A Public Diplomacy Symposium
and Film Festival
Program
Sponsors
These events are sponsored by the AnnenbergSchool's Project for Global Communication Studies with the support of the Cinema Studies, Slavic Studies and Germanic Literatures and Languages Departments, and the Middle EastCenter.
The film retrospective is made possible by an extensive film preservation effort by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and with the support of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the George C. Marshall Foundation, and the German Historical Museum.
Schedule of Events
Friday, January 27 (Logan Hall)
10:00 – 11:00Doors Open (Basement Lobby)
11:00-11:10amOpening Remarks: Dean Delli Carpini, AnnenbergSchool for Communication (Logan 17)
11:10- 1:00pm Panel 1: Public Diplomacy in the Cold War Era (Logan 17)
*Moderator: Peter Decherney, Assistant Professor of English and Cinema Studies, University of Pennsylvania
“Public Diplomacy: A post-cold war invention”
*Speaker: Nicholas Cull, Director, Master's in Public Diplomacy Program, USCCenter on Public Diplomacy
“Re-thinking American Public Diplomacy: Ten Lessons from its Past”
*Speaker: Victoria de Grazia,Professor of History, ColumbiaUniversity
“Public Diplomacy: A Post-Cold War Invention”
*Speaker: David Eisenhower, Director of the Institute for Public Service, University of Pennsylvania
“Post War Public Diplomacy: A World without Boundaries”
*Speaker: Sandra Schulberg, Project Director and co-curator of Selling Democracy: Films of the Marshall Plan
“Selling Democracy: Productivity and Propaganda in the Service of American Foreign Policy”
*Q&A (40 minutes)
1:00 – 2:30Break
2:30 – 4:30pm Panel II: The Current Landscape of Public Diplomacy (Logan 17)
*Moderator: Monroe Price, Director, Project for Global Communication Studies, University of Pennsylvania
*Speaker: Martin Rose, Director of Counterpoint, British Council “Supporting the Acrobat: Public Diplomacy & Trust”
*Speaker: Robert Vitalis, Director of the Middle EastCenter, University of Pennsylvania
“The Myths of Public Diplomacy in the Middle East”
*Speaker: Alexander Feldman, Coordinator of the Bureau of International Information Programs, State Department
“Public Diplomacy's Role in Transformational Diplomacy”
*Q&A (40 minutes)
Note: All panels are subject to change.
Talk Descriptions
Public Diplomacy in the Cold War Era
Nicholas Cull
“Re-thinking American Public Diplomacy: Ten Lessons from its Past”
It is a synthesis of a decade of research into the history of the United States Information Agency, including access to hitherto closed archives. The presentation will survey the history of USIA and consider the contemporary challenges facing the US in the light of this experience.
Victoria de Grazia
“Public Diplomacy: A Post-Cold War Invention”
A brief retrospective about modes of projecting civilizational values, comparing U.S. and Soviet deployment of cultural capital resources, roughly high Cold War, e.g. late 1940s-early 1960s.
David Eisenhower
“Post War Public Diplomacy: A World without Boundaries”
Sandra Schulberg
“Selling Democracy: Productivity and Propaganda in the Service of American Foreign Policy”
An overview of Marshall Plan's policy and propaganda goals, illustrated by specific films, and explaining how the messaging changed after the initial recovery period and gave way to rearmament concerns. She will also describe how the films were commissioned and distributed, and describe recent research into the conflicting audience reactions at the time.
The Current Landscape of Public Diplomacy
Alexander Feldman
"Public Diplomacy's Role in Transformational Diplomacy"
In her vision of transformational diplomacy, Secretary Rice has challenged the Department of State to approach the mission of diplomacy in a radically different manner. As part of this effort, the Secretary and Under Secretary Hughes have put renewed focus on public diplomacy. The presentation will discuss the principles of this effort, including how we are using technology to advance public diplomacy.
Martin Rose
“Supporting the Acrobat: Public Diplomacy & Trust”
The paper looks at the problems of trust facing Western governments, especially in the Near East, arguing that attitudes to the invasion of Iraq have greatly exacerbated mistrust. Western governments have not always helped themselves by the ways they have conducted public diplomacy – and indeed survey evidence seems to confirm anecdotal report that it is above all the perception of hypocrisy that impairs trust.
Robert Vitalis
“The Myths of Public Diplomacy in the Middle East”
Current "policy" toward public diplomacy in the Middle East invents some myths and refurbishes some others about US-Middle East relations generally. One is that we are trying something new in part due to having neglected public diplomacy in the region in the past. Nothing is farther from the truth. And nothing is more suggestive of the likelihood of the failure of this latest round, similar to the many other rounds since roughly the Korean War.
Speaker Bios
11am, Panel 1: Public Diplomacy in the Cold War Era (Logan 17)
Nick Cull, Director, Master's in Public Diplomacy Program, USCCenter on Public Diplomacy
Cull comes to USC from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, where he was a professor of American Studies and Director of the Centre for American Studies. His research and teaching interests are broad and inter-disciplinary, centering on the developing academic discipline of Public Diplomacy, the role of culture, information, news and propaganda in foreign policy. He is author of the forthcoming Selling America: U.S. Information Overseas, a history of the U.S. Information Agency (Cambridge University Press, 2005). His first book, Selling War, (Oxford University Press, 1995), was named by Choice Magazine as one of the ten best academic books of that year.
Cull earned both his B.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Leeds. While a graduate student he studied at PrincetonUniversity as a Harkness Fellow of the Commonwealth Fund of New York. From 1992 to 1997 he was lecturer in American History at the University of Birmingham.
He is the co-editor of Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500-present (2003) which was one of Book List magazine’s reference books of the year, and co-editor of Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico Border: Film, Music, and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants (2004). He is the president of the council of the International Association for Media and History, and has worked closely with the British Council's Counterpoint Think Tank.
Victoria de Grazia, Professor of History, ColumbiaUniversity
Victoria de Grazia has taught European history at ColumbiaUniversity since 1993. Currently, she is also Professor Part-Time at the European University Institute, the graduate faculty of the European Union at Fiesole. After writing several books on fascism in Italy, including the prize-winning How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1920-1945 (University of California Press, 1992) and the two-volume Dizionario del Fascismo (with Sergio Luzzatto).
She turned to the study of the history of commerce and consumer culture, especially as they have been used to establish U.S. global hegemony. The results of this research, based on a wide array of non-governmental U.S. and European archival sources is Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through Twentieth Century (Harvard University Press, 2005). She is a member of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences and for several years, she headed the Council for European Studies.
David Eisenhower, Director of the Institute for Public Service, University of Pennsylvania
David Eisenhowerhas been at Penn (with several extended absences) since being named a lecturer in the Political Science Department in 1981. In 1996, named a Fellow in the Political Science Department.
He is editor of ORBIS magazine, published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia 2001-2003, and has lectured in town halls in 45 states under the auspices of American Program Bureau for past 15 years.
He became a Public Policy Fellow at the AnnenbergSchool for Communication (ASC) in 1996. As Director of the Institute for Public Service, heruns the Annenberg Fellowship program; as IPS Director, he has been named chairman of a new academic concentration offered to Communications majors at the AnnenbergSchool.
He is the author of numerous articles and reviews including his regular editor’s column for ORBIS and a two-volume work on the Allied leadership in the pursuit phase of WW II entitled Eisenhower at War: 1943-1945 (Random House, New York). Eisenhower at War was a New York Times best seller, was one of three History jury nominees for the Pulitzer Prize in History, and was named by Time magazine in its annual year-end survey as one of the five best non fiction works published in 1986. Two sequels and a lengthy book on the pivotal year of 1968 entitled Last Agony are under contract at Random House. Last Agonyis to be completed this year. He sits on numerous non-profit boards and advisory commissions. He was named a Fellow of the American Society of Historians, New York City, in 1991.
He is the recipient of seven honorary degrees, the Golden Slipper Award for community service in Philadelphia, admitted to Golden Key Society membership and given the Panitt Award for Citizenship by the AnnenbergSchool for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, 2002. In May 2003, named the winner of UPenn’s university-wide annual Provost’s Award for Excellence in University teaching.
He is a former Naval Officer, and aformer syndicated sports columnist and front office employee of the Washington Senators and Philadelphia Phillies.
Sandra Schulberg,Project Director and co-curator of Selling Democracy: Films of the Marshall Plan
Sandra Schulberg is a distinguished producer and publisher. A pioneer of the independent film movement, she founded the Independent Feature Project in 1979, and co-founded First Run Features, a film distribution cooperative, in 1980. She also created the Los Angeles public television news series, “28 Tonight.” For many years, she was Senior Vice President of the “American Playhouse” television series and of its movie subsidiary, Playhouse International Pictures. Subsequently, she served as Executive Producer of Hollywood Partners, a private German film fund. Her movie credits include the Oscar-nominated “Quills,” starring Geoffrey Rush and Kate Winslet (20th Century Fox); “Undisputed,” starring Wesley Snipes and Ving Rhames (Miramax); “Waiting for the Moon,” starring Linda Hunt (Sundance Grand Prize winner); and “Shadow Magic,” filmed in China (Sony Classics). In 2001, she ventured into science fiction, founding Phobos Entertainment and Phobos Books. Phobos has published nine books of speculative fiction, and is adapting Ursula Leguin’s classic novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, for the screen. Her Marshall Plan film series, “Selling Democracy,” an effort to shed light on current U.S. policy in the greater Middle East, is touring the United States. It is also a hommage to her father, the late Stuart Schulberg, who served as chief of the Marshall Plan Motion Picture Section and of the Documentary Film Unit of the U.S. Military Government in Germany. Schulberg was born in Paris, and was educated at SwarthmoreCollege.
Speaker Bios (cont’d)
2:30pm, Panel 2: The Current Landscape of Public Diplomacy (Logan 17)
Alexander Feldman,Coordinator of the Bureau of International Information Programs, United States Government
Alexander Feldman was appointed Coordinator of the Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) on June 14, 2004. The Coordinator is the rank equivalent of a US Assistant Secretary of State.
IIP is the principal United States Government organization responsible for informing, engaging and influencing international audiences about US policy and society. The Bureau has over 370 full-time staff and contractors specializing in all geographic regions of the world and thematic subjects in the State Department’s portfolio. Mr. Feldman currently oversees an annual budget of almost $50 million.
Mr. Feldman joins the Department of State with extensive experience as an international media executive in TV, radio and the Internet. For the past 11 years, he has lived outside the U.S., residing in Hong Kong, Singapore and London, and working throughout Europe and Asia. He has worked for some of the world’s largest media companies, including NBC Universal, News Corporation and Viacom.
Martin Rose,Director of Counterpoint, British Council
Martin Rose is the Director of Counterpoint, the British Council’s think-tank on cultural relations and public diplomacy. He was educated at OxfordUniversity (MA in Modern History, M Phil in Oriental Studies), and worked in academic publishing and banking before joining the British Council in 1988. His postings with the Council include Baghdad (1989-90), Rome (1991-96) and Brussels (1999-2002). He takes up the post of Director of the British Council in Canada in the summer of 2005. Publications include Trust, Mutuality and Cultural Relations (with Nick Wadham-Smith, 2004) and British Public Diplomacy in an Age of Schisms (with Mark Leonard, 2005). He is married with four children.
Robert Vitalis,Director of the Middle EastCenter, University of Pennsylvania
Robert Vitalis directs the Middle EastCenter. He is the recipient of fellowships from The American Research Center in Egypt, the Social Science Research Council, the WoodrowWilsonCenter, the American Council of Learned Societies, The International Center for Advanced Studies, the MacArthur Foundation, and the ShelbyCullomDavisCenter. In 1996, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations awarded him a Bernath Prize for his work on Egyptian political economy. His areas of interest are the State and market formation in Saudi Arabia; the political and cultural economy of the world oil industry; American expansionism; the history of international relations and development studies; and race and American international relations theory.
Film Schedule
Saturday, January 28 (International House)
10:00 - 11:00Box Office Opens
11:00 - 1:00 FILM PROGRAM 1: Out of the Ruins Running Time 100 Minutes
Focusing on Marshall Aid to Germany and Italy, this program features Hunger, It’s Up to You, Between East and West, The Bridge, Me and Mr. Marshall, In Life and Death of a Cave City, one of the rare color films, and Houen Zo, a symphony of sounds and music that shows the city coming back to life, which won a special prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
1:00-1:30Q&A with Sandra Schulberg
1:30 - 2:30 Break
2:30 - 4:30FILM PROGRAM II: Help is on the Way Running Time 100 Minutes
The films in Program II embody the can-do spirit of the Marshall Planners before anti-Communist anxieties set in. These themes are amusingly tackled in The Extraordinary Adventures of a Quart of Milk, The Home We Love,and Rice and Bulls, all set in France. Thrilling struggles to reclaim land and find water for irrigation are recounted in Island of Faithand Town Without Water. Hansl and the 200,000 Chicks and Action No. 5 takes you on a tour of aid projects in Portugal, Great Britain, Belgium and Greece - all set to the jaunty tunes typical of 50’s newsreels.
4:30-5:00Q&A with Sandra Schulberg
Tickets: The International House box office will open an hour prior to the film screenings. The tickets are free.
Film Schedule (cont’d)
Sunday, January 29 (International House)
10:00 - 11:00Box Office Opens
11:00 - 1:00FILM PROGRAM III: True Fiction Running Time 120 Minutes
Marshall Plan filmmakers created a sense of drama in nearly all of their films and numerous documentaries were partially staged docudramas. The Marshall Plan also commissioned full-fledged fiction films. Program III illustrates both approaches in The Story of Koula, Aquila, a beautiful example of early Italian neo-realism, The Promise of Barty O’Briens, The Smiths and the Robinsons and Let’s Be Childish, a delightful ode to the future of Europe.
1:00-1:30Q&A with Sandra Schulberg
1:30 - 2:30 Break
2:30 - 4:30FILM PROGRAM IV: Strength for the Free World Running Time 100 Minutes
The invasion of Korea cut short the optimistic phase one of the Marshall Plan. During phase two,under the Mutual Security Agency, filmmakers would make more films with anti-Communist themes, stressing the virtues of political unity and military strength. The fear of Communist inroads haunts The Hour of Choice, Without Fear, Struggle for Men’s Minds, Whitsun Holiday, Do Not Disturb! and The Shoemaker and the Hatter, a cartoon parable about the virtues of a common market.
4:30-5:00Q&A with Sandra Schulberg
Tickets: The International House box office will open an hour prior to the film screenings. The tickets are free.
Related websites:
The Project for Global Communication Studies, AnnenbergSchool for Communication
International House
Selling Democracy: Films of the Marshall Plan 1948-1953