It was predictable, somewhere in the Arab Spring: the forces of security, representatives of the ruling military council, raiding offices and closing down a broadcaster.

Not surprisingly, it was Egypt where this Spring rupture occurred, with the military government disrupting Al Jazeera's specially created local channel,

I've been tracking elements of China's complicated and ambitious policy of expanding its information sphere to a possibly waiting world. In late May, I heard Dr. Hu Zhengrong, one of China's most distinguished ambassadors to the international academic world, give a talk on this "going out" policy to the International...

Here's a way to celebrate the coming of spring: go to that stretch of Fifth Avenue that incorporates the El Museo del Barrio at 105th Street, the Cooper Hewitt at 90th Street, and the Jewish Museum at 91st Street.

Why? The answer lies with...

How should the international community react to the surprising statement by Abdul Ati al-Obeidi, Libya's current foreign minister, with its dramatic suggestion for a way forward? Is his suggestion of a ceasefire and discussions leading to free elections worth pursuing?

I'd argue that al-Obeidi's contribution, in a...

While Bahrain careens and Egypt moves toward a new stasis, the debate over the shape and role of the Internet intensifies in different register and in different levels of abstraction.

An important forum for this global discussion is the Department of State and its vision for the Internet. There's...

A few months ago, I blogged here and elsewhere about the similarities and differences between China and the United States in terms of articulated policy concerning the development of the Internet. Wikileaks -- so huge an event in the history of the way we think...

(This post was originally published on the CPD blog at USC's Center for Public Diplomacy).

As global framing contests go, one of the most spectacular is the transnational effort to define proper regulation of the Internet (and in the process characterize China's information policy). In June, China's State...

Last week, the editors of the Weddings/Celebrations section of the New York Times demonstrated (probably unintentionally) the rise of media careers in the lives of the young socially elect.

David Brooks--before he was anointed as global pundit by the New York Times--wrote Bobos in...

There's only until the end of February to see one of the most dynamic, interesting and original exhibitions now on in Manhattan: Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis. It's at the nicely refurbished, newly reopened Museo del Barrio in the upper reaches of Fifth Avenue. Take my...

[This post was previously published in the January 29th edition of Forward, and you can view all the covers discussed in this blog there].

I knew there were a lot of "Holocaust-related memoirs" but how oft-rehearsed the genre was I...

The publishing of a book -- especially one that's personal and not a footnoted artifact -- is still worth celebrating, even if it's being published in the traditional format of pages between covers. This is particularly true if you're the author and the book is primarily about you.

So here's...

We're already into a decade of immense, uncharted, and widely distributed federal spending but with one vital part of the democracy in jeopardy.

At the same time that our President is engaged in a Hail Mary of economic planning, our much-reputed constitutional mechanism for accountability (otherwise known as newspapers,...

There's a striking image by Farida Batool in a current exhibit at New York's Aicon Gallery (reviewed at the New York Times). Seeing it was especially astonishing for me because I know something of the artist and the complexity of her relationship to Pakistan, its history and its...

There's little that excites the art world so much as a deaccessioning brouhaha. The National Academy Museum--one of the loveliest New York cultural institutions that is visited by too few people--has fallen on very hard times. It recently sold two paintings to put some version of real bread on...

There's yet another newspaper "turn off the lights" commentary in the New York Times, appearing ghoulishly on the last day of 2008: "When the Watchdogs Don't Bark," tracking Zell-related and Journal-Register depredations in Connecticut (Hartford, New Britain and Bristol) and journalistic enterprises laid waste in New Jersey. This summary...

My biggest personal problem in what seems like a placid, normal Delhi is that wireless is not working in my otherwise-charming hotel. But this means I'm spending more time watching the television news. Today, NDTV had a story on Shiv Sena, the hard-right Hindu organization, seeking to ban and harass...

It's hard to have yet another Sarah Palin epiphany, but that's what happened as I was drifting happily through a conference called "Reality Worlds," organized at the Annenberg School for Communication by Marwan Kraidy and Katherine Sender.

Scholars devoted to the genre were generating all sorts of theories...

We're less than 50 days away from the Mother of all Inaugurations (maybe that was Andrew Jackson's), and there is an almost unquenchable thirst throughout the country to participate, to celebrate, to possess the moment and relish it.

Is the Inaugural Committee doing enough to slake this thirst? Certainly the...

It may be peculiar to comment on one's own blog. But, having recently provided a post on possible directions for Obama's international broadcasting and public diplomacy strategy, I realized I had missed the elephant (or donkey) in the room.

In thinking about a strategy for the new administration, the...

Can two late thinkers, a French philosopher and British media scholar, point the way to a new American public diplomacy--or at least an American international broadcasting strategy-- for the Obama era?

Let's start with two unarguable points. The very election of Barack Obama shifts the world of public diplomacy...