Foreign Relations of the United States, 1917–1972, Volume VIII, Public Diplomacy, 1969-1972

175. Memorandum From the Chairman of the USIA/CU Ad Hoc Bicentennial Planning Committee (Winks) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs (Richardson) and the Deputy Director of the United States Information Agency (Loomis)¹

New Haven, Connecticut, September 11, 1972

SUBJECT

• Summary and Recommendations of initial meeting of the USIA/CU Ad Hoc Bicentennial Planning Committee, held at Airlie House September 5–7, 1972²

1. The Ad Hoc Committee, and especially the nine experienced academicians, agreed that the Bicentennial commemoration presents USIA and CU with a great opportunity to strengthen international communication; it makes certain recommendations as to emphasis and specific next steps; and it urgently asks for action. The committee believes that if the job is done well in the areas of our recommendations, a quality dialogue between the U.S. and other nations may very well be enhanced for some years in the future.

2. Since the Bicentennial celebration marks an anniversary of two hundred years of working together, programming targeted upon Bicentennial projects should emphasize, in particular, three vital elements in American life:

a) the dynamic process that has historically relied on consensus and cooperation, through which the United States has become one of the oldest and most continuously stable constitutional nations in the world, while at the same time pacing the world in social change;³

b) the United States as the Inquiring Society, engaged in persistent and healthy self-criticism and efforts at reform, as an indication of the confidence we have in our past and our hopes for evolving institutions;⁴

c) the United States as still an open society, a land of opportunity in its regional and cultural diversity, in its fluidity and mobility, and it its mature ability to recognize rather than hide its problems.⁵

3. The Ad Hoc Committee resoundingly endorsed a series of specific projects and urges USIA and CU to provide the necessary program support, in funding and in staff, to bring these proposals from idea to reality:

RECOMMENDATIONS TO CU

a) Proposal I—that a Bicentennial Institute of Advanced American Studies (BIAAS) be created, which would strengthen international exchange focused on American Studies and the study of contemporary America. The BIAAS should be a secretariat which would receive funds, and provide facilitative assistance for foreign scholars, artists and cultural leaders, publicists and Americanists. Some of these research visitors might want to be accredited to universities, major research libraries, the Library of Congress and local institutions or libraries, or presidential centers. The funding for the BIAAS should reflect external support (from foreign governments and foundations for their nationals) in partnership with funds from the U.S.

b) Proposal II—that there should be an International Congress of Foreign Associations of American Studies in the U.S. in 1976. The strengthening of international exchange can usefully be focused on groups with strong personal and professional commitments to America. In most major countries associations of American Studies, and professional organizations with American links, exist and would welcome the chance to come to the U.S. in the Bicentennial year. The Department of State, USIA, ARBC and perhaps Colonial Williamsburg should now plan space-available international conference facilities. The program should be coordinated with the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, the Conference Board and foreign scholar associations. As for funding, again foreign governments and foundations should be invited to aid their national associations and CU should appropriate FY ’76 funds to insure American host government costs.

c) Proposal III—that exchange opportunities be vastly expanded as a special Bicentennial International Visitors Program. We believe that exchange is the single most valuable instrument of building empathy and understanding abroad for the United States. The international visitors program concept is sound, universally supported, and cost effective. We emphasize that this program should reach out to all elements of society—e.g., publicists, parliamentarians, labor leaders, journalists, youth. We recommend, therefore, that the CU program should be expanded; that there should be coordinated use of the exchange of persons program of other governmental agencies for Bicentennial purposes; and that the Festival USA portion of the Bicentennial, in which both public and private agencies will be cooperating, should result in quality attention for our foreign visitors. We wish to give reality to the President’s invitation to the world to come and help us celebrate our two hundred years of achievement and our next hundred years of inquiry and experimentation. We stress that this must be a program of quality.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO USIA

d) Proposal IV (Training Programs)—that specific steps must be taken to provide USIA officers with a massive new training program to prepare them in fresh, new ways for the Bicentennial years, for we believe that few officers are now able either to take advantage of the unique opportunities offered by the Bicentennial concept or to implement the newer approaches to American Studies which must be the basis for future programming. To this end we overwhelmingly recommend that the Agency provide the necessary staff—beginning immediately with at least one officer assigned for this specific purpose—and funds to make possible the introduction of two proposals in this fiscal year:

(1) The development of a four-to-six-week course on the American Experience, which, over the next four years, would be offered at least twice a year and be required of all officers.⁶ The content of this course should be developed by a top-flight committee of academicians and Agency officers. Where it may prove useful, this course should introduce officers to the idea of similarity and contrast between national experiences as an organizing device for programming, in addition to giving emphasis to the uniqueness of America’s historical experiences.⁷

(2) The organization of one Experimental Workshop for June, 1973 on special subject areas of the American Experience (Art & Culture, Race & Society, Education & Life, and the like) which could be scheduled at the more attractive centers of local and State preparations for the Bicentennial. By assigning USIS officers to work-study experiences with such groups, much needed nationwide experience with the myriad of local and regional Bicentennial programs would be gained by our personnel.

We further agree that the Agency should move in fiscal year 1974 to promote four other approaches to training:

(3) Increase the number of full university study years in American Studies from the current level of approximately 2–3 per year to 6–8 per year.

(4) Establish a work-study program and training relationship with the Smithsonian Institution under which Agency officers would be detailed for three-to-six-month or even one-year periods to Divisions of the Smithsonian, particularly those which are charged with developing and preparing Bicentennial materials, exhibits and programs.

(5) Explore the possibility of organizing assignments of a number of senior Cultural Affairs Officers to the staffs of leading libraries and research institutes known for their outstanding collections of Americana. Such assignments would be for three to six months and be for the purpose of giving each CAO a professional experience with an outstanding cultural institution. (Possibilities: the Huntington Library in California; the New York State Historical Association Headquarters in Cooperstown, New York; the Winterthur Museum in Delaware are the type of institution we suggest.)

(6) Explore the desirability of assigning 4–5 officers each year to the staff of the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission itself as well as with other organizations making special efforts in the preparation of Bicentennial Programs, i.e., The American Heritage Publishing Company, the American Association for State and Local History, Society of American Historians, and the like.

e) Proposal V—We also feel that the Agency should give serious consideration to appointing, at least to our posts in London and Paris, a special Bicentennial Program Officer for the period 1973–1977. This person should not be below the level of 4, and might ideally be a senior officer (retired or retiring) on a consultant basis. If SCAOs are available at these posts, the BPO need not be an academic.⁸

4. Following considerable reflection and discussion, the Ad Hoc Committee identified six themes that may be said to run through the course of American history. It was decided that these themes in different forms might be considered by the Agency for programming through all its media products during the Bicentennial years. The themes are as follows:

I. Regionalism and variety in the United States⁹

II. Pragmatism and innovation: America as the Responsive Experimental Society

III. Conflict and Order: The Search for Social Responsibility

IV. Tradition and Continuity

V. Pluralism and Consensus

VI. Mobility and Change: The Evolving Society and the Permanent Revolution

5. Suggesting the importance attached to this aspect of the meeting at Airlie House, the conference organized itself into six sub-groups, each devoting the better parts of an evening and a morning to developing the tentative themes. Refinement and organization of these statements for further presentation must await the official transcript and notes, and media implementation recommendations could well be an item on the Agenda of the February meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee.

In the meantime, however, the committee singles out several aspects about the United States which deserve consideration in planning media products or other programming projects. We know, too, that several of the Agency’s elements have produced materials on some, if not all, of these subjects—but we are convinced the Bicentennial years heighten the need for additional concentration and more effective material. The following list of ideas relates quite directly to our elements a), b) and c) set forth in paragraph 2 of this memorandum:

(1) The American Experience in the context of the Human Experience in the search for freedom.

(2) The continuing American commitment to its Constitution; how that Constitution evolved from the period we are now commemorating; and how our Federal system works.

(3) Our two-party system.

(4) The role of consensus in America.

(5) Our continuing commitment to the free electoral process, as evidenced by the fact that this nation has never suspended its elections in time of national emergency, e.g., 1864, 1944, thus assuring an orderly process of political change and continuity.

(6) Voluntarism and the concept of community—voluntary organizations and movements are formed to effectuate the desires of their members, and to bring about reform, change and responsiveness on the part of government. Such groups are composed of people who share a common concern and are doing something about it (with and without the assistance of government); doing it of their own free will (citizen initiative); in response to a sense of civic responsibility—and within a political framework which permits and encourages such dynamism.

(7) Consumer advocates and movements—as examples of how the individual and like-minded groups can bring change.

(8) Community participation in education, a tradition dating from pre-independence to the present, as an expression of the nation’s commitment to free and ultimately universal education.

(9) Benefits to the society and to the individual of America’s commitment to a variety of forms and levels of university education.

(10) America as the “land of beginning again”, to draw upon the realities and strengths of our mobility.

(11) Adaptability and Openness—not the rootless American, but the American who carries his sense of identity with him, depending more upon his values than his environment.

(12) The continual fluid and wide economic choices open to Americans, as based on the free enterprise system celebrated by Adam Smith in 1776 in his publication in that year of Wealth of Nations.

(13) The role of the First American, who cannot be ignored in a year commemorating 1776: the Indian.

(14) The acceptance and tolerance, if not enjoyment, of change.

(15) The overseas view of America, with emphasis on the friendly and shrewd criticisms of writers such as Tocqueville, Beaumont, Siegfried, Bryce, Brogan, Revel, and other contemporary observers. (To illustrate that we are an open and self-critical society, we also recommend holding seminars during the Bicentennial to which distinguished foreign critics of America would be invited.)

(16) The relationship between private enterprise and good taste, showing the businessman and entrepreneur to be among those who are “creative” in the sense too often narrowly restricted to the arts.

(17) The Inventor: the American as tinkerer, improver, entrepreneur of ideas, and dreamer.

(18) The origins of new styles in the Arts evolving from our experimental society, especially in the dance, music and architecture.

(19) Philanthropy in America.

[Omitted here is a listing of members of the USIA–CU Ad Hoc Bicentennial Planning Committee.]

Robin W. Winks¹⁰

1. Source: National Archives, RG 306, Director’s Subject Files, 1968–1972, Entry A1–42, Box 28, 1972 PPL—Program Coordination. No classification marking. Loomis initialed the top right-hand corner of the memorandum twice. In a September 29 letter to Loomis, Winks expressed his thanks for USIA and CU leadership at the Airlie House Conference, adding: “I felt that the conference went well, and I have high expectations for at least some of the recommendations.” (Ibid.) Dunlap responded to Winks in an October 12 letter, thanking him for his “kind note” and explaining that Loomis had departed USIA on September 29 to take up his new position as President of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Dunlap indicated that he would send Loomis a copy of Winks’s letter and Dunlap’s reply. (Ibid.)
2. Loomis initialed the portion of the subject line beginning with “Summary” and ending with “Committee.”
3. Loomis underlined “dynamic” and “consensus and cooperation.” He also placed a checkmark in the left-hand margin next to this point.
4. Loomis underlined “Inquiring Society” and placed a checkmark in the left-hand margin next to this point.
5. Loomis underlined “open society” and placed a checkmark in the left-hand margin next to this point.
6. In a March 2, 1973, memorandum to Keogh (then USIA Director) and Kopp (then USIA Deputy Director), Towery (then Deputy Director for Policy and Plans) indicated that IPT would, beginning in FY 1974, “offer twice a year a six or eight week course in the ‘American Experience’ which will be required of all Foreign Service Officers before assignment abroad.” The memorandum is printed in Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, vol. XXXVIII, Part 2, Organization and Management of Foreign Policy; Public Diplomacy, 1973–1976, Document 85.
7. Loomis placed a checkmark in the left-hand margin next to this and the subsequent 5 points under “Proposal IV (Training Programs).”
8. Loomis placed a checkmark in the left-hand margin next to this point.
9. Loomis placed a checkmark in the left-hand margin next to this and the subsequent 5 themes.
10. An unknown hand signed for Winks above this typed signature.