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Remarks with Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy
and Public Affairs Karen P. Hughes and Assistant Secretary for
Educational and Cultural Affairs Dina H. Powell on Private Sector
Summit on Public Diplomacy
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
January 10, 2007
2007/015
Media Note
View Video
ASSISTANT SECRETARY POWELL: Hello, everybody. Welcome to the
State Department. Welcome to the beautiful Benjamin Franklin Room.
We are so delighted to be the co-host of the Private Sector Summit
on Public Diplomacy with our great partners, the Public Relations
Coalition, PR Coalition. We have had already a morning of tremendous
panels, speakers and we have already, I think, planted several
seeds that will bear fruit. Our desire, as we mentioned this morning,
is to ensure that public diplomacy cannot be seen as the work
of government alone. And with the help of all of our partners
in this room, I truly believe we're going to leave a lasting legacy
of these kinds of partnerships because we have such a common goal
in promoting mutual understanding of Americans and American values
with people all around the world.
There are a few people that I would like to thank. It's very hard
in a setting like this not to mention everybody that has been
such a strong partner and such a strong supporter of our efforts,
but there are a few people without whom we really would not be
here today.
The first is Karen Hughes, who when I come to her with ideas,
I often preface them with just listen to the entire proposal first
-- (laughter) -- before you make a judgment. But more often than
not, she not only encourages the ideas that we come up but she
is so fully supportive of them. And when we -- when BJ Goergen
and myself went to talk to her about partnering with the PR Coalition
-- on the first of its kind -- public/private summit, this high-level
summit with corporate leaders and communications professionals,
she got it immediately and she actually was so appreciative that
the PR Coalition had selected us.
Last night, Josh Bolten introduced her at the White House and
he said, "If you needed one symbol of President Bush's commitment
to public diplomacy, it was the appointment of his closest advisor
Karen Hughes, who he brought back from Texas to take on this tough
but critical mission." So thank you, Karen, for listening
to our ideas.
I also have to thank Jim tremendously and all of your board members
for making this a reality. This morning every one of the speakers
was terrific. And as often happens, we did not have enough time
and I'm so thrilled we're going to have this afternoon.
I don't think anyone is going to mind, though, that I'm going
to single out one of the speakers and that was Maria Pacheco,
who absolutely stole our hearts. Maria is one of our exchange
participants. Maria would you stand, please? (Applause.) Maria
participated in a program called the State Department FORTUNE
Most Powerful Women in Business Mentoring program that our friends,
Donna McLarty and Melanne Verveer of Vital Voices helped us create.
It brings an emerging businesswoman from around the world and
partners her with amazing leaders, female leaders, in our country.
Her amazing leader was Cathy Buskin (ph). But Cathy (ph) told
us this morning that not only did she learn more from Maria, she
actually hired her as a consultant. But Maria touched our hearts
when she said, "I came to participate in the program and
I arrived at the hotel and obviously I was nervous. But I arrived
at the lobby and I saw the most beautiful portrait of Dr. Martin
Luther King. And I thought this is a good omen because I, too,
have a dream." And Maria is a reminder of the dreams of so
many people all around the world that we try to partner with and
especially women. And I am so proud of you, Maria, and I'm so
proud that you now have gone back to Guatemala and helped so many
other women. You truly make us proud.
(Applause.)
I now have the great opportunity of introducing my partner in
crime, Jim Murphy. Jim, I think, got a good lesson in dealing
with government bureaucracy. But the great thing is our teams
have stayed wonderful friends. And Jim, I'm just so delighted
that this afternoon we're going to have what business likes to
call action products. And we are so looking forward to you all
voting on and unveiling the top ten things corporations can do
around the world to help in our efforts in public diplomacy. So
with that, Jim Murphy.
Thank you.
(Applause.)
MR. MURPHY: Well, thanks so much. You know, one of the objectives
we had for the morning was to put a lot of smart people in a room
and tell them some things they never heard of before and I really
think we accomplished that. And I really want to thank the panelists
for the terrific job. Could you all stand up? We just want to
give you another round of applause -- all the panelists, please.
(Applause.)
Now it gives me great pleasure to introduce our luncheon speaker,
or one of them, I've had the privilege of working with Ambassador
Hughes or meeting with her a number of times over the last year
or so since she's taken over the job that she has. And when working
with her, you can certainly tell firsthand what a remarkable person
she is and why the President and others call upon her for advice.
And also if you haven't read her book, "Ten Minutes to Normal,"
you know what that meant. It was ten minutes from the next stop
on the political roundabout, please read it. It's a terrific story,
a tale on politics in America told by someone who really understands
it.
I'd like to list just a second -- the broad responsibility she
does have. She overseas three bureaus of the Department of State:
Education and Cultural Affairs. Public Affairs and International
Information Programs and she also participates in foreign policy
development in the State Department, I think is a great American,
Karen Hughes.
UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: Well, thank you so much, Jim, and welcome
all of you to the State Department. I want to especially thank
Jim for having the vision and coming to us with a vision for this
summit. I want to thank Assistant Secretary Dina Powell. And I
have to brag on Dina a little. She's my partner. (Applause.) You
know, what better representation of America can there be than
from an Egyptian American who came to this country when she was
four, speaking no English, and later in -- actually later, but
at a very young age -- I think in her early 30s was able to introduce
her father to the President of the United States for whom she
was a top advisor. And I think that's a wonderful story of the
land of opportunity that our country indeed is. And I want to
thank Dina and all her team because this is a major even and they've
had to do a lot of work and I've been getting e-mails in the middle
of the night from people who are down here working that I keep
emailing back and say, go home, go home.
I really want to thank all of you for being here. And I had to
say, looking around the room and seeing the quality and the scope
of the talent represented here, I feel like reinforcements have
arrived. And so I'm very grateful to all of you and I'm looking
forward to listening and learning from you this afternoon in your
sessions. I'll be popping in to listen because if ever our country
needs your advice and your communications knowledge and your great
skill, if ever there was a time for our country to bring together
its very best talent, this is certainly it in the challenging
times that we face around the world today.
The list of companies that have stepped forward to make this summit
such a success are literally of the who's who of business in our
country and in both the quality of the talent that's represented
here and the scope of your reach. This private sector summit is
truly an unprecedented event -- the first of its kind to bring
together leaders, the top executives in America with top government
leaders to identify clear steps that the private sector can take
to support and improve America's public diplomacy.
Your work will make a difference, the work and the advice and
the input that you are giving to us, you are already making an
enormous difference around the world. And our hope is that by
working together to come up with some very specific tangible,
specific actions that we can take, that you will be able to --
we will be able to help each other reach out to the world in a
spirit of friendship and partnership and respect and that is our
goal. I know the private sector is already working in so many
ways around the world to make our world a better place. Today
we're going to try to put that in a little bit of a strategic
context and magnify all of our abilities to be effective and to
create a new paradigm for public diplomacy in the 21st century.
I thought, as a way to jump start your discussions this afternoon,
I would share with you the three strategic priorities, the imperatives
that we use to judge our programs here in the State Department.
And first, it is that America must offer people across the world
a positive vision of hope that is rooted in our deepest values,
our belief in liberty, in justice, in opportunity, in respect
for all. I saw an interview of a young man in Morocco and he was
asked; "What do you think when you think of America?"
And he said, "For me, America represents the hope of a better
life." And it's vitally important that our country continue
to be that beacon of hope, that shining city on a hill that President
Reagan talked about so eloquently. And that's why we speak out
for democracy and against human rights offenders and for a free
press and against those who would stifle religious freedom, for
equal treatment for women and minorities and against sex trafficking
because America believes that every person has worth and dignity
and value and we proudly stand for human rights and human freedom
everywhere.
Our second strategic imperative is to isolate and marginalize
the violent extremists that we are facing and confront their ideology
of tyranny and hate. We have to undermine their efforts to betray
the West as somehow in conflict with Islam because Islam is a
part of America. As a government official, I represent an estimated
7 million American Muslims who live and work and worship side
by side with us here in this great country.
And one of the things I've worked to do is to empower their voices
and to demonstrate respect for Muslim cultures and contributions.
I think you all heard from Steve this morning that r-e-s-p-e-c-t
word is a vitally important word that we respect. And it's, in
some cases, the number one thing we can do is show that we respect
the contributions and cultures of others. And that's why I've
spent a great deal of my time as Under Secretary reaching out
to Muslim Americans because I believe they're an important bridge
to Muslim communities across the world.
We're also encouraging greater interfaith dialogue. It's vitally
important that we bring people of different faiths together and
foster dialogue and understanding. And I wanted to suggest that
that might be something you might want to talk a little bit about,
how you can foster that in your workplace. We found -- we've hosted
several programs here at the State Department to try to bring
people of different faiths together to talk about what they have
in common, to talk about what they believe and to share that with
our employees who are going out to work in many places in the
world where faith has a major impact on people and their lives
as it does in our country.
Our third strategic imperative is to foster -- this one sounds
kind of simple -- it's to foster a sense of common interest and
common values between Americans and people of different countries
and cultures across the world. And it sounds simple, but it actually
came from a meeting I had with a beloved former Ambassador --
many of you may know him, Frank Wisner -- who lives in New York
now. And I went to see him and he said, "Karen," he
said, "especially at a time of war and terror, you have got
to focus not just on common threats, but you have to actively
seek to nurture common interests and common values."
Now, you'll notice that of those three strategic objectives, two
of the three have nothing to do with the war on terror, even though
our friends in the media sometimes refer to my job as Muslim outreach
and that's an important part of it, but it is part of it because
America's public diplomacy involves the entire world. Our relationship
with our neighbors in this hemisphere is vitally important. We
must work to nurture the vital transatlantic partnership that
we have that is so critical to so much of what we're doing across
the world to build our relationships with India and Pakistan,
to reach out to people across an emerging China, which I will
be doing next week with a trip there. And we're also trying to
establish relationships with people, even when we don't have relationships
even when we don't have relationships with their governments in
countries such as Cuba and Iran, and I think Dina talked a little
bit about that this morning.
Now, we're doing all this, as you well know, in a dramatically
different communications environment. I was thinking this morning
about when I started my career in television back in the mid-'70s
in Dallas-Fort Worth, one of my first jobs as an intern at the
TV station was to make what was called "the meet." And
what the meet was it literally, a person would get in the car
in Dallas and drive halfway and the person would get in the car
from Forth Worth and they would drive halfway on the turnpike
and make "the meet" to transfer the film to go back
to Forth Worth for processing for that night's news. So I was
-- one of my early jobs was to make "the meet." Well,
within a year, it was totally irrelevant because we'd gone digital
and electronic.
In the 2000 presidential campaign I didn't have a BlackBerry.
By 2004, I couldn't imagine how you would participate in a campaign
without a BlackBerry. So we're in a dramatically different communications
environment than we were in the Cold War. In the Cold War we were
primarily trying to get information into largely closed societies
where people were hungry for that information. But you know what,
in a few places there are, but in most places across the world
there aren't people just sitting around waiting eagerly to hear
from America anymore. We're competing instead for attention and
for credibility in what is a very, very crowded communications
environment. And so today's public diplomacy has to be rapid,
it has to be global, it has to be multimedia, it has to be people-centric
and it has to be a team effort because all of us are involved
in painting a very complex tapestry that is the picture of America
across the world.
I'm finding myself after almost a year and a half here focusing
increasingly on three areas. One of them is communications. And
since you are all communicators, I thought I would talk about
it first. We have launched a new Rapid Response Unit that monitors
world news from a state-of-the-art broadcast center. It produces
a morning summary of what is driving news across the world and
what our message is on those issues and it goes out to every military
commander, every ambassador, every cabinet Secretary, to all the
key leaders of our government. And I think one of the beauties
of it is not only that it gets our message on the same page, but
it also focuses the attention of policymakers in Washington on
what is important to audiences across the world, what is making
news across the world and what is our policy position on that
news.
To speed up our reaction time and to get more U.S. Government
officials out on television, which is becoming -- again, there
are exceptions in some places. In Africa, in Afghanistan, radio
is still the primary vehicle of news delivery. But in much of
the world, people are getting their news on television. And so
we have to be more aggressive as a government getting our spokespeople
out on television. And so we have established three regional media
hubs in Dubai and Brussels and London. These hubs recognize the
increasingly regional nature of today's media which transcends
borders and bilateral relationships.
When you think about it, our State Department setup is very --
is structured to have an embassy and nurture a bilateral relationship
so the public affairs officers in an embassy in a country is focused
on that country's media. But in a place like Dubai you have a
thousand media outlets represented and they aren't just focused
on the country, they're focused on the entire pan-Arab world.
And so these hubs -- and we're hoping to expand them to other
regions as well -- recognize that increasingly regional nature
of the media and seek to strategically place U.S. Government spokespeople
and experts and officials on particularly television. And we've
launched a digital response team to respond to misinformation,
to answer questions, to put out information on the blogs and the
chat rooms.
I've challenged my team to -- I've told them the first person
who comes up with a good plan to put TV cameras in the hands of
some of our exchange students, so that they can do little postings
to YouTube, I'll fund it. And so I just -- I'll give you that
challenge as well. I gave it to my global PAOs earlier today.
We're having to get into podcasting and all sorts of the range
of new communications tools that we need to be involved with in
today's world. In coming weeks, we're going to expand our efforts.
We're working to set up a new counterterrorism communications
center to specifically develop messages and counter some of the
false propaganda that is put out against our country around the
world.
And we're also reaching out to voices other than those of the
U.S. Government to help tell our American story with great credibility
across the world. I had a conversation with a woman in Germany
-- our Ambassador in Germany has done a great job of reaching
out to the Muslim communities there. And I was meeting with a
young woman and she was talking about telling me how isolated
the members of her community felt. And I said, well, "Could
I come and maybe meet some of those folks?" And she looked
at me and said, "Well, no." (Laughter.) I was kind of
taken aback. I mean, nobody usually says no when I say could I
come meet with you.
And I said, "Well, why not?" And she said, "Well,
because you know, we don't -- we're not interested in hearing
from our own government, why in the world would we want to meet
with yours?" And I said, wow -- you know. And I said, "What
if I sent some Muslim American citizens over to visit with you
all?" And she said, "That would be fantastic."
And so we did it and it was fantastic. It was very successful
and we're expanding that program. We call it Citizen Dialogue,
sending young -- sending Muslim American students and professionals
and business leaders across the world to engage in dialogue and
to speak about America with just that great credibility that comes
with being one of our citizens who has lived the American experience.
We're also recruiting and deploying special American public diplomacy
envoys. And if you have ideas for those, I would welcome them.
Our first is world champion skater Michelle Kwan, who will be
traveling with me to China. And I imagine if it's true to form,
the young people there will be a lot more interested in hearing
from her than they will this middle-aged woman. And so we're expanding
those type of programs so that we can tap into the creativity
and talent of America to send it out across the world and speak
on our behalf.
The second area that I'm finding myself -- in addition to communications,
the other area that I'm finding myself focusing on is exchanges.
I am absolutely convinced, without a doubt, that our exchange
programs have been our single-most effective public diplomacy
tool of the last 50 years. Everybody that you talk with who has
participated in an exchange says the same thing, that their lives
were forever changed. And what better way to tell the story of
America than to bring people here and let them see for themselves.
We're particularly focused on student exchanges. And I'm very
proud and I have to commend my colleagues here at the State Department
and Consular Affairs and at embassies across the world, particularly
students, everywhere we really worked hard to speed up the student
visa process and for the first time we have now reversed the trend
of decline that began in the aftermath of September 11th. And
that is a very, very significant moment for -- important fact
for our country. Because as I travel the world, I meet young people
who -- I meet leaders, political leaders, business leaders, the
leaders of the world, and more often than not they tell me they
were educated here in America. And that is enormous intellectual
capital for our country and I want the same thing to be true 20
or 30 years from now as it is today.
So we're really working hard to get students here. We're working
in partnership with our higher education community. Dina led a
group to China, Korea and Japan to reach out. We're bringing our
university presidents together to tout America as a higher education
destination. I'll be leading a trip later this spring. As well,
our First Lady. And this is so important because in many areas
of the world the majority of the population is under the age of
25 and we need to reach out to those young people, again, with
new means. You know, every young person about that age that I
see has earphones in their ear, either on the cell phone or they've
got the little iPod in. So we've got to reach out in creative
ways.
Another way we're reaching out to young audiences is through sports
diplomacy, which I think also has a great deal of significance,
and English language training. I remember meeting a young man
in Morocco and I asked him, I said, "You know, tell me what
difference it makes, has made in your life that you've learned
English here in this program." And he said, "I have
a job and my friends don't." And that is the kind of real
world difference. We can reach out through English with something
that the world wants that we have. It's knowledge that we have
that the world wants and it opens the window into a wider world.
We're also increasingly working and forming partnerships. We're
partnering with -- the third area in addition to exchanges that
I'm focused on is what I call the diplomacy of deeds. And that
is the way in which the things we do around the world make a difference
and improve people's lives. We're partnering with NGOs on things
like the Malaria Summit that was hosted at the White House, both
to improve our effectiveness but also to improve our ability to
communicate about what we're doing to wipe out the malaria that
kills 3,000 children a day. A preventable disease -- think about
that -- that kills 3,000 children a day. And we have it in our
power to change that and we're working to do that.
We're partnering with Nancy Brinker and the Susan G. Komen Foundation,
the people who run the Race for the Cure, too. Nancy traveled
with me to the Middle East for the first ever women's health initiative
to be launched in the Middle East. And we're working with our
American medical institutions on this breast cancer initiative
that we're hoping to take to other areas of the world.
We're partnering with journalism schools and the Aspen Institute.
Walter is here to provide professional training for journalists
around the world. One of the things we focused on is who are the
key influencers in a society. And in a time when you have an explosion
of information and media outlets across the world, those journalists
are reporting the news and we want them to be trained in the standards
of fairness and accuracy and giving both sides of the story. And
so Walter and the journalism schools and the Aspen Institute have
been terrific partners in that effort.
And we're partnering with business in new ways. Dina mentioned
Maria and the Fortune women's -- most powerful women mentoring
session -- so many of these people-to-people programs that really
invest in people. And you heard from Maria the impact it's made
on her life. And one woman from -- who attended the Fortune session
said -- it was a great statement. She said, "I came by myself,
but I brought my village." And so we are really through people
touching whole communities.
I traveled with business leaders to Pakistan to offer disaster
assistance after the earthquake there, and to Guatemala and Honduras
after the flooding there. Dina led a group of CEOs to Lebanon
to offer help in reconstruction and job creation in Lebanon in
the aftermath of the war there. And I can tell you, when people
across the world see that American business leaders care enough
to take the time to fly across the world and go to a community
that's been devastated by a disaster or has been through the trauma
of war, and say, you know, we're Americans and we are here to
help, what can we do to help, it makes a difference in their views
of our country.
I recently saw some research that showed that after the Navy hospital
ship USS Mercy went to Bangladesh, polls showed the favorable
opinion of the United States rose to 87 percent. Now, that's not
the reason we do these things; we do these things because that's
who we are because we believe deeply that every life matters and
every life counts. But as we do them and as the world sees that
that's who we are, it also comes to the benefit of our country.
We need to take that goodwill and multiply and magnify it because
it's that kind of people-to-people interaction that I believe
is one of the most effective diplomatic tools we have. These deeds
of diplomacy, the effort to combat AIDS in Africa, the effort
to fight malaria really display the compassion of America in a
very tangible and I think a very important way.
Now, your companies come at this experience from a very different
perspective than government does, but I think we have a lot of
interests in common and you have the ability to be so vital to
what we do. You have employees all across the world who have an
incredible reach into their societies. Your operations touch millions
of lives every day. You know, the truth is the image of America
abroad is shaped by a lot of different things. I think of it as
like a giant tapestry on which we have thousands of different
artists painting, because it's everything from our exported consumer
goods to how Americans act when they travel abroad, to an experience
you might have with a clerk at a visa line, to an experience when
you land at our airport, to how a company behaves overseas, to
how a company treats the foreign workers on its team, as well
as the culture that we export, the movies, the art, the television.
It's a very, very complex tapestry painted by thousands of different
artists. And your contribution can be really invaluable. When
you donate computers to a school overseas, you are not just helping
your company, you are also helping your country. And we're very
grateful for that and you have a unique role to play.
It's no exaggeration, I don't think, to say that this is a hinge
moment when history can tip one way or the other in a more positive
direction or not. And it's a moment that calls on all of us to
pitch in to counter violent extremism, to stand up for the values
of liberty and justice and respect and opportunity that our country
believes in so deeply. Across the world in every country, in every
place where we work, America seeks to be a partner, a partner
for peace and a partner for progress.
Now, I know it is hard to talk about peace at a time of war, at
a time when we face violent extremists who want to undermine our
confidence, our freedom, our way of life. Yet we are at war and
war is difficult and no one likes war, but we are at war because
we want to preserve that broader peace, we want to preserve that
opportunity for a life of security and a life of justice and a
life of safety, not only for our own citizens, obviously for our
own citizens but not only for our own citizens, for our neighbors
and our friends and our partners across the world.
When I first took this job, I went on a listening tour across
the Middle East, and a young man asked me a very haunting question.
I've never forgotten it. He looked at me and through the translator
he said, "Does the Statue of Liberty still face out?"
And he meant, you know, is the United States still a welcoming
country, do you still face out in the world? And the answer --
is it still that place of hope, is it still a symbol of a better
life that the young man in Morocco talked about? And I told him
yes, the Statue of Liberty does face out. And our companies, your
companies and our business people and business men and women across
this world can be an important part of making sure that America
remains the land of opportunity, the symbol of hope and -- for
the rest of the world.
So I thank you for being here today to help us with that challenge.
I look forward to listening to all of you this afternoon.
And now it is my pleasure -- one of the things that we are working
to do here is to reinvigorate America's cultural diplomacy, and
it is my pleasure to introduce you to some of the great talent
of our country. You may remember last September First Lady Laura
Bush helped us launch the President's Global Cultural Initiative
to bring together our private arts institutions and our federal
cultural agencies -- oh, I see that our Secretary of State is
arriving. (Applause.) I think that we are having a change in plans.
(Applause.) We will get to the cultural after we hear from our
Secretary of State and Assistant Secretary Powell is here to introduce
her. Thank you. (Applause.)
ASSISTANT SECRETARY POWELL: Okay. She has a busy day -- (laughter)
-- but I think it shows her tremendous commitment to public diplomacy
and the fact that all of you are here working in partnership with
us. And I know her time is short, but I have to say one quick
thing about our Secretary of State.
You know all the amazing things she's done. But recently when
a young man from Syria stood up and asked her, "What do you
think about being the most powerful woman in the universe?"
After she stopped laughing she said, "I don't think much
about my power. But I do think about the power of the ideals of
this country that allowed an African American woman to be Secretary
of State. And I hope that you work on the power of the ideals
of your country.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Secretary of State. (Applause.)
SECRETARY RICE: Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, thank you and thank
you for receiving me a little early. Sometimes the schedules of
president's change and when the schedules of presidents of change,
the schedules of secretaries of state change and so I didn't want
to miss the opportunity to come by. Thank you very much, Dina,
for that kind introduction. I am very, very pleased to join you
here today. This is a really wonderful gathering and I want to
thank Karen and Dina, who are giving just fantastic leadership
to our public diplomacy efforts. I really don't think that the
United States has ever had a better team leading our public diplomacy
efforts, so thank you Karen and thank you Dina.
I'd like to thank also the Public Relations Coalition for its
partnership with the State Department to advance America's public
diplomacy. A special thanks goes to Jim Murphy, the Chair of the
PR Coalition, for his vision and his energy in making today's
summit a possibility.
This Summit is truly unprecedented and could not be more timely.
As we look around the world, there are great challenges and opportunities.
And as diplomats, we are accustomed to monitoring world affairs,
but America's public relations experts and international business
leaders are really attuned to trends that are changing our world
in ways that perhaps those of us on the diplomatic side are not.
America is one of the most internationally engaged countries in
the world, perhaps the most internationally engaged and global
country in the world, and our nation's influence can be seen throughout
the world in every field of human endeavor. Yet the solutions
to the challenges of the 21st century are not going to be met
by government alone. They come from all sectors of American society
working together, and that means a close and vital partnership
between government and the private sector.
Within the Bush Administration, we are actively looking to build
partnerships with the private sector so that we can operate better
and smarter. As I look around the room, I see a lot of colleagues,
a lot of friends who've already done a lot of good work in this
area. And I can assure you it is an effort that I'm personally
very passionate about and I'm going to remain committed to strengthening
public/private partnerships throughout my tenure.
As leaders in communications with international horizons, you
have a unique role to play in public diplomacy. How you operate
in the international arena has a real impact on America's presence
in the world. At the same time, your engagement with the world
adds another dynamic to how people and countries across the globe
learn about America's values and its character.
Through all of this, you approach the work of public diplomacy
from a different direction than we do in government but from the
same concerns for America's progress and for the progress of democratic
values. Good work is already being done around the world by American
organizations, whether it's outreach programs for rising business
women in countries like Guatemala and Afghanistan, or CEOs raising
support for countries devastated by natural disasters and conflict,
your contributions -- in partnership with the government or on
your own have significantly and positively impacted our public
diplomacy.
Now in order to recognize this excellent work and the contribution
that it makes to our country, I'm very proud to announce today
the establishment of the Secretary's Award for Public Diplomacy,
to be named for the man for whom this room is named, Benjamin
Franklin. Few individuals displayed the true character of America
to the world better than Benjamin Franklin. Like America itself,
Franklin had a seemingly limitless desire to help improve the
world around him and he did it with a sense of humor and a lot
of grace. I know this because I read Walter Isaacson's book on
Benjamin Franklin. (Laughter.)
In the same spirit of Franklin, this award will recognize the
broad spectrum of businesses and foundations and non-governmental
organizations and private citizens for their outstanding contributions
to America's public diplomacy and we hope to highlight the exceptional
and to inspire others.
As this Summit continues today, I applaud each of you for your
commitment and service on behalf of America. I thank you for what
you have done in the past. I thank you for what you are going
to do in the future. I can think of no better stewards and no
better partners in public diplomacy than those of you gathered
here today. Thank you very much. (Applause.)
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