Launched in 2007 by the Department of State, ILEP has provided over 300 secondary school teachers of English, math, science, and social studies from around the world with professional development at U.S. graduate schools of education.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will travel to Brazil to meet with underserved youth... As a Cultural Ambassador, Abdul-Jabbar will lead conversations with young people on the importance of education, social and racial tolerance, cultural understanding, and using sports as a means of empowerment.

It is heartening to learn of the strong support for the Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2012. The United States, through the State Department and USAID, is already doing good work in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector. This new act will improve the effectiveness, transparency and accountability of existing U.S. international aid programs.

When Secretary Clinton announced the launch of the first-ever virtual embassy for Iran, she made clear that the U.S. Department of State wants to communicate directly to the people of Iran and to support a more direct and robust engagement between our people, emphasizing the role of new media platforms to reach younger and more tech-savvy audiences.

“We shouldn’t be afraid to speak out, to say what we believe in. There are enough people who support us and they want to hear it from us. We shouldn’t be apologetic all the time. We should be strong and right, and that’s the message we’re sending from the Knesset.”

Art films and dance recitals no doubt do their bit to further cultural understanding, but a comic can, with one fell swoop and a calibrated punch-line, unite a contrastive crowd in laughter like nothing else can. The U.S. State Department has brought to India a stand-up act that will resolve any residual doubts about the south Asian immigrant experience.

Russian speakers/readers of the language might be struck by the number of negative comments to the Ambassador's YouTube performance, which suggests that Russian anti-Americanism is indeed a factor to consider in the two countries' relations -- and that, on a more mundane level, Russians use the Internet as a way of "letting off steam."

“The basketball games are incidental [to] this,” said Cooley. “It’s the cultural exchange.” In each of the previous cities, the Nanyang Model High team stayed with host families. Along with private training sessions and games, the team has mixed in plenty of sightseeing, including Niagara Falls, Smithsonian museums, and D.C. monuments.