Good afternoon and welcome to an event sponsored by AEI and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston.

I wanted to get started early because we have a full program and we need to end by 2 o’clock on the dot.

I am James K. Glassman, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Instiute, host of TechCentralStation.com, and in my waking moments, a columnist for the Washington Post.

I will serve in a dual role. I will make some not-too-brief comments at the outset and also will serve as moderator. We will then hear from our main speaker and from our two panelists, then take questions from the floor.

For the past three months, I have had the honor of serving my country as one of 13 members of the Advisory Board on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World, headed by our main speaker today, the distinguished American diplomat Edward Djerejian. He is the former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Israel, under both Republican and Democratic administrations and former assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department and a deputy press secretary for foreign affairs in the Reagan Administration. The ambassador is now president of the Baker Institute at Rice.

The first of our two distinguished commenters is Penn Kemble, a senior scholar at Freedom House and director of a Freedom House and Foundation for Democratic Education joint project on democracy and the global economy. During the Clinton Administration, Mr. Kemble was deputy director, chief operating officer and later acting director of the U.S. Information Agency. The other panelist is Joshua Muravchik, a resident scholar at AEI whose most recent book is Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism, published last year. He is also an adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy.

Those of us on the Advisory Group have had a very intensive three months. As private citizens, volunteers, without pay, we embarked, at the request of Congress and the administration, on a study of what has gone wrong in public diplomacy--which is defined as the promotion of the national interest by informing, engaging and influencing people throughout the world--as distinguished from other such means of influence, such as the use of military power or state-to-state diplomacy.

We were specifically asked, in the legislative language, to “develop new approaches, initiatives, and program models to improve public diplomacy.” I think we have done that. And more. One commentator wrote that our report is “a refreshingly blunt assessment . . . offering a series of generally useful, often innovative, and sometimes audacious suggestions.” You will have to judge for yourselves.

Public diplomacy, since the end of the Cold War has fallen on hard times. Public diplomacy helped win the Cold War and it can help win the war on terror--but not in its current state. As our report says in its third paragraph: “A process of unilateral disarmament in the weapons of advocacy over the last decade has contributed to widespread hostility toward Americans and left us vulnerable to lethal threats to our interests and our safety. In this time of peril, public diplomacy is absurdly and dangerously underfunded, and simply restoring it to its Cold War status is not enough.”

This is our main message: that public diplomacy must be treated, and again I quote from the report, with a “seriousness and commitment that matches the gravity of our approach to national defense and traditional state-to-state diplomacy.” Such a commitment and gravity can only be imparted from the top, by the president--which is one of the reasons we call for an office of the special counselor in the White House to set strategic direction, coordinate and monitor public diplomacy throughout government.

But I do not want to get ahead of Ambassador Djerejian.

Let me say something briefly about the group itself and then make two quick points.

This was a remarkable bunch of people. Thirteen of us--Muslims, Christians and Jews. Six Arabic speakers, one Urdu, one Farsi. Many born outside the United States and naturalized citizens. Most academics. Bipartisan. Differing in political and policy outlooks on Middle East affairs, but unanimous in the recommendations of our 80-page report, which was issued Wednesday.

The members were Amb. David Abshire, who heads the Center for the Study of the Presidency; Stephen Cohen, National Scholar for the Israeli Polilcy Forum; Ambassador Diana Lady Dougan, who chairs the Cyber Center Forum; Mamoun Fandy, senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace; Dr. Malik Hasan, founder of two health-care firms; Farhad Kazemi, professor of politics and middle eastern studies at NYU; Judith Milestone, former CNN executive; Harold Pachios, who just completed his term as chairman of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy; George Salem, partner at Akin Gump and chairman of the Arab American Institute; Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor of Peace and Development at the University of Maryland; and John Zogby, one of America’s most admired pollsters. In addition, Christopher Ross, former U.S. ambassador to Syria, served as a consultant to the group, and Nina DeLorenzo was chief of staff.

One special mention: This report, I hope, will set a new trend in Washington not just for its content but for its design. It was designed by one of America’s great designers, William Drenntel. We were lucky to get him.

Our group traveled to Egypt, Syria, Turkey, France, Britain, Senegal and Morocco. We conducted videoconferences with interlocutors in Islamabad and Jakarta. We interviewed, in all, about 200 people--U.S. officials from the State Department, Pentagon and White House, the administrator of US AID, the Deputy Secretaries of State and Defense, English teachers in Damascus, artists in Egypt, public affairs officers in Istanbul, Muslim intellectuals in Paris, communications experts in London, NGO officials in Ankara, ambassadors in Egypt and Turkey.

My two quick points . . .

First, from the very start--from the first week--it was clear that public diplomacy not merely lacked resources, it lacked a coherent management structure. No one was providing the leadership and strategic direction that is provided in domestic policy. Much was ad hoc. This is not a reflection on the dedicated people who practice public diplomacy. We were impressed with them, but they operate under a threadbare and often chaotic system. One of its deficiencies is the lack of measurement.

The second point concerns one of my main areas of interest: media. Government-sponsored international broadcasting was funded last year at $540 million; that compares with $600 million for all State Department public diplomacy programs, including exchanges like Fulbright. Yet, the Board of Broadcasting Governors exists outside the normal structure of public diplomacy. We call in our report for bringing broadcasting under the same coordinated strategic direction as the rest of public diplomacy. We also urge that Radio Sawa adopt the right objectives--as our title says, changing minds, rather than simply building an audience, and we call for an independent review of the proposed Middle East Television Network.

As one commentator wrote about our recommendations, “The report is perhaps most valuable for injecting some much-needed sanity into the Washington debate over radio and television stations targeted at Middle East audiences.

People who like this report ask what they can do. That’s simple. Tell Congress to support it and enact the recommendations. Just as important, tell the White House. So far, the White House has said nothing publicly about the report. Speaking as one member of the advisory group, strictly on my own, I hope that state of silence will end.

Now, the main act: Ambassador Edward Djerejian . . .

James K. Glassman is a resident fellow at AEI.