Fulbright Scholar Program: Are We 'Ugly Americans?' Conference Looks at U.S. Image Abroad

3/28/2002

From: Judy Pehrson of the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, 202-686-4014; E-mail: jpehrson@cies.iie.org

News Advisory:

Fulbright Scholars from 60 countries will gather at a conference in Washington, D.C. at the Wyndham City Center Hotel April 3-6 to examine America's image abroad.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the conference is titled, "The Images of the U.S. Around the World: Myths and Realities." The 125 foreign Fulbright academics and professionals attending will hear from State Department officials, heads of U.S. research centers and think tanks, representatives from a variety of international organizations, and foreign and U.S. journalists.

Political scientist Benjamin R. Barber, author of the international best-seller "Jihad vs. McWorld," will deliver the conference keynote address Wednesday, April 3 at 7:30 p.m. His topic is "Democracy vs. Jihad vs. McWorld."

Barber is the Gershon and Carrol Kekst Professor of Civil Society at the University of Maryland and a principal of the Democracy Collaborative, an international consortium of more than 20 of the world's leading academic centers and citizen engagement organizations. He is the author of 15 books and recipient of Fulbright, Guggenheim and Social Science Research Fellowships, and the Berlin Prize of the American Academy of Berlin.

Patricia Harrison, assistant secretary of state for Educational and Cultural Affairs, will be the luncheon speaker, Thursday, April 4.

Ambassador Kenton W. Keith, the U.S. State Department's Special Envoy to Islamabad from November 2001 to January 2002, will discuss "Public Diplomacy in the War Against Terrorism" at the final plenary session on Saturday, April 6 at 10:30 a.m. Keith set up the Coalition Information Center in Pakistan following the September 11 terrorist attacks, and served as spokesperson on Coalition activity in Afghanistan. Currently senior vice president of Meridian International Center, he was U.S. Ambassador to Qatar from 1992-1995.

Other conference speakers include S. Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, whose topic is "Primetime: How TV Portrays American Culture"; Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, who will discuss "How the World Sees the U.S. -- How Americans View Themselves;" and former Foreign Service Officers Dr. Barry Fulton, from the George Washington University Public Diplomacy Institute, and Dr. Juliet Antunes Sablosky, adjunct professor of liberal studies at Georgetown University, who will speak on "Communicating Beyond the Headlines: U.S. Public Diplomacy."

Conference attendees will also hear from a panel of foreign and U.S. journalists commenting on the views of the U.S. in their countries. Panelists are Jefferson Brown, director of the Washington Foreign Press Center; Andrei Sitov, Washington bureau chief for ITAR-TASS (Russia); Jacques Charmelot, a reporter for Agence France-Press; Chinanand Rajghatta, Washington bureau chief for the "Times of India"; David Kaplan, senior editor of U.S. News & World Report; and Thomas Gorguissian, Washington bureau chief for "Al-Wafd" of Egypt.