The house has held exhibitions of work by the students of Prague's Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, as well as students of the Prague British School. The Václav Havel Library held a two-day international seminar on the grounds during which participants discussed philosophical issues connected with the concept of human rights in today's "post-European" world.

Prof. Wilfried Lulei, a German researcher of Vietnam Studies, highlighted the significance of the event, saying it will help strengthen the bilateral friendship and mutual understanding about the cultural traditions and customs of each country.

Food aid is a hot topic in the world of foreign policy these days. Though the U.S. Government’s Food for Peace program is housed in America’s international development agency, food aid is public diplomacy.

Looking back over 50 years of the Union, 'cultural diplomacy' has a greater chance of creating understanding between peoples than what I will call for the purposes of this article, 'conventional diplomacy'. As such, over the next 50 years, we should throw down the challenge to the AU to put cultural diplomacy at the top of its agenda.

The French parliament is debating a new road map for French universities, which includes the proposal of allowing courses to be taught in English. For some, this amounts to a betrayal of the national language and, more specifically, of a particular way at looking at the world - for others it's just accepting the inevitable.

Scholars around the Muslim world were alarmed five years ago by news reports that Turkey planned a new, possibly heretical, compilation of the Prophet Mohammad’s sayings that might scrap those it thought were no longer applicable.

Members of diaspora communities are grassroots ambassadors, often returning to their countries of origin or heritage to speak about America's values. For such communities, supporting higher living standards, economic growth, and political stability is about helping their friends and families, not simply a matter of traditional policy or diplomacy.

Given all that, out of the TV shows to send to the mother country, surely this one could be skipped? I'd argue just the opposite: This is exactly the kind of cultural product America should be exporting.