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Topic: Culture and American Foreign Policy
From The Margaret Mead Symposium: Wither the United States in the World?
Commemorating the centennial of the birth of Margaret Mead.
December 2 & 3, 2001
Sponsors: Library of Congress and The Smithsonian Institution
How does American culture shape our foreign policy? Panelists approach this topic from a variety of angles, including Mead’s thinking about the role of the US after WWII, trying to understand Al Qaeda, the true meaning of globalization, and the American legal system.
America’s Responsibility
Speaker: William O. Beeman
Professor of Anthropology, Brown University
Beeman talks about Mead’s feeling that America, after, WWII bore a responsibility to transcend individual cultures and develop a world culture.
Quicktime (2.38MB)- Windows Media Player (2.89MB)
America’s Deaf Ears
Speaker: Amitai Etzioni
Professor of Sociology, communitarian, George Washington University
Speaker: Ben Wattenberg
Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute and moderator of PBS's Think Tank
Speaker: Herve Varenne
Professor of Anthropology and Education, Department of International and Transcultural Studies, Teachers College, Columbia University
Etzioni discusses why its problematic to say we should try to “understand” Bin Laden’s agenda.
- Quicktime (4.3MB)
- Windows Media Player (5.19MB)
America Needs to Understand Other Cultures
Speaker: Judith Kipper
Director, Middle East Forum, Council on Foreign Relations; Co-Director, Middle East Studies Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, consultant, ABC News
Kipper explains that its in America’s own self interest to understand other cultures.
- Quicktime (896KB)
- Windows Media Player (1.15MB)
America Must Learn to Live With the Rest of the World
Speaker: Judith Kipper
Director, Middle East Forum, Council on Foreign Relations; Co-Director, Middle East Studies Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, consultant, ABC News
Kipper believes we have not examined what globalization really means; that we have to live with the rest of the world. All current problems are transnational and none can be tackled alone, she says.
- Quicktime (2.55MB)
- Windows Media Player (3.16MB)
American Arrogance
Speaker: Judith Kipper
Director, Middle East Forum, Council on Foreign Relations; Co-Director, Middle East Studies Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, consultant, ABC News
Kipper argues that Americans see through rose-colored glasses, and discusses what September 11 meant to her.
- Quicktime (814KB)
- Windows Media Player (1MB)
American Adversarial Approach
Speaker: Deborah Tannen
Professor of Linguistics, Georgetown University
Tannen compares the American legal system with others.
- Quicktime (1.17MB)
- Windows Media Player (1.46MB)
America Affects World but World Has No Voice in America
Speaker: Herve Varenne
Professor of Anthropology and Education, Department of International and Transcultural Studies, Teachers College, Columbia University
Varenne discusses the question of why the French are not more enthusiastic after America came to their aid in WWII.
- Quicktime (2.67MB)
- Windows Media Player (3.19MB)
American Policy in Cambodia
Speaker: William Watts
President, Potomac Associates, former Senior Staff Member, National Security Council under Henry Kissinger
Watts discusses his own resignation from the White House over the American invasion of Cambodia, arguing that the U.S. helped create the Khmer Rouge.
- Quicktime (1.66MB)
- Windows Media Player (1.99MB)
South Korean Official Anti-Americanism
Speaker: William Watts
President, Potomac Associates, former Senior Staff Member, National Security Council under Henry Kissinger
Watts tells the story of an American diplomat in South Korea who was surprised at levels of anti-Americanism he encountered while giving lectures around the country on US policy post 9/11.
- Quicktime (2.52MB)
- Windows Media Player (3.03MB)