold mining technology. The cameraman asked me who Thomas Edison was. I explained to him that if it wasn't for Thomas Edison…... FULL TEXT
 
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