[ilds] the quartet & US politics

[Charles Sligh]

Here follows the full text of the NEH Chairman's speech.

I do not question that speech is well-meaning. Such things usually are.

But is Chairman Leach's paraphrase of the "moral" (???) of the /Quartet/ 
at all accurate?

>         The moral is that to get a sense of reality, it is necessary
>         to see things from more than one pair of eyes.

Read on.

C&c.

***

> http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/speeches/09292009.html

> Speech by NEH Chairman Jim Leach
>
> “Bridging Cultures: NEH and the Muslim World”
> Carnegie Corporation of New York
> New York, New York
> September 29, 2009
> (As prepared for delivery)
>
> Good morning. It is an honor to be charged with opening the discussion 
> today on the challenges of civic engagement with Muslim communities 
> inside and outside the United States.
>
> First, let me begin by thanking our hosts—the Carnegie Corporation, 
> the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Doris Duke Foundation for 
> Islamic Art—for gathering us together and, more consequentially, for 
> the leadership role they have played for decades on the topic at hand.
>
> In this context I want to stress a theme that might seem self-evident 
> but is seldom given the attention it deserves. To wit, relations 
> between countries are only in part a dialogue of one government with 
> another. Actually, it is businessmen and women, unelected people of 
> good will, be they artists, scholars or students, who are more 
> integral to defining the tone of relations between states than public 
> officials.
>
> Government is a part of culture, not vice-versa. Accordingly, 
> government-to-government relations are only one kind of diplomacy. In 
> the literature of political science, official interchanges are 
> sometimes referred to as track 1 diplomacy. Broadly speaking there are 
> two other kinds. Track 2 is diplomacy involving non-government 
> officials attempting to advance, often at the behest of a government, 
> policies consistent with the views of the government. A subset of this 
> track is free lance diplomacy: private citizens advancing perspectives 
> that, while perhaps well-intended, may be objectionable to a 
> government in power. The third track is cultural diplomacy, which 
> encompasses all private contacts and relationships—social, 
> professional, business, artistic, and educational—that take place 
> unrelated to specific political issues of the day. Cultural diplomacy 
> generally precedes and increasingly supersedes 
> government-to-government relations.
>
> Just as government is a part of culture and not vice-versa, cultural 
> relations are often more consequential than political ones. Public 
> officials and their views come and go; culture may evolve but it is a 
> weighty constant. If peoples of a country or set of countries don’t 
> like each other, don’t understand or respect another’s way of life, 
> fail to sense good will, or can’t see any common interests, there is 
> little chance for the development of constructive 
> government-to-government relations.
>
> If this premise has validity, the national interest suggests that 
> whatever the politics of the moment in nation-state relations, citizen 
> effort, consistent with law, should be undertaken to reach out to 
> those societies with which tension is highest. While such an endeavor 
> may be facilitated by government, it is disproportionately a 
> private-sector responsibility.
>
> At the turn of the last century, two controversial political 
> sociologists from Italy, Mosca and Pareto, attempted to update an 
> undertaking of Aristotle and chronicle the types of governments then 
> in existence. One of their observations that seems trite but carries 
> profound implications is that whatever kind of government is in place, 
> it is impressive how at key moments powerful elites are empowered to 
> make decisions of a kind that impact multitudes. Our founders thought 
> a lot about this democratic dilemma. In these trying times, we are 
> obligated to reflect anew on this problem.
>
> At the time of our founding, one of the principal concerns of our 
> first citizens was to limit the capacity of a single person—in this 
> case a presidency shorn of kingly authority—to initiate war. Today the 
> challenge for citizens is to help make the need for government 
> officials to instigate war less likely.
>
> Democracy is no guarantee of good judgment of public officials, but it 
> is the best system to allow publics to insist on course corrections. 
> We all recognize that the last election produced a candidate who 
> prevailed in no small measure because he suggested that new approaches 
> were called for in international relations. That doesn’t mean that if 
> implemented these new approaches will prove popular or effective. 
> No-win situations abound. The bad news is that some events may simply 
> be beyond management and the actions of others may be impervious to 
> civil logic. The good news is that the President has a mandate to 
> rethink policies in place and appears to have chosen first class 
> professionals with open minds to advise him.
>
> In this circumstance there is an indispensible role for cultural 
> diplomacy to help create a social environment where disagreements 
> between peoples are more likely to be resolved in a civil way. As the 
> President suggested in one of the great humanist speeches of our time, 
> the development of cultural understanding requires that a young person 
> in Kansas be able to communicate with a young person in Cairo.
>
> Government-to-government relations implicitly reflect national power 
> contrasts whether or not military power is being asserted. But any 
> study of the human condition—the humanities—in any century, including 
> the last one in which man experimented with the most coercive dogmas 
> of hate, finds that military power alone can not for long hold 
> populations in check or control the mind and soul of a people.
>
> People want to have a say in their own destinies. There is something 
> about the human condition that prefers governing decisions, even 
> seemingly irrational ones, to be made at socially cohesive levels. A 
> lot is written today about globalism, but this century is also about 
> localism. To adapt to a fast changing world, one must understand both 
> of these phenomena: the fact, as Tip O’Neill repeatedly noted, that 
> all politics are local and the corollary, as we have learned again 
> with the financial crisis, that all local decisions are affected by 
> international events.
>
> Whether violence is an integral element of the human condition or a 
> learned response is a matter of conjecture. But non-violence is almost 
> certainly a practice that must be learned. And the most effective form 
> of social education is human contact. It is the humanization rather 
> than the demonization of individuals from different cultures that is 
> so critical if non-violent approaches to problem solving are to be 
> institutionalized. Without humanization—hand shakes of 
> understanding—there can be no trust and hence no family or national 
> security.
>
> In a fundamental sense, the issue of the times is not simply 
> Muslim-Western discord; it is also the philosophical paradigm with 
> which our founders grappled. At issue was and somewhat surprisingly 
> remains the contrast with a state of nature, which Hobbes defined as a 
> jungle where life was “nasty, brutish and short,” and civil society, 
> which Locke described as a circumstance where rules governed disputes 
> and third party arbitration could be called upon. For Hobbes, 
> self-centered man could never escape the jungle because he lacked the 
> capacity to put himself in the shoes of others. For Jefferson and his 
> Lockean cohorts in Philadelphia, individuals were not only born with 
> rights no legitimate state could take away, but with a rational nature 
> capable of developing institutional arrangements to advance common 
> interests.
>
> For students of Western political theory, Hobbesian thought has for 
> long been considered to involve an interesting but abstract set of 
> propositions. But with the globalization for the first time in history 
> of anarchistic strategies, it is suddenly becoming clear that not only 
> have we not entirely escaped the jungle, but that the more modern and 
> centralized a society, the greater its vulnerability to terrorist 
> acts. In this circumstance, the case for a strong military and 
> expanded intelligence capacity is self-evident. But the only long-term 
> answer would appear also to require: a) a commitment to advancing 
> mutual understanding and the framework of law; and b) an understanding 
> that military intervention, even if employed by a democratic power 
> without a goal of Empire, can have unforeseen, counter-productive 
> consequences.
>
> In this setting I have suggested to the students I used to teach at 
> Princeton and Harvard that the most important geo-political tract of 
> the last century was that of a family of novels—the Alexandria Quartet 
> by the British author, Lawrence Durrell. Set between the first and 
> second world wars in the ancient library center, Alexandria, Durrell 
> wrote four books about the same set of events, each a first-person 
> perspective from the eyes of a different participant. One wonders why 
> read about the same events more than once. It ends up that each story 
> is profoundly different. The moral is that to get a sense of reality, 
> it is necessary to see things from more than one pair of eyes. This 
> may apply to interactions in a community, a court room, or in 
> international relations where what America does may seem reasonable 
> from our perspective but look very different from the eyes of a 
> European or African, a Middle Easterner or an Asian.
>
> As everyone in this room knows, over the past several decades two 
> Harvard political theorists, Samuel Huntington and Joseph Nye, have 
> written about the dangers of a clash of civilizations and of the role 
> of “soft” (recently relabeled “smart”) power as contrasted with “hard” 
> power in international relations. These are important frameworks of 
> thought, but I would add to such considerations the contrasting model 
> of realism vs. pseudo-realism in policy development. Realists look to 
> effect, not to bluster. But what should a citizen think of ideological 
> arguments advanced in recent years by a small cohort of ideological 
> insiders that arms control agreements are to be avoided and diplomacy, 
> particularly multi-lateral diplomacy, is soft-headed? Should we not 
> ask whether this is pseudo-realism? What is more realistic and more 
> consistent with the American heritage than attempting to advance the 
> rule of law? Americans prefer to work in alliances. It is nonsense, 
> realism inverted, to press a foreign policy rooted in snubbing the 
> concerns of others.
>
> One of the myths of our time is that realism is principally about 
> might. Actually realism is about the human condition. Nations that are 
> ill-led, ill-fed, and ill-respected are breeding grounds for radicalism.
>
> America at its best combines principle and idealism with Yankee 
> pragmatism. One without the other is a prescription for disaster.
>
> In this context, NEH is launching a “Bridging Cultures” initiative. 
> The analogy to a “bridge” and use of the word as a verb is hardly 
> novel. Nor is what we have in mind a radical departure from prior NEH 
> initiatives or the long-term efforts of many individuals and NGOs 
> represented in this room. Our effort is simply to burrow “in” more 
> deeply at the domestic level and press “out” more broadly internationally.
>
> Hence we plan, in partnership with our state humanities councils, to 
> hold colloquiums, large and small, throughout the country on the issue 
> of “hate speech and civility”; to commence what we intend to label 
> “academies” on American history and the Constitution; and to hold 
> conferences on the importance of Muslim contributions to American 
> society. We are also open to partnering with other government 
> departments and non-governmental organizations in any number of ways.
>
> International violence, economic insecurity, and the chaotic nature of 
> accelerating change have produced a crisis of perspective as well as 
> values. Citizens of various philosophical persuasions are reflecting 
> increased disrespect for fellow citizens and thus for modern day 
> democratic governance.
>
> We have all followed the outburst of a congressman from South Carolina 
> during the President’s recent address to Congress. Less noted, and 
> vastly more significant, than the much publicized congressional 
> utterance is the fact that significant political figures and many 
> citizens have over the course of the last year charged our current 
> President with advancing policies that were either “communist,” or 
> “fascist” or both, and suggested that members of his party in Congress 
> should be investigated for “un-American” activities. Several in public 
> life have even toyed with history-blind radicalism—the notion of 
> “secession.”
>
> Words matter, for they reflect emotion as well as thought. The ones 
> cited above are politically and personally charged. In a legal sense 
> they are, of course, protected by free speech, but the question is 
> whether they nonetheless are part of a vocabulary of hate, 
> jeopardizing social cohesion and even public safety.
>
> In the public humanities we are fortunate to have a network of 
> humanities councils in every state and territorial jurisdiction. Each 
> is composed of independent humanities leaders with a sensitive sense 
> for what works in their areas. Most have already put outreach programs 
> in place that are truly impressive. Illinois, for instance, has a 
> strategy of reaching out to citizens in unexpected places in a program 
> they call “Café Society.” Meetings are held in coffee houses, even 
> barber shops. Oregon has a comparable program called “Think and 
> Drink,” presumably involving places that don’t just serve coffee. 
> Montana, for its part, is emphasizing what it calls “gracious” dialogue.
>
> NEH is a kind of domestic State Department with state-wide embassies 
> and consulates. We are proud of the professional staff and appointed 
> board members who have proven so innovative.
>
> We are also proud of the scholarship we have supported in the past. In 
> recent years, for instance, utilizing a rigorous peer review process 
> in a manner similar to decision-making at the National Institutes of 
> Health and the National Science Foundation, we have funded nearly a 
> hundred projects relating to the Islamic world.
>
> We have supported seminars for teachers on “The Arabic Novel in 
> Translation,” in which the works of the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz 
> and Ibraham al-Kuni and other modern writers are explored, and 
> provided research for books on topics that initially seemed abstractly 
> academic but later turned out to be essential reading material for 
> American policymakers. For example, we supported the publication of 
> Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad, which was completed 
> only weeks before 9/11. Its publication made Professor David B. 
> Edwards of Williams College a principal source of scholarly knowledge 
> when the United States went to war in 2001.
>
> To the degree all war has antecedents or analogies to prior conflicts, 
> the studies we have encouraged of the French colonial experience in 
> places as distant from each other as Algeria and Indochina may also 
> inform our decisions on war and its conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
>
> Of more cultural relevance, we have awarded research grants for the 
> study of the Maimonides Code in the medieval Islamic world; on the 
> history of cross-cultural trade under Islamic law; on the influence of 
> the story of Job on Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle Ages; 
> and, more contemporaneously, we have shared the science of museum 
> preservation with Afghan and Iraqi curators. In addition, our staff 
> recognized the importance of the “Bactrian gold,” which was hidden for 
> twenty years in the basement of the presidential palace in Kabul. We 
> paid for the collection to be catalogued and helped it to tour museums 
> around the world to illuminate the national culture we were attempting 
> to protect on the battlefield.
>
> Because our support of these projects and many others like them is 
> based on peer reviewed scholarly criteria, they send an implicit 
> message to Muslims in our country and in other parts of the world that 
> we deeply value the contributions of their diverse and fascinating 
> cultures. Unfortunately our knowledge deficit is large. The need to 
> expand American understanding of Muslim history and traditions has 
> been extensively elucidated in the work of one of our Carnegie hosts, 
> Dr. Gregorian, who has been preaching for decades about how woefully 
> under-educated Americans are about the 1.2 billion Muslims with whom 
> we share this globe.
>
> Much attention has properly been directed to the question of whether 
> we had valid information about alleged WMD development in Iraq. But 
> this kind of precise intelligence probing has allowed a glossing over 
> of how little policymakers knew about the culture of a country we had 
> been at war with a decade before and were giving serious consideration 
> to invading in the wake of 9/11; of how sparse our knowledge was of 
> the basic tenets of the Muslim faith; of how limited our understanding 
> of the differences between Sunnis and Shi’a and the likely effects 
> Western military intervention would have on the historic tensions 
> between and within various faith systems.
>
> At a cultural level it is also unfortunate how little respect we have 
> exhibited for Muslim history, particularly the Golden Age of Islam 
> which was coterminous with what are frequently referred to as the Dark 
> Ages in pre-Renaissance Europe. This was a time when Islamic 
> intellectual life was thriving in centers of learning like Cordoba in 
> Muslim-ruled Spain. Said to have had 70 libraries, with over 400,000 
> volumes, Cordoba was a center for scholars to translate the classic 
> world of antiquity into Arabic. Without Muslim intellectual 
> leadership, works of Aristotle and many others would likely have been 
> lost forever. Importantly, Muslim intellectuals worked in 
> collaboration with rather than isolation from Christian and Jewish 
> scholars.
>
> When Europe went Dark, Muslims led in “bridging cultures.”
>
> Our founders proved more prescient and more impressed with Muslim 
> history and culture than citizens today. Jefferson, for instance, read 
> widely in the area of comparative religion and was convinced that what 
> mattered most was not where faith systems differed but where they 
> conjoined. A century and a half later, presumably on the assumption 
> that in the field of ideas and enlightened thought no country had ever 
> received more foreign aid than the United States, Congress authorized 
> a series of marble relief portraits of law makers through history to 
> be placed on the walls of the House of Representatives. Thus, in the 
> people’s House are inspirational wall sculptures of Moses, Hammurabi, 
> Maimonides, and Suleiman the Magnificent, as well as such figures as 
> Solon, Justinian, and Jefferson.
>
> Yet, exacerbated by the acts of a score of Muslim terrorists on 9/11, 
> poll after poll indicates that American attitudes toward Muslims are 
> exceptionally disrespectful.
>
> As a former Member of Congress, I was fortunate to represent the 
> oldest mosque in America in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. After 9/11 I often met 
> with the elders of the mosque and was impressed with how much they 
> understood about attitudes in every corner of the Muslim world. 
> Likewise, I am confident that Muslims outside the United States hear 
> regularly about social difficulties faced by Muslims in America. It 
> would therefore seem logical that a critical element in developing a 
> more sympathetic attitude toward America and our foreign policy 
> concerns in Muslim nations would be a neighborly commitment to see 
> that Muslim citizens are welcome in every American community. Cultural 
> diplomacy begins at home.
>
> Finally on a personal note, I chose as a Republican to endorse Barack 
> Obama for President because I was convinced that never in American 
> history was the case for a course change more compelling in 
> international relations and because I had become convinced that seldom 
> had a more natural humanist been chosen to represent his party for 
> national office. I had not intended to return to government and, in 
> fact, turned down several initial offers. But when I was called about 
> this job, I could not decline.
>
> No one should underestimate the importance of the public humanities or 
> the need to address the temper and the integrity of the political 
> dialogue. America cannot revive its infectious leadership until it 
> revives its sense of self and reaches out respectfully instead of 
> shunning, or, worse yet, name calling those with whom we differ.
>
> In the profoundest political observation of the last century, Einstein 
> noted that splitting the atom had changed everything except our way of 
> thinking. Now civilization is jeopardized both by weapons of mass 
> destruction and by the brutal acts of people armed with machetes in 
> deepest Africa and terrorists with suicide bombs in Western societies. 
> In this jungle of man-made weapons instead of tigers, all the world’s 
> peoples have no choice except to think through the meaning of humanity 
> itself.
>
> In this context, the President couldn’t have chosen wiser words when 
> in Cairo he called for “a new beginning between the U.S. and Muslims 
> around the world” based on “mutual interest and mutual respect.”
>
> Governmental policy is shifting. We at NEH, like so many in the 
> non-profit community represented here, are prepared to re-center 
> attention and underpin a new Muslim-American relationship. This 
> President has articulated a call to action that none of us can ignore.
> Thank you.