mike working? the mike is working. my name is sherry mueller and it is my privilege to service as president of the public diplomacy council and to welcome each of you in this room to the first monday forum, a monthly event that public diplomacy council cohosts with a public diplomacy alumni association. and the university of southern california annual annenberg center for leadership, communication, and policy. and also, just to correct, i saw the president here, it is the public diplomacy association of america. we got it, i promise. all three organizations are really pleased to cohost our special guest, dr. vivian walker, who will be introduced by one of our board members, . botch in a few minutes peter kovach in a few minutes. we are very grateful to george washington university, they are renovating the normal room that we work with and i appreciate the patience of all of you. we are grateful to the elliott school and anthony desantis who is here. anthony, for all the hosp
I am here to offer special thanks to steve, sitting over here, who is the other instigator and driving force of this conference. Steve wrote an enormously rich, informative biography and a sort of career study of lenny bruce, done in 2005 at the university of paris. As a result of his research in that respect, he got to meet and know lenny bruces daughter, and it was really steve is adjusted to kitty steve who suggested to kitty that Brandeis University would be the ideal site for the papers of her father. None of us would be here without steves initiative and instigation, and i want to thank you for that. [applause] you will be hearing from steve later this morning as well as this afternoon, when he will be in conversation with kitty bruce. I was not privy to that conversation in which they suggested that brandies was the ideal site, but i want to start with what the argument might have been. We have the same initials as lenny bruce, that is the least significant feature. We are a som
And he was really good. People really liked his course and i personally want to have that course, i think we should have it, but something has happened. Student demand for that course is not high and i understand it because student demand i understand so well for journalism is not high either. Its all part of the whole evolution thats taking place in the world and academia. Young people are coming at this from a different perspective than what we came out. Either we adapt to that or we die. It doesnt mean that you do away with public policy, not at all. What i am trying to say is be honest about, one, competitive environment, and two, what the students want, right . So but the course that is we do have are very popular. I teach courses about how to write oped pieces. That goes into international biases and the different between liberal societies. Really everything about how you change the global debate. Thats what the course is called. Then we have other course that is we have to do wi
Today which is the heart of what we all talk about, Public Diplomacy. And you can go back a century to the beginning of the u. S. Governments First Official formal messaging, world war i, john brown did a program about that last year. After world war ii and during the cold war we had education on cultural exchanges very much on the floor and today one of president obamas signature efforts, the Young African Leaders Initiative is bringing hundreds of African Leaders to washington to meet with the president and others today and tomorrow. And then there is the social and digital revolution and media. And that is something which continues to unfold. We have an announcement most recently, i believe thursday is the latest iteration of the innovation in u. S. Messaging this time to attempts to head off recruiting by isis and other terrorists groups appealing to emotion. You may have seen that in the friday the New York Times and other papers. This is a quickly changing field and we have someb