Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XXX, Public Diplomacy

92. Action Memorandum From the Deputy Director for Policy and Plans, United States Information Agency (Schneidman) to the Deputy Director (Bray)¹

Washington, October 5, 1977

SUBJECT

• Organizing Principles for USIA During Bicentennial of the Constitution

REFERENCE

• Your Memorandum of June 27, 1977²

This memorandum sets forth an action plan for the Agency’s participation in the Constitution Bicentennial. Part I sketches what preparations the U.S. and other governments as well as non-governmental organizations have made to date. Part II postulates five Constitution-related program goals for the Agency. Part III suggests an approach and schedule of activities for working toward those goals. Part IV specifies several initiatives which the Agency can take immediately at no additional cost to itself.

I—STATUS REPORT

Executive Branch: ARBA (American Revolution Bicentennial Administration) closes its doors on October 1, 1977.³ For its last year Congress voted ARBA only $65,000, correctly assuming that ARBA could operate till October on revenues generated by licensing and medal sales. The approximately half a million dollars in non-appropriated funds left over are being transferred to the Department of Interior (Park Service) for battle reenactments and other “pseudo-events” connected with the Revolution Bicentennial.

The National Endowment for the Humanities will probably allocate $200,000 to an inter-disciplinary multi-year study of the Constitution-making period co-chaired by Williams Political Scientist James McGregor Burns and Columbia Historian Richard Morris. “Project ’87” is expected to get more help from Mellon and Ford Foundations, aggregating $800,000.⁴

Judicial Branch: The Supreme Court, with Congressional appropriations, sponsored the production of five short documentaries on famous court cases and the Burr trial;⁵ IMV is acquiring prints for overseas distribution. The Office of the Chief Justice is anxious to be a prime mover in the early planning for the Constitutional Bicentennial. Special Assistant to the Chief Justice Mark Cannon is the responsible official. Former USIS Saigon Press Counselor Barrett McGurn now directs the Court’s Office of Public Information.

The Judicial Conference of the United States, the governing body for the administration of the Federal judicial system as a whole, has commissioned the writing of a pioneering popular study of the U.S. judicial system—national, state, and local—by Historian Sidney Hyman. The Conference’s International Committee Chairman, Chief Judge of the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, is eager to use the Bicentennial to widen links between the American and overseas judicial systems. The book promises to be a good presentation item for expanding our contacts in this crucially important audience.

Legislative Branch: The 94th Congress failed to act on the bill co-sponsored by Senators Mathias, Javits, and Pell to create an American Constitution Bicentennial Foundation.⁶ According to the Assistant Librarian of Congress, Congress has provided no guidance on the Constitutional phase of the Bicentennial.

The Private Sector: The key player is the Bicentennial Council of the Thirteen Original States, a non-profit corporation registered in Virginia, which has embarked on an intensive citizen education program centered on high schools and civic groups. The Council has scheduled annual seminars until 1989, a Bicentennial Book Award and a periodical on constitutional issues. The Council is energetic and productive; its title, however, has made it somewhat objectionable to some organizations west of the Atlantic seaboard.

Other Governments: One hundred and one governments allocated more than 100 million dollars to commemorating the Revolution Bicentennial. International interest in the Constitution Bicentennial is understandably quiescent, although the French Bicentennial Committee plans to celebrate the Franco-American alliance and the Treaty of Paris.⁷ Spain, Poland, and the U.K. also have plans to observe anniversaries in the eighties of their respective roles in the U.S. revolution.

II—OBJECTIVES FOR USIA PARTICIPATION

The goals proposed below for Agency operations pertaining to the Constitution Bicentennial flow logically from our traditional mission and the pattern of commemorations for the Revolution Bicentennial; they also reflect CU mutuality themes. (In the Agency’s next annual Program Priority Paper a short paragraph focussed on the need for planning, but not mounting actual operations related to this event, could be included to sensitize posts to think ahead.)

1. To foster recognition of the historical and contemporary significance of the American Constitution, encouraging its study as part of the curricula of foreign universities, polytechnics, teacher training institutes and secondary schools, seeking to implant relevant knowledge of American constitutionalism into international social science curricula.

2. To strengthen understanding among appropriate foreign publics of the practical impacts of the American system of separate but shared powers upon American foreign policy and programs.

3. To initiate dialogue on the principles of constitutional democracy between Americans and foreign counterparts concerned with studying, commenting on, framing or performing official functions under, written constitutions.

4. To illuminate the achievements of constitutional democracy to nations under authoritarian systems, citing the American experience as a source of ideas.

5. To dramatize the interconnection between the U.S. Government’s current stress upon human rights and the original Bill of Rights of the American Constitution.

III—STRATEGY AND A POSSIBLE TIMETABLE

Retrospective analyses of the Revolution Bicentennial effort tend to share several common conclusions:

a. The syndrome of the “Revolution Bicentennial hangover” cannot be blinked away. After such a sustained period of fevered activism, one can expect neither Americans nor foreigners to maintain the same intense interest and energy level for the Constitutional observance—at least not without a pause.

b. The Constitutional commemoration will not lend itself to the mass hoopla of the Revolution Bicentennial but rather to the selective and focussed programming with which the Agency is doctrinally most comfortable.

c. Establishing a successor to ARBA⁸ should be preceded by a period of careful planning and idea generation.

d. The new coordinating mechanism for the Constitution celebration should not be involved in operations but confined to planning and grant-administration.

e. Planning should not be over-centralized; inputs from a wide spectrum of institutions, public and private, are crucial to success.

f. Domestic and foreign dimensions of the Constitutional observances should not be overly compartmentalized. What ought to be sought, over the long run, is a broad interflow of ideas and inputs between USIA and other agencies and ultimately between Americans and foreigners.

The following timetable is offered only as a framework for discussion.

November 1, 1977: It is highly desirable that the White House, as the leadership center of the government, should call the first organizational meeting for intra-governmental cooperation on the Constitution Bicentennial. This act would reduce the vexing problem of territoriality which may arise if another Federal executive agency should be in the position of summoning its peers. All agencies with potential roles in the Constitutional Bicentennial would be included: HEW, Interior, Justice, State, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Judicial Conference of the U.S.A., and the USIA. If the White House (possibly Al Stern of Stuart Eizenstat’s staff) could not be prevailed upon to call such a gathering, Richard Hite, the custodian of the Bicentennial’s remaining funds, could be persuaded to do so. USIA, of course, could not properly spearhead such a meeting but could play a catalytic part. Succeeding meetings could meet outside the White House orbit. Conferees might elect a chairman (rotating?) and then select three working committees to conduct liaison with three different sectors—the Federal establishment (including the Supreme Court and the Judicial Conference), private organizations, and overseas. As a probable member of the international committee, USIA would be prepared to invite the International Commitee of the American Studies Association to circularize overseas Americanists (2,000 strong as of 1975) and seek their ideas and invite outlines of ideas for Bicentennial grants. USIA would coordinate also with Washington embassies such as the French and the Australian so as to avoid overlaps with their national celebrations coming at the end of the decade. Our posts would be encouraged to add their own constructive ideas on appropriate forms of celebrating the event.

About October 1, 1978: the intra-governmental committee should be ready to appoint a subcommittee to approach staff members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Constitution (Sen. Birch Bayh) and the House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights (Rep. Don Edwards) in order to sound out their willingness to sponsor bills to authorize an American Constitution Bicentennial Foundation. After almost a year of consultation and investigation, the intra-governmental committee should be well equipped to design a highly workable piece of legislation, avoiding the mixture of planning and event management which bedeviled ARBA. The new Congressional Act should also specify such points as the inclusive dates of the celebration, considering questions such as whether the commemoration should extend through the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights (1791).

January, 1979: or early in the first session of the 96th Congress the bill would be proposed in both houses. If and when the Act is passed, coordinating responsibility would be transferred to the staff and board of the new Foundation.

No firm plans should be made at this time beyond the creation of the Foundation. In the meanwhile, however, fruitful fermentation should be taking place as the result of the initiatives described above, within the government, with NGOs and abroad.

IV—IMMEDIATE OPTIONS

A number of steps can be taken at once without a specific allocation of resources.

1. Responsibility can be clarified for the early phase of the Constitution Bicentennial. An IOP Officer should be designated to chair a small Agency committee with representation from ICS or its successor organization, and IGC, with IMV, IPS, and IBS participation as needed. The ICS American Studies Staff should hold the files of all correspondence and otherwise backstop this planning unit. CU would also be invited.

2. The Office of Education International Division, HEW, is prepared to commission the compilation of a companion volume on the Constitution to its 1976 book: The American Revolution: Selections from Secondary School History Books of Other Nations (Argentina, Canada, the CPR, Egypt, France, Germany, Ghana, the U.K., India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, USSR) at no cost to USIA.⁹

3. Boston University’s Gaspar Bacon Fund for Constitutional Studies, which has sponsored lectures and books on the American Constitution since 1926, is seriously considering a suggestion to allocate funds for the preparation of a handbook on constitutionalism, an annotated bibliography of periodicals, publications and a roster of organizations on constitutional democracy. This suggestion, which now seems almost certain to be acted on, should produce a volume which the Agency would wish ultimately to buy in bulk orders for world-wide distribution to jurists, legislators, political activists as well as academicians as a program tool for spurring substantive discussion across national boundaries of constitutional issues. In any case, no advance order will be needed.

4. Deputy Assistant Secretary of CU, Mildred Marcy, who figured prominently in Revolutionary Bicentennial operations as a USIA employee, intends to broach to League of Women Voters President Ruth Clusen the idea of the League’s staging a multi-year, national forum on American Constitutional Democracy: A Self-Assessment. The seminar, as Ms. Marcy visualizes it, would explore how well America has fulfilled its ideals; in a sense, it would be a self-scoring exercise. This kind of public examination would of course become a media event. Ms. Marcy notes that the League’s charter authorizes it to “identify and seek solutions for” national problems. As a former officer of the national staff of the League Ms. Marcy is in a strong position to energize the League to undertake a major symposium in this vein.

Sub-themes for objectives should congeal in due course. Meanwhile, USIA can cross-pollinate the thinking of domestic agencies by distributing the International Directory of Specialists in American Studies, a most suggestive reminder of the depth and range of American scholarship on the U.S. and its potential engagement with what the ARBA Study on the Bicentennial of the Constitution called “our finest achievement as a civilization”. The Directory contains a total of 2,142 names from 71 countries around the world.

1. Source: National Archives, RG 306, Office of the Director, Executive Secretariat, Secretariat Staff, Correspondence Files, 1973–1980, Entry P–104, Box 141, 7704140–7704149. No classification marking. A copy was sent to Reinhardt. Bray and Liu initialed the memorandum, indicating that they saw it. Attached but not printed is an undated attachment entitled “Individuals Consulted in Preparing Recommendations.” In an October 14 memorandum to Schneidman, Bray stated: “I have read your memorandum of October 5 with interest. It represents a careful and thoughtful piece of research. Please proceed vigorously and in a catalytic manner.” (Ibid.)
2. Not found.
3. On July 8, 1966, Johnson signed into law legislation establishing the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission (P.L. 89–491; 80 Stat. 259), charged with planning the multi-year independence celebrations. In February 1973 Nixon proposed that an American Revolution Bicentennial Administration be created to carry forward the work of the ARBC. Public Law 93–179 (87 Stat. 697), which Nixon signed into law on December 11, 1973, established the ARBA as an independent entity to coordinate governmental and non-governmental projects and programs commemorating the bicentennial. The legislation directed that the ARBA submit a final report to Congress by June 30, 1977, and that the ARBA should terminate by June 30 or at the time the report was submitted.
4. A joint initiative of the American Historical Association and American Political Science Association, Project ’87 brought together leading U.S. historians and political scientists in order to promote public dialogue on the U.S. Constitution. In 1976, at the time that Project ’87 was proposed, Burns was serving as the President of APSA and Morris as President of AHA.
5. In 1807 former Vice President Aaron Burr was charged with treason and brought to trial before the U.S. Circuit Court. Burr was subsequently acquitted.
6. Reference is to S. 3100, the American Constitution Bicentennial Foundation Act, introduced by Mathias on March 9, 1976, and cosponsored by Javits and Pell. The bill proposed the establishment of a foundation consisting of 15 members, appointed by the President. The foundation would administer grants-in-aid to assist individuals and groups in carrying out projects related to the U.S. Constitution and democratic principles. The bill was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee but was not reported out of committee.
7. 1783.
8. On January 26, 1983, Hatch introduced a bill (S. 118), co-sponsored by eight senators, proposing the establishment of a Presidential Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution. On September 29, Reagan signed the bill into law (P.L. 98–101).
9. Published by the Government Printing Office as DHEW Publication (OE) 76–19124 and compiled by Robert D. Barendsen and others in the Bureau of Post-Secondary Education.