Anderson Cooper to Headline Murrow Forum at Tufts University April 11

now.tufts.edu; see also.

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Excerpt:

The Edward R. Murrow Forum on Issues in Journalism is inspired by legendary broadcaster Edward. R. Murrow for his many contributions to journalism and public diplomacy. The forum brings together interdisciplinary panels to reflect on Murrow’s legacy and relate it to contemporary issues in journalism. ...

Classic Quotable: Edward R. Murrow -- “history has no patience” (1963)

publicdiplomacycouncil.org; see also.

Saturday, January 30th 2016

On May 17, 1963, the Director of the U.S. Information Agency, Edward R. Murrow, sent a memorandum to David E. Bell, Director of the Bureau of the Budget, asking for additional funds.  They were needed because of “the crushing defeat of the Cuban landings” at the Bay of Pigs and the “deteriorating political and military situation in Southeast Asia.”  James Warren analyzed the memorandum in an article, “The Struggle to Propagate the Truth,” which appeared on the website ofU.S. News and World Report on December 30, 2015.  Warren’s article included a link to Murrow’s six-page memorandum, originally marked “Confidential.”  The memorandum included a peroration:

In this century of crises, no crisis has been graver than that which we now face. History has no patience with alibis. Generations yet unborn will ask: "Did they try to preserve for us the land and the ideals of Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln? Or, like the ancient Carthaginians, did they – figuratively speaking – offer their children as hostages in a vain effort to hold back the enemy?"

We are in a war both hot and cold, a war for men's minds as well as their bodies, a war for men's souls as well as their goods. This Agency could operate for four hundred years on one year's appropriation for the Defense Department. We do not dispute the spending of vast sums for physical defense. Nor are we asking billions for propaganda – propagation of the truth. But if we are unwilling to do what must be done to preserve and promote our ideals, we may have alien ideas imposed on us and our allies.

As never before, USIA urgently needs adequate resources to do the job which must be done; not only the funds requested herein but also substantially all of our original request.

Warren commented, “The Obama administration has continued a tradition of modestly financed and seemingly subpar world-wide media efforts that trace themselves to Cold War attempts to confront and rebut communism.”

Author: Donald M. Bishop

Dangerous candidates

Andrés Federman, buenosairesherald.com

Image from, with the headline: [Recently appointed Argentine Ambassador to the U.S.] Lousteau Presented his Credential Letters to Obama

Excerpt:

It is called an “Ambassador Credentialling Ceremony” and is a cost-effective public diplomacy tool. A number of recently arrived foreign ambassadors visit the White House, meet the US president in the mythical Oval Office and present their credentials. The bonus is that the president takes the time for a quick individual chat with each of them and a photographer takes a picture of the new ambassador in a cordial moment with Barack Obama. No massive family photographs. Just the president of the US in a friendly, “one-on-one” moment with the new ambassador, which is likely to make the front pages of each ambassador’s country, conveying the image of friendliness.

If the rumours are true, in the case of Argentina such friendliness might go beyond the photo opportunity, should Obama’s visit to Argentina really happen. The government and its followers are quite happy with the signals of the quick thawing of the bilateral relations which had been put in the fridge, if not in the freezer, during Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s presidency. ...

Sharansky applauds ‘One Kotel for One People’

Ryan Torok, jewishjournal.com

Western Wall image from article

Excerpt:

In the wake of the Israeli government’s historic announcement on Sunday, Jan. 31, that a new, expanded egalitarian prayer space would be opened up at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, spoke to the press from Pasadena. The new section could take two years to create, but will reportedly accommodate as many as 1,200 people and will be accessible through the Wall’s main plaza for use by all genders and denominations together. Previously, the Kotel – the Hebrew name for the Western Wall – was run under Orthodox rule and had allowed only for separate prayer spaces for men and women. It also did not allow women to read from Torah or wear tallits. The existing Orthodox sections will remain in place. ...

Maya Kadosh, consul for public diplomacy and culture at the Consulate General of Israel, Los Angeles, said she welcomed the vote by the Israeli Cabinet. 

“All the partners here [the Israeli cabinet members, the Jewish Agency for Israel and others] came together, so people will see the Jewish people is trying to be united on an issue,” she said in an interview. “I’m really glad it’s happening.”

Devyani now in race to promote girls' education

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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NEW DELHI: Diplomat Devyani Khobragade, who was charged in 2013 with visa fraud by US authorities, will later this month undertake a cross-country run in her home state of Maharashtra aimed at promoting women education and
empowerment.

Khobragade will try to keep pace with legendary ultra-marathon, endurance runner and former Australian MP Pat Farmer, who has undertaken a 4,600 km 'Spirit of India Run' from Kanyakumari to Srinagar to raise funds for girls' education in India, as also to improve bilateral ties between India and Australia.

In an exercise promoted by both the Indian and the Australian governments, Farmer started his run from Kanyakumari on January 26, India's Republic Day and which is also celebrated as Australia Day by the island nation, and is expected to enter Maharashtra on February 9. That's when Khobragade will join the Australian MP.

Khobragade, who has done two half-marathons and several other runs, will also help organise meetings for Farmer with schoolchildren.

Sources said Khobragade was keen to become a part of Farmer's campaign because she saw it as an opportunity to bring forth the significance of women's education, issues related to their health and also self-defence exercises meant to ward off sexual violence.

Farmer and Khobragade are expected to speak and give demonstrations on some of these issues along the route. Schoolgirls will also be encouraged to run short distances with Farmer and, in case the world champion of endurance running scampers away too soon, with the diplomat.

Farmer's run is supported by the foreign ministry, tourism ministry and Mahindra Foundation. According to the foreign ministry, the run is a one-of-a-kind public diplomacy initiative intended to promote India-Australia relations, and raise money for the education of the girl child. It is expected to promote goodwill, friendship and trade between the two countries.

"As Pat runs through cities, towns and villages, stopping to interact with the local community, he will witness India's immense diversity, natural beauty and vibrant culture - capturing in two short months, the Spirit of India," the foreign ministry had earlier said.

As a diplomat, Khobragade has in the past spoken on issues related to women's rights. As acting consul general in New York, she held a round-table on the same. Some of the issues she sought to address were gender sensitisation, need for holistic approach to education and reservation for women in Parliament.

In a write-up on sexual harassment, she said the solution was to raise girls and boys more fairly and equitably. "So they do not stand by the next time anyone is subjected to touching or staring by men. So they stop going to films which show stalking as acceptable behaviour or women as brainless sex objects," said the diplomat, who currently works as the director of MEA's states division responsible for the ministry's liaison with states.

'Korea needs more professional curators'

koreatimes.co.kr

Korea Foundation Vice President Yoon Keum-jin / Courtesy of the Korea Foundation Galleries overseas not fully utilized: KF vice president By Rachel Lee. Korea should find ways to make the most of limited gallery space at overseas museums to better promote the country's culture, a Korea Foundation (KF) executive says. Vice President Yoon Keum-jin believes that making the best use of space, and having professional curators, should be the top priority instead of focusing too much on getting more space. The KF was founded in 1992 for international exchange and public diplomacy initiatives. "Korea joined the museums pretty late, which means we didn't have much choice for location and size in the first place anyway," Yoon, 58, told The Korea Times. "Unless major renovations take place at the venues, it is certainly not possible for us to obtain more gallery room." Yoon, who has handled almost every project related to Korean galleries abroad for over 20 years, was director at the organization's office in Washington, D.C., the Culture and Arts Department and the International Cooperation Department. The KF has helped set up rooms in 28 locations in 10 countries. The Korea Foundation has hosted workshops to educate curators from around the world since 1999. / Courtesy of the Korea Foundation According to the organization, 75 Korean galleries and small sections had been set up in museums in 23 countries as of 2014. Most are in Europe (27) and the U.S. (33). There are 12 in Asia, two in South America and one in Oceania. In 2012, there were 67 galleries in 22 countries. Leading museums including the British Museum, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Sweden have presented Korean cultural displays. The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco has 794 items on show. "Looking at the location and scale, our displays may seem to fall short of what our neighbors have done," Yoon said, pointing out rather fundamental problems apart from Korea being a late starter. "To begin with, a lack of cultural properties available for display and an unbalanced range have made it hard to attract audiences," she said. "China and Japan, for instance, boast a large quantity and also a better location, but it also has something to do with philanthropy as well. Some of the assets in the Chinese gallery include donations from Chinese individuals, which helped a lot." There are a total of 15,500 assets available here for exhibition — mostly pottery from the National Museum of Korea. "Another problem is that there are not enough curators in charge of the Korean sections at the museums," the vice president said. "Their role is vital as they are the ones that come up with various ideas for exhibitions to attract and engage audiences with their in-depth understanding about the country and its collection." The Korean collection had some of the renowned experts in the past — including Jane Portal and Charlotte Holyck who curated the gallery at the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V and A) in London. There are Korean experts working for overseas museums — including Lee So-young, associate curator in Korean Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Kim Hyun-jung, associate curator of Chinese and Korean Art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; and Woo Hyun-soo, Maxine and Howard Lewis associate curator of Korean Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The KF has launched a series of projects to support the Korean galleries — including a special day dedicated to Korea and workshops to educate curators from around the world. "We have offered a session for overseas curators to help them understand the history of Korean art. This year, those from Japan are coming to Korea for this workshop," Yoon said. Last September, the KF supported "Chuseok Family Day" at the V and A, which was designed to "share and communicate the mood and the spirit of Chuseok," Korean Thanksgiving, according to the organization. The program offered 11 activities such as Korean traditional games, pop-up performances of Korean folktales, a hanbok dressing room, a kite-making class and a Korean pop dance workshop. The vice-president also suggested holding special exhibitions with a specific theme. "We aren't satisfied with the current limited space and the relatively small of number of cultural properties available for display," she said. "Now we should think about what we can do with the circumstances instead of moaning and complaining." "If we can make the best use of what we have in collaboration with well-educated experts, I'm sure it will make the exhibitions more attractive and interesting for audiences," Yoon said.

Recruiting college students to fight extremists online

pbs.org; via LJB by email

image from

The federal government has launched an initiative to counter violent extremism among potential homegrown terrorists. Part of the effort enlists college students to develop an online campaign and social media strategy against ISIS propaganda. NewsHour's Christopher Booker reports.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: At the midday formation at the U.S Military Academy at West Point every cadet is subject to inspection.  

The way they stand, salute, and march is part of their development of a U.S Army officer.

But across this Hudson River campus in the basement of the social sciences building a new aspect of cadet education is underway.

While lacking the ritual and repetition that dominate this prestigious 214-year-old academy, the virtual warfare tactics explored in this counter-terrorism elective may one day prove to be as integral as the midday formation.  

COL. BRYAN PRICE: Information has always been crucial to warfare, and so when you take a look at propaganda, over the years it’s always influenced the fight in some capacity.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Price directs West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.

COL. BRYAN PRICE: If you take a look at the dollars that the United States government is putting into its counter-narrative campaign and then you compare it to the emphasis that organizations like the Islamic state is placing on it I think we are operating at a deficit.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: The Islamic state in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, is running a 21st century social media blitz, and its preferred platform is Twitter.

Cadets in this classroom are one of 45 college teams developing an online campaign against extremists.  The cadets are part of a “peer to peer” competition sponsored by the U.S. state department, the department of Homeland Security, Facebook, and EdVenture Partners.

COL. BRYAN PRICE: This is the demographics and the generation that the Islamic state and other jihadist organizations are targeting. So why not utilize what appeals to that generation?

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: The target of Price’s class is what they call “fence sitters” — people who may or may not be interested in joining ISIS or other jihadi groups.  Using a multi-platform approach, they hope to surreptitiously lure social media users already engaged in conversations surrounding “jihad,” and other extremist ideas to their own website, Facebook page, twitter account, and YouTube channel

We have obscured the social media pages to avoid compromising the cadets ongoing campaign.

COL. BRYAN PRICE: We are not thinking that we are going to create a social media campaign that is going to stop card carrying members of the Islamic State and have them put down their arms. What we’re trying to do is to identify at risk youth and create a community online to which they can go get answers, information about the Islamic State. About jihad. About Islam.  And those folks that haven’t quite made up their mind yet.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: The cadets are searching for ways to insert their messages into the broader social media conversation – all without being detected as West Point cadets.  Sometimes they do this by exploiting the use of twitter hashtags.

COL. BRYAN PRICE: The Islamic state does a very good job of utilizing trending hashtags in order to get on sites, and get on people– people’s twitter feeds, where they wouldn’t normally be on there.  For example, so, if the super bowl was trending, they will include whatever messages they want, but they all include the hashtag, #superbowl. And so we are trying, utilizing some of those same techniques.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: Direct messaging also allows the cadets to interact one on one with users.

CJ DREW: This is someone from the Middle East in our 18 to 40 age bracket, telling us we have a nice page.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: During our visit, the cadets said they received a Facebook message from someone they believed to be in the Middle East. Senior CJ Drew was one of the first to read it.

CJ DREW: In this in this instance, we were reached out to by a person who had seen our page. And the first thing that came up to them was jihad.  And they looked like they were a fence-sitter or someone we consider to be vulnerable to targeting by ISIS, and they wanted more information and they wanted to engage us and tell us what jihad meant to them.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: Drew, who speaks Arabic, says their posts need to balance writing in English and other languages to look as authentic as possible. If a post has too much polish, the team risks exposing itself.

CJ DREW: We had a couple times where I was able to use hashtags that ISIS uses a lot, especially after the Paris attacks. And we had multiple conversations with some of ’em.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: While West Point’s approach is to enter a conversation already underway, this New York University graduate class is looking for individuals who might not be in the the conversation at all.

The class created the number “7 train stop” project — named after the New York City subway line that runs through the city’s most diverse borough, Queens.

The online platform encourages immigrants to share their experiences living in the borough. NYU professor Colette Mazzucelli teaches the class.

COLETTE MAZZUCELLI: We wanted to really focus on the difficulties, the vulnerabilities of immigrant integration and the ways in which immigrants are vulnerable. They might be more prone to indoctrination so we felt that we wanted to emphasize both the diversity of the area, the integration that comes with that, as well as the need to really be aware that indoctrination happens when communities are vulnerable.  And therefore we have to promote this idea of the american narrative, which is to integrate these immigrants in these communities, well into their new environments.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: In the United States, the number of individuals radicalized by ISIS is believed to be lower than in Europe but is also believed to be increasing.  So far, the U.S. government has brought criminal charges against about 80 people for ISIS-related activities — 61 cases last year – the most new cases in any year since the September 11, 2001, attacks.

SEAMUS HUGHES: Social media plays a big role in the recruitment of Americans who join ISIS.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: Seamus Hughes, Deputy Director of The George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, is the co-author of “ISIS in America: From retweets to Raqqa.

SEAMUS HUGHES: We don’t have communities that radicalize in the U.S. We have individuals. They are going online, and they are finding like-minded individuals, they are not finding it at mosques and community centers.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: Hughes says radical messages online are like an echo

Chamber.

SEAMUS HUGHES: We look at about 300 accounts of Americans we believe to be ISIS supporters online, over a six-month period, and what we saw is they didn’t hear dissenting voices. They only heard what they wanted to hear. They were only pushing the propaganda that they believed in, so when you have people trying to interject themselves into the conversation, they were quickly pushed out.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: Last year Hughes monitored an alleged ISIS supporter  — an Ohio  man who called himself “lone wolf” on Twitter. Twitter regularly suspended his account, only to see “lone wolf” return again and again. The user was eventually arrested after he allegedly released the home addresses of U.S. soldiers and urged people to kill them.

SEAMUS HUGHES: It’s very hard to try to figure out when someone’s gonna make that leap over to militancy.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: The Peer 2 Peer competition that NYU and West Point are involved in, also called P2P, is part of the State Department’s acknowledgement that it needs to change its approach.

EVAN RYAN: What we need to do is get in the middle and get in the middle so that we can actually reach people who are at risk of recruitment.

Evan Ryan is the Assistant Secretary of State for education and cultural affairs and a P2P competition judge.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: The U.S. State Department, for lack of a better term, has struggled in this space, why do you think that is?

EVAN RYAN: Well listen, we can’t do this on our own. We need to work with partners across the board, and that’s what we are doing with this program  P2P, working with university students, but we are reaching out broadly, to organizations, the private sector, other entities, putting minds together to think about how we can best address this problem.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: And one of the big questions, I guess, surrounding these private partnerships is their dealings overseas. Obviously Facebook, Twitter, these are global users, so they are juggling a lot of parameters, is it difficult to bring them into the fold?

EVAN RYAN: I think they understand this is where this demographic that we are trying to reach lives today. They live online. They live on these platforms, so when we are able to sit down with a Facebook and have them as a partner that is really important to us and we are looking forward to establishing more partnerships just like that.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: The P2P competition is not the first time the state department has experimented in this space. Until last year, Alberto Fernandez was State’s Coordinator for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications.  

To counter extremist propaganda, his team launched the “Think Again, Turn Away,” campaign, which included the release of the video titled  “Welcome to the Islamic State land,” a graphic, minute-long video meant to undercut the group’s message with satire.

ALBERTO FERNANDEZ: What we tried to do when I was there is we tried to be extreme and radical and we were too extreme and too radical for government, but not extreme and radical enough for the challenge we face, so we kind of fell between two stools.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: Now with the Middle East Media Research Institute, Fernandez says while the P2P competition is step in the right direction, it is only a small part of the new strategy needed.  

ALBERTO FERNANDEZ: So  if you are talking about a revolutionary insurgent organization, which is the Islamic state, it is going to take a while for government to turn that old battle ship around.  I think the idea that, with all due respect, that West Point cadets are going to be able to do that deep dive, to have that time to follow through and the depth to do it is probably unlikely.

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: Perhaps, but the scale of the task does not seem to bother these cadets. In this competition of 45 teams, their entry was selected as one of three finalists. Next month, they will head to the Washington to present their project.