LIEBERMAN: Good afternoon. Welcome in particular to members of the diplomatic corps who are here this afternoon. And also, I would like to say hello to my colleagues at the foreign press centers in New York and Los Angeles. And thank you for helping set this up. Thank you for doing a good job. I'm very, very pleased to be here today to talk to you about the White House Conference on Culture and Diplomacy which will take place on Tuesday, November 28, 2000. The conference will begin with a plenary session in the White House that will be hosted by President and Mrs. Clinton and chaired by Secretary Albright. Ellen Lovell will talk to you a little bit more about the panel itself. In the afternoon, we will have four simultaneous workshop sessions at the Westin Fairfax Hotel, concluding with a plenary session at which groups will report on discussions to Secretary Albright. On Monday evening, November 27, 2000, on the eve of the conference, Secretary Albright will host a dinner for participants and other guests in the Benjamin Franklin Room of the State Department. The conference workshop topics in the afternoon will include: preserving and promoting diverse cultures in a global economy, the role of culture in the practice of diplomacy, the role of multi-national companies and multi-national organizations in promoting cultural understanding and exchange, and the last will be the arts and humanities abroad, providing an accurate image of America's cultural diversity. The White House conference is a follow-up to a meeting which Secretary Albright had in March -- convened last March at the State Department, in which she and international leaders of cultural institutions, the arts, foundations, corporations, NGOs and Congress discussed culture and foreign policy. Why are we doing this? Why are we holding this conference? There are three important reasons for this conference. The first, because culture both shapes U.S. and other countries' foreign policies and it is the best vehicle to explain the U.S. It is critical that culture have a larger and more intentional place in our foreign policy planning and implementation. Second, because there are so many other demands on the federal budget, we hope to encourage public-private partnerships in order to increase cultural exchanges and the presentation of diverse American culture overseas to the benefit of both our foreign policy and American artists. And third, because the views, policies and actions of foreign governments and societies are shaped by their culture. It is important for us to understand this foreign cultural context so that we can respond more effectively to our foreign interlocutors. Overall, our goal in holding this conference is to carry out the secretary's plan to put culture into the same sentence and paragraph as any mention of foreign policy. In March, at the dinner the secretary convened this year, she said, and I quote, "Culture and American foreign policy are not often used in the same sentence, or even paragraph, and I want to change that," end quote. We believe that doing so will contribute to greater mutual understanding between the U.S. and other countries and societies, and it will only rebound to the benefit of our government, our artistic and business communities and our whole society. After Ellen Lovell talks to you, we'll be happy to take your questions. LOVELL: Thank you, and good afternoon. I wanted to tell you a little bit about the White House conference and especially what will happen in the morning panel in the White House with the president and the secretary of state. The White House Conference on Culture and Diplomacy is going to gather about 180 cultural, government and artistic leaders from the U.S. and abroad. You will see a broad spectrum of American ambassadors, foreign cultural ministers, leaders of private foundations, leaders of nonprofit organizations active in cultural understanding and the exchange of art and ideas, federal agency heads and multinational corporations that support cultural understanding and exchange. Also members of Congress and other congressional officials. As Undersecretary Lieberman mentioned, the event will begin with a president's panel in the East Room of the White House, and on that panel will be the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, the secretary of state, Madeleine Albright. Also His Highness Aga Khan, who has broad concerns with the preservation of language and culture and historic preservation and religion; Giovanna Melandri -- Her Excellency Giovanna Melandri, who's the Italian minister for cultural heritage and activities, also a deep background in economics and in the environment; Yo-Yo Ma, the world renowned musician and cellist. I think many of you know about his recording "Appalachian Waltz," his wonderful collaborations with Eastern artists and across many musical forms. And you'll hear on that day a little bit more about his new Silk Road project. Wole Soyinka, who is, of course, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist from Nigeria, also noted playwright and poet and academic who's taught in many American institutions; Joan Spero, who is now president of the Doris Duke Foundation, but also had a distinguished career at the Department of State and with the American Express Corporation; And Rita Dove, who is currently serving as commonwealth professor of poetry at the University of Virginia, but started, early in her career, as a Fulbright scholar and also as the former poet laureate of the United States and the youngest person to hold that title and the first African-American woman to hold that title. Of course, the purpose of the opening panel is to set the tone for the conference, to show the importance of this subject, to discuss the broad themes that are going to be then discussed and elaborated in more detail in the afternoon sessions and in a plenary with the secretary of state, all relating to the importance of culture in the successful formulation of our international relations. I think you can also be prepared to hear some powerful testimonies as to the power of the arts and ideas to connect different people from different cultures and countries in some very profound ways. The conference is co-sponsored by the Department of State, the Office of the First Lady, the Executive Office of the President and the National Security Council. And after all of the discussion and the exploration of these ideas and many approaches, the Department of State will prepare a report of the conference discussion. And that will be available for release. And so I think Undersecretary Lieberman and I are now ready to take your questions. QUESTION: Do you have any idea of how many Japanese will be attending the conference and in what capacity? LIEBERMAN: We can find out for you. I'm sorry, we don't have all -- there are 180, 200 people on the list. We can have Peter get back to you. QUESTION: OK. Thank you. LIEBERMAN: Thank you. LOVELL: Also, I believe, that we are releasing the names of the panelists and guests after confirmation. So as Undersecretary Lieberman said, that information will be available. QUESTION: Yes. I would like to know how the conference has been prepared? LOVELL: Well, there's a wide range of interest and involvement across the federal government, and including our non-profit sector and our foundations and business sector in the United States. We have a very complex way of supporting and organizing our culture. And so those parties have come together through a whole series of discussions to come up with the conference subjects and the focus of the conference. So it's been a collaborative effort run by the Department of State, the National Security Council, the Office of the President and the Office of the First Lady. LIEBERMAN: We've spent a long time talking to interested parties. And we've had various conversations and meetings and have done a lot of reading and gotten a lot of recommendations for people. I think the challenge was how to boil everything down into a day and an evening, but we have consulted with people representing many different organizations and, actually, people from other countries as well. We wanted to show enough of a diversity from around the world so that as many places around the world could be represented as possible. QUESTION: (inaudible -- but broadly on U.S. relations with Turkey) -- LIEBERMAN: The conference is going to be broadly thematic and is not going to concentrate on any particular cultural or regional conflicts. QUESTION: We're long used to the idea of linking culture with diplomacy. And I'm just wondering, because I've been having a lot of contact with your colleagues in London, whether in a sense this is -- the outcome of this conference is going to be a longer-term investment in this area. Because I know your colleagues are seriously deprived of resources and look with envy on our pittance that we live on. LIEBERMAN: Yes. Yes. This conference came about for a number of reasons. One is that the former USIA, the former United States Information Agency, known abroad as USIS, was formally merged with the State Department on October 1, 1999. And these cultural programs and educational exchanges and all the programs that -- all the cultural and education programs that the United States government was involved in have now been brought into the State Department. And one of the reasons that we're trying to do this conference is to say in some ways to our colleagues in the State Department, as well as everywhere else, that it is clear that culture and foreign policy cannot be separated anymore and that cultural diplomacy is as much a part of traditional diplomacy. And it's very hard, in this world of instant -- you notice how both of us have been trying very hard not to use the word "globalization" throughout this -- throughout our remarks, but it's very hard, in the world of instant communication, that diplomacy is conducted behind closed doors. It just doesn't work that way anymore. So I think this is a recognition, a more formal recognition, and trying to figure out the best way that not only we can work best in the United States, but that also we work with our international colleagues as well. And not only were our American colleagues jealous of the resources that all of you have, even though you call them a mere pittance, but when I was director of Voice of America I was also very jealous of the not-so-little pittance that BBC had as well. LOVELL: Just to say that, again, in the very diverse, pluralistic way that we support culture in America, this is a time of immense vitality, so we do have interesting foundations and corporations that are now multinational corporations in partnerships that strengthen the work of government and the private sector together. And because we have seen that the millennium has been celebrated throughout the world largely through cultural celebration and expression, this is another way to capture this immense vitality and momentum that's going on right now. QUESTION: You mentioned about cultural diplomacy and saying the age of the instant communication and openness. What you are expecting from the press to reflect from this conference? Especially I can see that only the formal sessions are open to the press, while these real discussions are closed to the press. LIEBERMAN: My understanding is that the plenary sessions will be open to the press -- the morning session and the afternoon session. I think somehow there was a sense on the part of many of our participants, who we have encouraged to come and speak candidly and bravely, there was a belief that they would have a little bit more freedom to speak their mind, particularly people from around the world, if they were able to be able to talk with their colleagues without the scrutiny of the press. Many of them, however, have agreed to talk to the press -- you're talking to a former press secretary, please -- many of them, however, have agreed to be interviewed afterwards, and I hope that you will take advantage of that and talk to some of the participants. QUESTION: How did you choose the people that are coming? LOVELL: Obviously our principals were chosen because this represents the highest level of recognition of the importance of culture in diplomacy. The other presidential panelists were chosen because they're outstanding artists who have performed, read and had international experience and in person experienced that connective power of the arts and ideas, and also because they represent the highest realization of various fields and themes that we're going to be exploring in the afternoon. We also, of course, tried to look at a diversity of cultures and locations. It's impossible to have one of everybody, but I think when you look at the range of topics that they represent, we will have covered a lot of the subjects that need to be discussed in a condensed conference such as this. LIEBERMAN: We cast a very wide net, as Ellen said. We got a lot of recommendations from around the world. I think we were constrained mostly by the number of chairs for a plenary session in the East Room. That was pretty much what we were forced to limit ourselves to. QUESTION: Can you give an example of what you consider a very good private-public partnership that's done something in this administration? LIEBERMAN: Yes. We have just helped, along with the President's Committee on Arts and the Humanities, a number of corporations, the State Department and I'll think of some of the other organizations as I'm talking to you -- we have just helped send the Dance Theater of Harlem to China. Shanghai invited them to be part of their arts festival. And we were able to work with a number of organizations to get the funding together to make that possible. There is a recognition on the part of many corporations and foundations that, as I've said before -- that cultural programming, cultural diplomacy is key to the way we present ourselves in the world, just as it's key for us to learn about how other countries present themselves. And one of the things that makes this conference so important to us -- and, by the way, this conference is just a beginning conversation, we believe -- one of the things that we're hoping to do here is to try to figure out how to get more partnerships from among diverse groups to help make this cultural programming, cultural exchanges, happen in the absence of increased funding, which, of course, we will continue to fight for. I would like to say one other thing about some recent legislation. One of the concerns we have heard from certain corporations and others who wanted to fund some cultural programming, particularly in countries where they do business, is that they thought it was a little bit difficult for them to be giving money to the State Department and then not have a say in how that money would be used in places where we wanted to send cultural programming. And Congressman Leach of Iowa and Senator Biden of Delaware have both authored legislation in the House and in the Senate to provide a small non-profit -- a non-profit entity attached to the State Department with a separate board that would enable corporations and foundations to give money for overseas cultural programming, and that would not have to go directly through the State Department or be part of the State Department, but will have much quicker turnaround time, and would have a separate board helping to decide how the funding for these programs and what programming should be sent overseas. That wasn't very articulate, but I think you got the message. QUESTION: The question I just want to find out is that what's the key point, what are you trying to achieve from your conference? LIEBERMAN: What we hope to achieve from the conference is multifold. The first thing is, as I said, we want to start the conversation. We want to start a dialogue. We want to show that, contrary to some misperception, the United States is a very diverse and vibrant culture and that we respect other countries' cultures as well. And, as some accuse us, we don't always show it appropriately. So I want to be able to start this kind of dialogue. That's number one. The second is that we want to be able to try different kinds of pilot programs to see what can work and what cannot work. For example, a few months ago, we sent a team of American cultural personages to Nigeria. We sent a Broadway producer; we sent the head of the Arlington School of the Arts; we sent another musical producer; we sent someone who worked in museums. And I'm missing one that I'll remember. We sent this team to meet with their counterparts in Nigeria to talk about what they could do cooperatively. And we came up with a number of ideas. As a matter of fact, we're going to have one production that will be staged at the Kennedy Center next year that came about from funding from a number of diverse sources. Our next step is to being those people from Nigeria to the United States to again work with their counterparts here to get some of these projects moving. We want to try everything and see what works. There is no one magical answer to what we are trying to accomplish. We want to say to everybody: We are a diverse culture, we want people to understand what we are, the United States, and we are a country also of rich traditions, and we also want other countries to understand that we respect their cultures as well. We want to try everything and see what works. That's what I hope will happen. That this is a conversation we'll continue for many years to come. It's a beginning. QUESTION: I say I understand that you try to promote something, but how is going to be beneficial for some country from Africa? What they going to get from the conference? LIEBERMAN: What are they going to get -- QUESTION: Yes. I mean, what's the reason for them to come to your conference? LIEBERMAN: I think the reason for them to come to our conference is to talk about their own cultures, number one, and to figure out if it's possible that we can work together to increase cultural programming and mutual understanding between us. That's what I hope will happen, that we'll start talking more to each other and start working together a little bit more. Not just from Africa, from everywhere. LOVELL: Well, I just wanted to pick up on something Evelyn said, which is that this is part of a trend, I think, towards intense interest in world cultures, in preserving culture and in the artistic and scholarly possibilities of collaboration. And so you see that happening all over the place. There's the African festival at the Kennedy Center. There are artists working in collaboration with other artists -- Yo-Yo Ma's project, for example, working with artists along the route of the Silk Road from Japan to Italy and then working with the diaspora communities of those peoples and artists in other countries. Again, tremendous amount of vitality. So I think we're not saying anything brand new, we're bringing it to the forefront and maybe changing how we and other countries think about culture and cultural development and preservation together. I wanted to add a footnote to the examples of that person's question, just again to make the point that there's a proud history of this kind of federal-private sector collaboration. There is something called the Fund for U.S. Artists at International Festivals and Exhibitions, and it has been funded collaboratively. It sends artists abroad to represent the best of our cultural offerings. And it's been a collaboration between the Department of State and the Pew Charitable Trust, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, which funds Arts International, to participate in this important initiative. LIEBERMAN: Believe it or not, we're not trying to invent the wheel here. The former United States Information Agency has been doing cultural exchanges and cultural programming for the 50 years of its life. We're just trying to figure out how to make this better, how to do more and how to get more people around the world involved, and how to get us more involved as well. QUESTION: Do you think or accept that the private sector or the foreign leaders, they will give the same meaning to a conference about culture (inaudible)? LIEBERMAN: I'm not sure I understood his question. LOVELL: Do you mean that --- LIEBERMAN: Will they give the same weight to --- QUESTION: Do you accept or do you think that the foreign leaders or the private sector, they will give the same meaning, the same importance to a conference (inaudible). LOVELL: I think that the answer is a resounding yes. Again, because we see internationally over and over how cultural development, economic development and even environmental preservation are intertwined. And, one, there's more and more recognition of this, and this was evidenced by the World Bank conference in Florence last year in which economic -- sustainable economic development was discussed hand in hand with cultural preservation and development. And so these things must be taken seriously and spoken of together. LIEBERMAN: Another resounding yes. And I think, first of all, just from the people who have been enthusiastic about this and who want to come to this, and we cannot discuss any issue anymore, any kind of trade or economic issue or biotech or treatment of women, any kind of issue without understanding the cultural underpinnings of any society. So yes, yes, yes. QUESTION: One of the subjects of discussions would be under-recognized cultures. What is idea behind this discussion and what can be done by the conference? LOVELL: The discussion and highlighting of under-recognized cultures, is that what you said? I think the point here is the very important one that the First Lady has emphasized in her travels and her domestic programs, and many of our ambassadors and also cultural leaders abroad emphasize, and that is the importance of preserving culture -- tradition, art, documents, monuments and sites, and understanding that, even though we might be in a rapidly changing society, with instant information and the ability to influence each other in more rapid ways, that the foundation of identity is one's own culture, and that needs to be taken seriously. And the diversity of cultures around the world needs to be preserved and taken seriously. QUESTION: What's the next step? I mean, do you have any plan? I mean, it's going to be a policy or mechanism or a certain specific (inaudible) decided after this meeting? LOVELL: Well, first of all, there'll be a report of the discussions so the ideas will be disseminated. Secondly, as the undersecretary stated, this is part of a whole process that has been going on since the merger of USIA and the Department of State. Thirdly, there's the pending legislation to encourage partnerships. And fourth, I hope that new collaborations and partnerships will emerge out of this at all levels, between nonprofit organizations abroad, artists and scholars themselves, and also at governmental levels. LIEBERMAN: One of the things that I've been doing since October 1, 1999, is trying to institutionalize as much of the activities and practices of the United States Information Agency into the State Department as possible in order to lay a foundation for Secretary Albright's successor and my successor. And I am hoping that this is another piece of laying the foundation for future secretaries of state and future administration's to continue this discussion for however long it takes. MODERATOR: Well, we thank our briefers today. I think this is -- for those of us that work in this area-- I know many of you in this room do, this is a conference that I think will have an impact on the future of what we do and what we believe in. For journalists, I have a little bit of information. Journalists who want to cover the White House event should apply for credentials to the White House Press Office. For those of you in Los Angeles and in New York, if your colleagues wish to attend, would you please let them know that that's how they can get in; they're most welcome. For the afternoon session on the 28th, at the Westin Fairfax Hotel in Washington, you can call Ms. Catherine Stearns at area code 202-619-5030. Thank you very much. [end of document] Culture and Diplomacy Conference | Educational and Cultural Affairs | Department of State