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 hospitality that you provide to us for these first monday forums. the first monday forum in february will feature the executive director of the alliance for international exchange. and we are pleased to learn more about the kind of advocacy they are doing on the hill and their outreach in general and how we can work with them. i would ask every public diplomacy councilmember to raise their hand of the board. ok. they are undergoing thank you all a strategic planning process and any of you who have advised, these find your local board member. we are listening, we are in listening mode. i was just reading how important listening is the public diplomacy. also, i want to say a special thank you to c-span for covering this. with that, i'm going to turn the microphone over to joan from the public diplomacy association of america for an announcement and then following her, peter will do the honors of introducing a very special guest for today. >> thank you, sherry. i'm delighted to be the new program chair and vice president, which is my volunteer job. many of you know me from my day job. as program director, i'd like to announce we have a great program on february 24 with the ambassador, now the deputy commander and she will be talking about the nexus of the military and public diplomacy and her experiences in that area. finally, we really are looking for ideas and thoughts to merge these two programs, the first mondays of the house. the two organizations work together on those, so any suggestions or ideas you have, i will give you my email. with that, i look forward to today's program. thank you very much. >> good afternoon, friends. what a privilege for me to introduce a distinguished colleague, a dear friend, dr. vivian walker. vivian started as a project of mine in protege of mine in morocco and as a public intellectual, has ended of a mentor to the community of international practitioners around the world. we are all indebted. dr. walker presides over the advisory commission on public diplomacy in the 71st year. as we near release of the nearest annual report, today, the the and will share a research-based presentation, a historical reflection tracking key issues and strategizing and implementing public diplomacy over these seven years as reflected in these reports. and who better to do this? vivian is a compulsive researcher. she does everything on the basis of maximum knowledge. what distinguishes her scholarly reflections on our profession in my view is that as a public diplomacy officer, she proves to be an amazingly wise and was active manager. a rare combination, i feel. one that catapulted her rapidly up the ranks. in her career as a scholar and strategic communications, this latest appointment combines her passions for study of our field with her management skills. a few of her career achievements to embarrass her just a bit more, as the regional pao in kallick stand in the late 90's, khazakstan in the late 90's, she advocated against some bureaucratic inertia, establishing fully staffed public diplomacy sections in two places. as the public diplomacy office director, in the decade after consolidation, she more skillfully embedded her pd country officers with desks. even though she and i have some differing views on that, it was a very dicey question back then. more recently, as the senior officer for afghan state department border issues, she, against some resistance of habit, refocus our border attention to the northern border with central asia to address an absolute plethora of issues that had been pretty much unaddressed with the of session on pakistan. the scholarly reflection the first week of the new year comes as a symbolic moment, obviously. vivian, may we all drink from the cup of your historical research and wisdom, and i thank you very much. it has been an honor. (applause) >> thank you very much for that kind introduction. it is such a pleasure to be in a room full of colleagues and friends and mentors, all of you dedicated to the practice of public diplomacy. so, today, in the new year, i think it's appropriate that with this look backwards over 70 years warning, reporting, we are essentially going to look at the history of the commission and the commission's reporting helps us to understand the public diplomacy problems today and to look to the future. in fact, with the 2019 report, which should be out in about a week or 10 days, before it on our website, it is the 2019 report, and it is the 70th anniversary of reporting. the first report produced by the commission was in 1949. the commission itself was established in 1948. what i would like to do today is to look at the history of this reporting and spend some time tracing some of the key themes across the years, and then turn our focus to the present with a quick preview of some of the recommendations that will be appearing in the 2019 report, and then finish out on some of the issues that i think are occupying us now that will very clearly defined the practice of public diplomacy for the future and leaving us with a set of questions that i hope we can discuss in the question-and-answer session because again, in a room of such distinct practitioners and experts in the field, i see this presentation as less of a lecture and more of an opportunity to have a dialogue. the u.s. advisory commission on public diplomacy. before i joined the commission as executive director, i had no idea what this advisory commission business was. in fact, there is a very old tradition in the united states dating back to the 1840's at least of putting together commissions that advise the government or advise the president using outside expertise to bring together a number of different perspectives on the issue, and then to provide a recommendation. these are formally called federal advisory commissions. so, the idea is to provide an objective assessment of the issues for the public. the primary consumer of these reports is the american taxpayer. as well as all of the institutions and experts associated with the topic. it is independent, it is bipartisan. the chairman is presidentially appointed, he is senate confirmed. the seven commissioners in general represent ideals from both republican and democratic viewpoints. it is the longest-running federal advisory commission in foreign affairs to date. in the 70 plus years, it has provided reports of recommendations to congress, the white house, the department of state, and the public. one of the best features about these reports if they do rely on outside expert assessments to bring a fresh perspective to the matter at hand. let's start with a little history. the commission was formed as part of the act of 1948, the u.s. information and educational exchange act. this is a very interesting time. this was, of course, just after the end of world war ii. the early days of the cold war. there was tremendous debate in congress about this act which meant to give authority to the state department to conduct public diplomacy activities. there was a lot of debate and there were certain members in congress who were concerned that the state department was incapable of nonpartisan action. that there were communists embedded in the department of state and to give them this authority would be essentially to be giving up our democracy and the sanctity of our government. the debate was finally concluded in favor of passing this legislation on the argument that truth can be a powerful weapon. so, to the concern that the state department would perhaps pander to the communist ideology, the response was no, this is an act that will enable us to put the truth out there about democracy, and that is what carried the day and that is where the commission was created. the commission was created out of this very important time in our history, post-war where we were very anxious about how we were going to not only project our image, but also protect and defend the values that we held most dear and the commission was put together to serve as both advocate and a watchdog on these efforts. just a couple of quick legislative landmarks for the commission. in 1961, the exchange component of the commission was activated. initially, two commissions were created in 1948, one on information and one on exchange, but until 1961, the work was done exclusively by the commission on information and in 1963, the exchange commission produced the first report on education and cultural exchanges. and then, the 1977 amendment to the 1948 act merged the information and exchange commissions and maintained the statutory authority. shortly thereafter, it became the advisory commission on public diplomacy. so, if we go back across the years the inning with 1949 to look at these reports, and by the way, they are all available online on our website. we are slowly updating our website to make these reports more accessible. if you go back and look at them, what you realize is that they represent, really, a very interesting overview of the evolution of public diplomacy in part of our foreign-policy activity. what i have done in going over all these reports is come up with about six areas where the recommendations seem to fall. there was certainly across the years a real interest in resources, funding. but also, very early on, and i will take you back to the 1950's and show you this, a concern about research and evaluation. that was there from the very beginning. not only how do we create these programs and make them effective, but how do we assess their value? i take an area of concern that is perennial, the professional status of the practitioners. what became public diplomacy officers. their training and development. a third area of focus, the institutional structure. what this beast of public diplomacy would be shaped as. of course, the usaa. even after usia, sustained debate on the validity and importance and the need for reform of usia. also a lot of discussion about where public diplomacy actually fits into the inner agency and how much power public diplomacy officers should have and how to get public diplomacy leadership to sit at the table where the positions are made. the fourth area that is consistent across 70 years is concerned about how to take advantage of and adapt advancement anti-medication technologies. i think it is easy for us to forget as we are now in this period of dealing with social media and internet and the consequences of these multiple and multiplying platforms and all of the challenges they provide, i think it is easy for us to forget that this is not a new problem and that with every iteration, every introduction, shortwave radio and then television and then satellite, at every stage, we've wrestled with how to take communication technologies and turn them into useful tools for our purposes. a fifth area is the perennial concern about the nature of cultural exchanges, not only their funding, but their tone and what they should be focused on and finally, the role of the international broadcasting service. so, there are things, there are outliers that don't fit into these categories, but by and large, these are the issues that dominate the reports. so, what i would like to do now is going to take you through, decade by decade, how these reports were framed in what kind of issues they focused on. with the idea, then, when we get to the end of this, of giving you a sense of the art of public diplomacy challenges over the last 70 years. and i'm going to put my glasses on because this is smaller. so, 1950's, early cold war. a period where the recommendations were quite foundational in nature. there was, as i mentioned, immediately a concern not just about the programs themselves, but how they were going to be evaluated and assessed and how we could get more field input into the way in which these programs are developed. this was a time in which the legislative basis for public diplomacy practitioners was created. not only official foreign officer career status, but granted diplomatic immunity and diplomatic passports. that was a tremendous development. there was, in that time, the creation of usia and getting the usia director a seat in the cabinet, a very, very important development. and even in the 50's, talking about focus on technology, early discussions in the reporting about, what are we going to do about this interesting thing? very early on, some themes in the recommendations about that. there was a lot of interest in where the education and exchange component should sit. and finally, there was a lot of discussion about how we were going to establish a viable u.s. presence in the global information space as it was then. a lot of thought about how we could push the american story out words using our services. in the 1960's, of course, characterized by events such as the bay of pigs and vietnam, an era of conflict and dissent, you could see a shift in focus in the reporting. by the 60's, solid research components within usia had been developed, but there was a sense that these research divisions were not adequate to the task and so there was a continued discussion about how we would make research and evaluation work better. in terms of professional training, now that professional core had been established, it had to be fully professionalized, and there was concern even in the 60's about how to elevate the status of the public diplomacy officer within the country team context as well as in washington operations. there was, in the 60's, already a sense that usia wasn't it, maybe that was not quite the organization we needed. again, it might come as a shock to those of us who thought the 1990's was a period where usia really came at the question. there was continual discussion about whether it was right agency for what we needed, and whether it was the right mix of powers. there is, as you might imagine, more exploration of the use of audio-visual techniques, and a real push in the 60's to court congress for support in terms of a cultural exchange program, a tradition that has worked very well for eca. with the broadcast services and the need to keep up with the new technologies of a developed. we get to the 70's. the era of ping-pong diplomacy and cap david accords, china and the middle east. the conversation in the 70's with respect to resources starts a conversation about linking resourcing to public diplomacy strategic potential. there was really an interesting discussion on public diplomacy as a strategic tool in the 70's. again, kind of forward-looking. more of a focus toward relationships between the fields. for example, looking at how public diplomacy officers related to their ambassadors. diplomacy and cap david accords, china and the middle east. the conversation in the 70's with respect to resources starts a conversation about linking resourcing to public diplomacy strategic potential. there was really an interesting discussion on public diplomacy as a strategic tool in the 70's. again, kind of forward-looking. more of a focus toward relationships between the fields. for example, looking at how public diplomacy officers related to their ambassadors. and what their status might the in the country team. there were concerns about updating shortwave transmission capacities. there was a push in the 70's particularly on expanding english language teaching programs, where they really push them out more broadly as well as exhibit programs. and in a sense with respect to the broadcasting services, by the 1970's, there was a lot more competition in the global information space. more needed to be done to remain competitive and viable. then we get to the 80's. berlin. catastrophic attacks on our embassies. the arms race, and of course, the foundations for the fall of the wall. and in that period, you first begin to see serious discussions of not only needing more money for public diplomacy activities, but looking at how miniscule the expenditure on public diplomacy was in comparison to, for example, defense spending or foreign affairs spending. there was a concern in the 80's we think that perhaps this is a concern limited to our era of filling long-standing vacancies at the senior levels of leadership. the 80's also saw the beginning of this very difficult debate which we are still working through on how you maintain the public access nature of public diplomacy programs in an environment that is not necessarily risk-free. terrorist attacks take place. there was concern that maybe we should put some limits as to what we can do with public diplomacy in order to protect our people and our resources. at the beginning of the debate which became much more heated up later on. the shift, of course, to satellite technology, those of us who wwere pao's remember our satellite dish and all of the agony associated with the upkeep. and then in the education and cultural grounds, there was the sense of needing to push out the exhibits, both in western europe, but also in what was then called the third world. again, with the broadcast services, a concern about technology and keeping up with technology. by the 1990's, a period where history was over and we had won all kinds of wars. we saw a renewed focus on polling and audience attitudes. and a real push for more leadership for public diplomacy within the inner age of the coordination process to include the nfc. there was, i think also in the 90's, a sense of frustration about the second class nature of public diplomacy, an attempt to defend public diplomacy is a core foreign-policy tool. of course, in the 1990's, the internet and the growth of high-speed digital networks which impacted the way in which we do public diplomacy. there was, in the 1990's, thanks to the freedom support act fund, which enabled public diplomacy sections in embassies all over the countries of the former soviet union and eastern europe, provided them with tremendous resources and programs to build civil society. there was a very controversial discussion at the broadcast services about perhaps phasing out both the recommendations of the commission which were rejected. by the 2000, and i'm going to leave us in the 2000s, i don't think i'm really ready to characterize to 2010, but we start with the war on terror and for want of a better word, i think our current preoccupation with what many call maligned influencers. but the sense that we are back with the cold war may be over, but we are in another kind of war. and in the 2000's and also as a consequence of integration, which happened into the cusp of 2000, there is a focus on, in terms of resources, how we protect the firewalls around pd funding and in terms of professional status, especially with public diplomacy officers being moved into department of state, a concern about how competitive public diplomacy officers were going to be within the department of state, and what their promotion rates would look like compared to the other state department officers. and also, the degree to which public diplomacy officers would have a shot at ambassadorial positions and other leadership positions that were not necessarily available to them while usia was a separate agency. in terms of the institutional structure, there was, and remains, a slight bit of concern about the way in which the usia was integrated into the department of state, concern that the stove piping of the regional bureau taking the regional issues is bifurcation and the separation of programming resources and geographical area, had some impact on the ability of public diplomacy initiatives to be effective. and in terms of the communication technology, having embraced and worked to adopt the social media technologies into our own programming, the challenge is more recently how we counter maligned influencers'use of these very same tools and how to cope with that. in terms of public access, despite risk aversion, of course with the embassy bombings and then 9/11 and the creation of these new, hardened embassies where we are often moved out of town or created in such a way that makes access to american centers almost impossible, a real debate about how we could continue to provide public access to our programs and resources. and finally, interesting questions in the 2000s about the broadcasting services which have multiplied and we are so concerned about duplication of effort and overlap and the concern that perhaps there had to be a more rational way of organizing the services, and what that might look like. so, that brings us to where we are today. and so, what were some of these actual recommendations of consequence? i talked about a lot of areas in which these recommendations were made, but what do these recommendations actually produce over time? a fair question. well, in fact, the creation of usia and the cabinet level status for usi director, that happened and that was a direct result of the commission recommendation. the legislation, has a mention, giving a status to public diplomacy officers. the redesign and upgrade of american libraries around the world came from the commission. the merger of state department bureau of investigation and cultural affairs with usia in efforts to consolidate information and cultural programs, a commission recommendation. the institutionalization of support are data-driven pd decision-making, research analysis and valuation. the suggestion of the center of gravity needing to be creative for public diplomacy to support other maligned influencers which is now what we call the global engagement center. that initial recommendation came from the commission. the development of new public accessibility standards for american spaces overseas that met security requirements and this was work in collaboration with diplomatic security, a commission recommendation. the commission also recommended a blue sky conversation on the future of the board of broadcasting governors that i think we can make a case for starting the process toward what is now the usagn. the recent merger of pa and iip bureaus and to what is now the global public affairs bureau, and its origins in the commission. and so, that is sort of a run through over the years of what the commission was able to achieve during its recommendations. so, here we are today. and i promised you that i would take a quick look at what the recommendations are for 2019. but since we are also talking about 70 years, 70 years, i thought it would be interesting to look at them side-by-side. what you have are the recommendations from 1949. the reports in those days were blessedly short and concise and have given me much room for thought. and then i put on the other side, some of the recommendations, the key recommendations that you will see in the report in a few weeks. and i think the side-by-side comparison is constructive. so, in 1949, and this is almost word for word, i've modified here and there for clarity, but there was real concern about gaps between department of state policy and the information and outreach function. and a need to address serious problems of coordination and possible conflicts between information programs carried out by various government departments. and you see our 2019 recommendations, which calls for information sharing across u.s. government agencies and prior organization coordination. so, 1949, they called for a better, more balance budget for military economic policy. with concern that there was, perhaps, a preponderance of support for the military followed by the economic and information. and in 2019, we have sustained investments in public diplomacy and global media programs as a priority. in 1949, there were some very specific recommendations about programming, about broadcast facilities, about the number of films. about what kind of tools we would need for the field and what would be most useful. and in 2019, we were called to conduct a strategic review of all of these structures and programs and consolidate and modernize the mission. so, not exactly parallel, but you can see how, in the 1949 focus, a very specific focus on the set of tools, we could get to where we are in 2019 with overall strategic review. there was a concern about resourcing more specific to travel and representation for the field, and also the kinds of visual materials and other items that would be attractive to far-flung places, and in 2019, we have renewed the focus on field driven information outreach. that is to say, trusting the field to be able to tell us what the needs are and empowering and enabling the field to do the job that they need to do to further our interests. and finally, the concern that the information about the united states is not really penetrating in the way that it should and this recommendation for the global public affairs agency to increase the frequency of briefings in order to keep audiences up-to-date about our strategies, our values, and our interests. so, by laying these two reports out side-by-side, there are some interesting conclusions that we can come to, and i will be interested in what you have to say about that as well. just because we are reporting on them in 2019 and that some of the issues are very similar, that is not suggesting that the commission is not doing its job. why are we still talking about it? rather, an indication of the enduring nature of these problems, and a reminder that we continually need to be asking ourselves these questions and we need the commission or something like the commission to keep us engaged on these issues, because they are enduring and they are part of the fabric of public diplomacy. the second thing i think that we can take away from this is that, yes, some things never change. so, we've been through the past, given you a taste of what it is we are looking at today in terms of recommendations. but here, and this is where i really welcome your input and your thoughts on this as public diplomacy practitioners, what next? looking backwards to look forwards. here is the looking forwards, and here is the emerging issues and trends that we have seen before, but are taking on new import in this day and age. the first one is this perennial identity question crisis for public diplomacy. his public diplomacy a legitimate craft? where does it belong in the process? what defines public diplomacy and how it should be orchestrated? this is a question that comes up continually. and i think, actually, it is understandable that the nature of public diplomacy and how it should be structured and who should be doing it and what the priorities would be, they are continually under review in a way that other aspects of the state department are not. and that is because the purpose of public diplomacy is to inform and influence target audiences in such a way as to affect their behaviors and their perceptions, to get them to at least tolerate if not accept and support our policies in a very human endeavor. it is trying to change minds and affect the way people think. and i think that very fluid, very difficult to define nature of public diplomacy and the challenge of its mission is part of the reason why we queue have this perpetual identity crisis about the profession. the second thing i think we need to be really looking at is 21st century public diplomacy in terms of the modernization of position descriptions. in fact, rppr is engaged in a modernization program of locally engaged staff position descriptions that is getting rid of the designations of culture and making it all audience-focused. i think there is a lot of merit to it. this is not a comment that necessarily is arguing the merits or demerits of the approach, but the information environment has changed and we do have to think very hard about how we change something as basic as position descriptions not only for the locally engaged staff, but also for our officers. and these changes in the way that we think about public diplomacy then have to be holistic. but this is something that is coming and something that we need to look at very carefully. the metrics challenge. we had outdone ourselves in creating metrics and performance measures year after year. recommendations and the condition is probably committed more to this as metrics. the problem i see arising is that each bureau seems to be developing a unique set of metrics and performance measures which are great and they can make a case for them being completely appropriate to the issues. but one you want to step back and get a bigger picture sense of how the measures on the activity, it is often very difficult to reconcile these competing ways of thinking about performance and evaluations. that is something we need to pay attention to. data privacy. we are always looking for more and better ways to do audience research. the more we know our audiences, but more effectively we can design our programs. and assess their impact. but the reason that we are not competitive, frankly, in the area of research is because we can't access certain kinds of information about audience that can be accessed in the private sector. and i think we have to have a real conversation about how we want to handle this. we want to be able to get the best information possible, but we also have to think about what kind of restrictions we want to place on the kinds of information that we can obtain. or, we have to revise our expectations about the kind of research that we can do. the virtual and the actual. we have to find the right balance between cutting-edge social media and traditional outreach tools. that, i think, is something that we continually have to pay attention. there is a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater, to look at the traditional tools and not useful for our purposes. this balancing act is important. how to maintain competitive in the educational exchange program environment in the case of the tremendous push to provide education as one very geographical and specific area we need to look at and made in russia. do we need a new containment strategy? what is the best response to russian disinformation? and finally, the interagency coordination. i initially wanted to call this interagency coordination and madness. my husband talked me out of it. coordination is essential, but how to do it and how to do it effectively? i don't think we've arrived at it. maybe we never will. maybe we need to rethink our expectations about interagency coordination. but if we do that, what would it look like? and some final questions, some bigger pictures. the issues that i just ran through were pretty tactical in nature. in this day and age, how do we maintain the sanctity of the last three seats? what happens to the essential people in a world that is increasingly virtual encounters? how do we manage the impact of this rapidly evolving information acquisition processing and distribution trend strategies? we live in an age with paradox of plenty. i don't know if you've heard the formulation of the information age. he says the paradox of plenty is that with all of this information available, the plenty of information leads to scarcity of attention. it's very difficult to get audience attention in this day and age. and then, when you have manipulation influences out there who use this tremendous wash of information for their own purposes, it raises serious questions about how we remain effective and strategic in an environment like this. and finally, how do we continue to promote unique cultural information products in a world where anything and everything is now accessible? both in terms of image and sound. those of us old timers in the room remember sending out great performers and jazz artists to read regions of the world that may not otherwise have access to that kind of opportunity. that is no longer the case. everything is available everywhere at all times. how do we continue to produce programming and events and opportunities and information that can remain meaningful given this challenge? and with that, i will look forward to your questions and your response to this. thank you very much for your attention. (applause) >> while you are thinking of your questions, i want to remind you, please speak up because of the c-span coverage, and in consideration of your colleagues to make sure we all hear what you are asking. i want to say a special thank you to dr. walker. you gave us a lot of food for thought and anyone who was worried about the sanctity of the last three seats is dear to our heart by definition. questions, please? four comments. or comments. identify yourself, please. michael and then catherine. >> if you look at the history of the commission over 70 years, it seems like in the early days, and had very prestigious members. household names, frank stanton and many other leading scholars in academics and media figures. and over the years, the quality or the prestige of the board commission members seemed to decline. would you comment on that? how can that be restored? i think you could argue that their output is important in the wider public and if you don't have that prestige, you don't get the attention of congress, policymakers, white house. >> thank you. in answering that, i'm going to borrow heavily from bruce gregory. bruce, jump in at any point. i hope you will. bruce as a former executive director, he talks about this as three eras of the commission. the first, as you point out, where we have household names. cultural icons and james michener. and then the second is the era of commissioners who might that necessarily be household names, but you're certainly movers and shakers in the washington community and beyond. the business community and the media world, and who have the ability to pick up the phones or write the letters or have the conversations that could perhaps influence events. and then, we are in the third era which is executive directors. i am walking in the shoes of some truly extraordinary executive directors, catherine brown, for example, who launched the report as we know it today, the compendium. that was her baby. shawn powers followed her, some groundbreaking work on can pd survive the internet for example which is one of the most highly cited works on these issues today. and i take your point about your concern about the effectiveness of the commission. but i find that a number of the findings that were actually adopted that i pointed out to you occurred during the areas era of executive directors. and i think as long as we have a set of commissioners and an executive director who are attuned to the problems, who are open to asking the hard questions and doing the research to get the answers, as long as we continue to produce reports that people read and take action on, then i am not so worried about the future value of the commission. the commission is certainly at luster and the commissioners we have today are dedicated and very interested in what we do. but the work of the commission goes on. >> i'm catherine lincoln. a very basic question, how is the commission funded and has that changed over the 70 years? >> i don't know the history of 70 years. we have an allocation that is administered to the department of state. i will run administered only out of the department of state's bureau of information programs. >> other questions, comments? >> my name is jeffrey and my question is about how the commission keeps its finger on the pulse of pd despite different changes happening. and if there have been incorrect recommendations in the past, how have those been corrected? >> your first question was, >> how do recommendations remain relevant? >> really good question. a number of different ways. every year, in preparation for the annual report, we send out a set of questions and to all of the regional and functional bureaus we also travel overseas. we use that as an opportunity to learn more about programs and refresh our experiences of public diplomacy in the field. we either write ourselves or commission special reports focusing on particular topics of interest. i mentioned ken pd survived the internet? we have done studies on security for american corners. we do reports on issue sets that seem to be of value and relevance. we do a reasonably good job of keeping our finger on the pulse. we could. i mentioned ken pd survived the internet? we have done studies on security for american corners. we do reports on issue sets that seem to be of value and relevance. we do a reasonably good job of keeping our finger on the pulse. we could do better. we could always do better. one of my goals in my own time as executive director is to try and broaden the reach of the commission as a platform for discussion. broadening into the academic community. another way in which we have been approaching this is to take the whole of government mandate the commission has. the initial language for the commission did not ask it to focus specifically on the department of state. the commission is supposed to look at public diplomacy activities across the u.s. government. the bulk of public diplomacy activities do occur in the department of state. but we can think of a few agencies and institutions that do a bit of their own like the department of defense. as a preview, at the end of january, i am sponsoring with the defense university. a look at how we define the information in order to teach it. that will be an attempt to get our finger on the pulse of what the folks in the dod community are thinking about about public diplomacy. the people who study at the professional military education institutions are not just military but civilians from across the inner agency. how are we educating the next generation of leadership? to think about issues about public diplomacy and how to use it strategically in pursuit of interest. that is where we are trying to broaden our reach. i have forgotten the third part of your question. >> recommendations provided by the pd went wrong. >> wrong or right i don't know about wrong or right. recommendations that were not accepted, absolutely. or ignored. that is ok too. in some sense, i don't think of the commission so much as the answer people. i think of the commission as the question people. i think it is important to identify the tough issues and get a number of people to provide their input and advice on what is the best way forward. sometimes the recommendations we come up with as a result of these conversations are not recommendations that are necessarily approved. i would not put them in the question of wrong or right. this is not that business. this is a business of collecting ideas, sharing them in the public sphere, and coming to a consensus about how best to move forward. >> if you could introduce yourself again. >> i am joan from the pdaa. what is the number one challenge in your opinion facing pd officers? second, do you think the data-driven we need information right away, i go to embassies where they are spending the whole day in front of computers trying to measure something. not able to get out. >> i think they are combined. i do have concern when you talk about the role of public diplomacy officers. about the way in which the range of responsibilities in the field right now. part of it is data-driven. part of it is the attention to metrics. it is also a consequence of the use of social media which require constant maintenance and immediate response. public diplomacy officers, and shawn baxter my senior advisor working with me, we can attest to the fact that in our conversations they find the time they have to do the long-term strategic planning the time they would need to go out and talk to contacts and engage is increasingly limited by the demand placed by the continuous short-term advocacy. also this business of measuring and evaluating and assessing programs. it seems like no sooner have you completed one set of requirements or fulfilled one set of assessments than another comes along. this commission is reaching out to you for more information. i think that is a big challenge the public diplomacy officers in the field are dealing with. one that washington perhaps does not appreciate. not that washington is not interested in the problem. you have to be in the field to understand just how overwhelming some of these requests can be. >> ambassador morris. >> thank you very much, vivian. i know sometimes you do go up to the hill to talk with members and staff of congress. i am wondering how you find the interest of members, particularly staff, and public diplomacy. are they responsive to your views? particularly to the need for more resources? >> i would have to caveat this by saying i have been on board since may. i have not had contact with members. i have talked to staffers on both sides. my senses the among the core staffers who are interested in public diplomacy issues there is a genuine support for and interest. there is a recognition of the value of the program. they have reached out to me and reached out to me and my predecessors for support on drafting language for resolution or a bill that would support increased resources for public diplomacy. my impression so far is that there is a genuine desire to be helpful and maintain, if not increase, funding. the reality is there are many competing priorities on the hill. it is often difficult for public diplomacy to take front and center when there are so many other issues under consideration. >> we have time for a few more questions. i am going to call on this lady in a moment. bruce gregory, if you at any point before we finish want to offer other reflections. you are one of the distinguished predecessors. first, we will take a couple more questions. mary. introduce yourself. >> mary kruger retired fso. you mentioned the advisory commission talks about questions not just answers. has there been discussion about how to communicate in an era when the concept of truth is what? questioned itself. related to that, one of the processes i have observed is i remember during my career we emphasized reason, fact, and things that were generally agreed upon as truths. that is what we communicated about. in today's communication environment, the role of emotion is much more important than it used to be. the question of how you approach your audience seems to me is that social media plays on emotion rather than presenting facts. >> with response to your question about the truth or the post-truth environment, yes, that is a perennial question. i think the i am looking for it. the question of when i was talking about the paradox of plenty here it was. that one. the second one. in this environment, where there are so many competitors for truth, because of this absolute explosion of information the audiences who are so overwhelmed they are defaulting to go with things they already know or conform to their previously held belief. they don't necessarily challenge their views. it is very difficult to compete effectively. the report i mentioned a couple of times, can pd survive the internet which we put out a year and a half ago talks about ways to address that. i think it is a perennial problem. as to the emotional nature of social media, yes, it is. we are not going to walk back the use of these media tools. the challenge becomes as i mentioned in the lookahead is how do we balance that with the use of traditional tools that allow us to be able to provide that context and opportunity for reflection? i think that is really possible i think that is still possible. we need to provide opportunities for broader reflection and engagement even as we work in the short term responding to these questions. >> bruce, anything you would like to add? >> i have a habit of not pivoting from the back. three quick points. i think this is a wonderful presentation and i have been a big fan of the executive director's beginning with david kramer, catherine brown, shawn powers, and now vivian for the work they are doing. i value and respect the past but the most interesting part of what she is talking about are the final questions and where we go from here. i think i will leave it there. >> thank you so much. i am going to take a prerogative of the chair to thank vivian and i will ask you all to join me in applause. many of you know the public diplomacy association of america and the public diplomacy council has a working group to decide if we should continue to hold hands or get married. they are working hard on that. we will ultimately develop more of a signature gift. in the interim, i wanted to share with vivian the very first pdc signature cookie. made in wisconsin. it must be eaten right away because it has no preservatives. it is a tiny thank you for an enormous job you just did is our first speaker in 2020. please join me in thanking vivian. >> that is very sweet of you. thank you all. we will be adjourned. >> if you missed any of the discussion you can see it on our website at c-span.org, type public diplomacy in the search box. 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