Nicholas Cull Quoted in Washington Post Article on Afghan Youth Orchestra

February 4, 2013 - CPD University Fellow and Director of USC’s Masters of Public Diplomacy program Nicholas Cull was quoted in a Washington Post article on the Afghan Youth Orchestra, a celebrated ensemble of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul. The article discussed the orchestra’s upcoming showcases in Washington and New York as effective cultural diplomacy efforts. With heavy investments from the U.S. State Department, the World Bank, the Carnegie Corporation and Afghanistan’s Ministry of Education, the tour has come to serve as a symbol of the international community’s support for progress in Afghanistan.

Cull sees the tour as a sign that the United States is investing in public diplomacy once again, rather than letting private companies represent the cultural face of the nation as it has done in the past. “What’s most significant is that the U.S. has a history of sending culture out,” Cull said. “This tour enables Afghans to share their culture and stories with the U.S. It’s great that Afghanistan is getting a chance to speak, to be more than the passive recipient of the world’s largess.”

To read the full article, click here.

For more information on the tour, click here.