The Iranian cultural attaché in Athens, Mohammad-Hossein Mozaffari, said that Iran plans to honor Iranian and Greek scholars promoting cultural and scientific relations between Iran and Greece.

Human rights groups have urged Scottish universities to sever links with Chinese language centres that have sparked worldwide fears over academic freedom.

State propagandists - if far from all policy-makers - have long understood the political power of language learning. (...) Most major states figured this out years ago. Democracies like France, the UK and Germany have publicly funded institutes around the world teaching their languages and cultures. This is part of what diplomats call soft power, the drive to boost global influence by co-opting rather than coercing, by friendly persuasion rather than force.

The tournament is one of the most important cultural events this country has ever staged. It is Australia's coming out as a member of Asia.

The extensive cultural program that took place in 11 cities and in collaboration with 44 institutions reached nearly 800,000 people and was mentioned as one of 2014's most-discussed programs in Turkish media.

The ongoing transformation of Hungary’s foreign policy aimed at enforcing the country’s economic interests more effectively has reached the halfway point, Péter Szijjártó, the minister of foreign affairs and trade, said in an interview to MTI. (...) The government has already carried out the biggest change, namely integrating the institutions overseeing external economic relations and cultural diplomacy into the foreign ministry’s structure, he said. 

According to Joseph Nye, the American political thinker who developed the concept of soft power, American culture is one of the pillars of the US power structure and instrumental in the projection of that power. The Iranian leadership fears that normal relations will result in the expansion of trade and commerce and thus, suddenly, increase the number of Iranians visiting the US and vice versa.