Tag: public affairs

Londrina, a city of about a half a million with two million in the metro area, was founded by British settlers in 1934, so the city is not very old.  The region was settled primary by German, Italian and Japanese immigrants and this is reflected in the look of the city’s population today.  Brazil is a very diverse country.  This part of it could be Europe with some Japan.  There were lots of Japanese restaurants and the monument pictured along side commemorating the colonization. It was once the center of a near mono-culture coffee producing region.  This changed in 1975 when a devastating frost wiped out around 70% of the crop.  They have since diversified.

I got to experience a wider variety of weather here than I get to see in Brasília.   I arrived to a hot and dry day.  I was told that weather this year was variable and that it had been near zero degrees only a few days ago.  But this was a dry season.  It had not rained for more than a month and it was uncomfortably warm the next morning, but around noon the wind shifted.   A cooler wind blew and it rained by the end of the day.  Now it is a little cold and rainy. The impression of the city is very different.

I visited the Federal Institute of Technology and then spent most of the day at the BNC, talking to several classes of students.  It was interesting.  Talking to small groups used to be a big part of my work, but I don’t do them very much anymore and I miss them.  

In the evening, I made brief remarks at the opening of a new addition at the BNC and did an interview for local TV.  They had a jazz band you can see below. The BNC is above. A good time was had by all.

On Tuesday, I met with Dean of  the Universidade Estadual de Londrina (UEL – pronounced well) the Paraná state university in Londrina, along with the person in charge of Science w/o Borders and a local journalist who interviewed me for the university newsletter. They were happy that we came to visit them in Londrina and that we were trying to get out of the Rio, São Paulo, Brasília triangle.

Science w/o Borders is working well for UEL. The students who came back from the U.S. were universally delighted with their experience. They came back changed for the better, the director said, and their impact on the university will be positive.

We talked about our visions for the future and they were very much shared. We all understand that SwB is a great thing, but that it will not last forever and that the sustainable future lies in connecting American with Brazilian institutions. The Dean said she was interesting in contact with all sorts of American universities, but thought that something with a public research land-grant institution would be the best fit for UEL, which is very much like a land-grant institution. She talked about an umbrella agreement that would cover lots of areas. UEL already has  many MOUs with universities on specific issues. She understood that the role of the Embassy and the USG is to facilitate relationships, not to create them, but also understood that because of our work and contacts with Brazilian and American institutions we could be very helpful in making that happen.

I was thinking about innovation.  What is innovation and where does it come from? It is far to complicated to discuss it well here, but an important part of innovation is the process of connecting, connecting people and ideas in novel ways that produce results better than the sum of the parts.  I don’t think you can create innovation, but you can create conditions that permit and courage innovation.  One of the ways this can be done is by getting around, meeting and connecting people.  That is a big part of our diplomacy, especially related to education.

I spoke at the opening of the EducationUSA fair on Saturday. I try to keep my remarks short, but I did take advantage of the captive audience of more than fifty recruiters from the U.S. to emphasize the fantastic opportunities Brazil offers.  Of course, I was preaching to the choir.  They came because they expect Brazil to give them great opportunities. But while you need not preach to the choir, you do sometimes need to lead and encourage them. I did that.

EducationUSA fairs are self supporting, i.e. the schools and others who take part pay the full cost. Presumably participants think that the return is worth it.  Each Brazilian student brings in around $55,000 in direct benefits into the American economy for each year they are there  (not counting all the intangibles and long term), so if a school attracts only one or two it more than pays for the effort. The USG outlay is only for some incidentals and my time, which is free to the USG in this case, since the event was on Saturday when I am not paid. 

My pictures are not from the EducationUSA fair.  Pictures of a crowd of people gathered around booths in a big hotel space are not remarkable.  But across the road from the   fair building was an exhibition for patriotic week.  Those were interesting pictures, so I include them. The top picture shows the gate to the park. Next is the Brazilian Marine band.  The picture below is the convention center where the EducationUSA event was held.

The exciting news that came with the HBCU visit is that the Brazilian Ministry of Education is going to fund scholarships for prospective Brazilian secondary school teachers to go to HBCUs.  The plan is for them to start their university studies in Brazil for the first year.  After that, they spend two years in HBCUs, and then return to Brazil for their fourth year to graduate in Brazil.

We have to work out details. This program will be complicated because it is specifically designed to send only to HBCUs and the Brazilian target audience will be Brazilians of African descent. This kind of affirmative action is controversial in Brazil and difficult for practical reasons.  

Brazilians don’t recognize the same racial categories as we traditionally have. In America, race was identified as any African descent, no matter how small a percentage or physical appearance. Brazil is not so black and white. Most Brazilians have some kind of mixed heritage and it has always been appearance rather than heritage that counts. Brazilians are not surprised to find that a “black” man and a “white” one are brothers, or that parents might have children of what we would call different races.  That is, if they even bothered to think about it at all. In the U.S., we would probably try to resolve this dilemma; in Brazil the dilemma just doesn’t exist.  You are what you look like and the definition might vary.  An individual, who might be called mostly black in primary European southern Brazil, might be identified as mostly white in heavily African heritage Bahia. There is a famous case at the University of Brasília where identical twin brothers were classified into different racial categories.  

The use of racial categories for affirmative action purposes is creating the need to more closely and permanently define racial identity. Blacks make up less than 8% of the Brazilian population, but mixed race people are more than 43% and even among the 48% that now identify as white, there is room for interpretation. If there is advantage, more people will emphasize their African heritage and the African-Brazilian population will likely grow despite falling birthrates. 

One thing that may be useful in casting a wider net is additional emphasis on English. Students from poorer backgrounds, which often include more African-Brazilians, tend not to have English up to the level required for university study. English is the single biggest barrier to a more inclusive education policy.  The Brazilian government is working to improve English competence in general and specifically they will fund additional English study for those selected to go to HBCUs.

The HBCU delegations’ successful visit to Brazil culminated with the Minster of Education’s public announcement of a new scholarship program to fund Brazilian students going to HBCUs.   This program will go beyond SwB to also include studies in humanities and communications. The Minster ended his remarks by praising Martin Luther King and quoting from the “Dream” speech.  This program had nearly perfect public diplomacy pitch.   

Posts in Rio, São Paulo and Brasília shared the responsibly for escorting two groups of HBCU leaders. It was a big investment in time but worth it.  Besides the clear benefits for the HBCUs, this was a wonderful opportunity for us to make and renew contacts with important academic leaders inside and outside the usual big cities.

We spoke at a post initiated but Brazilian run seminar on how Brazilian universities can attract American students.  Sixty-three Brazilian universities were represented.  We asked PUC Rio to organize and sponsor the program since they are the most successful Brazilian university in attracting American students. Brazilians sharing experience with Brazilians does more to advance the 100,000 Strong initiatives than anything we ourselves could do.   The only USG expense was my travel and paying for a coffee break.  That the universities are paying their own way shows their commitment.  

U.S. Speakers Mark and Valerie Wynn continued their series of workshops and talks about domestic violence, this time in Minas and Pernambuco.

Recife PAO met with ABA (BNC) President Eduardo Carvalho who will return to Harvard next week to finish up his one-year Advanced Leadership Seminar.

PA São Paulo, in partnership with SESC and SENAC, launched the book Shared Heritage at Livraria da Vila at JK Shopping, in a cocktail attended by approximately 200 hundred key contacts from government, academic, literary and NGO sectors. As part of the event, PA organized a photo exhibit of works by American and Brazilian photographers on the African, Indigenous, European and current immigrants influence in both countries, originally displayed at the four shared heritage festivals.

Our main social media campaign of the week was the 50th anniversary of the March to Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech anniversary. Posts on Facebook had great reach and interaction with mostly positive comments regarding MLK, America, President Obama and the fight against segregation. Posts had a total of over 62K people reached, total of 278 shares on Facebook. Even the cover photo about MLK had a lot of interaction, with 30 shares, which is uncommon for a cover photo change. On Twitter, tweets had a total more than 1.2 million potential impressions.

Our most precious resource is not money; it is our people.  I don’t ask myself what I could do if I had more money; I ask what I could do with more high qualified people.   This leads to a different sort of paradigm, in my opinion a more evolved one.  Let me qualify what I am about to say by pointing out that none of these formulations are mutually exclusive.  One has evolved from the other as conditions have changed, but we still can find reasons to use all of them or combinations. 

The oldest paradigm, the one developed during the Cold War in a time of higher budgets and fewer able partners was for us to just do it.   We would bring a speaker or organize a cultural event and pay most of the cost.  At that time, it was important to be seen doing such things. We wanted to get our symbol, our logo, on events.   In many ways, it was analogous to sophisticated advertising. It was much like firms sponsoring programs in order to build their image.  Mobile Oil sponsored “Masterpiece Theater,” for example, and I still remember Mobile’s name and logo immediately followed by classy music and the erudite speech of announcer Alistair Cook. Mobile got what it wanted in convincing people like me that it was more than a greedy firm. The influence on me lasts to this day. 

We (the USG) can still do things like this, but much less frequently and with less effect than in the past for three big reasons.  First is simply money.  Sponsoring is expensive and beyond our budgets.  Second, it is less effective than it once was, since vehicles have proliferated and the market for them has segmented or maybe even shattered.  But the third reason is most important.  It has to do with the USG being a sponsor of anything.  In the years since the end of the Cold War, others have really grown up. They don’t need us to sponsor and my even resent us doing so with too much unilateral effort.  Another word for what we did was patronizing.  Patronizing can be great, but the word itself often carries a connotation that accurately conveys what it does.  Patronizing, no matter how generous, implies a difference in status.    

A newer paradigm tried to maintain the idea of patronizing (in the good sense) but using other people’s money.  This involved fund raising from private sources.   The idea is correct, that the American nation is greater than the American government alone and it is good to get other people involved in our endeavors.    This worked well about twenty years ago, when we had our program budgets cut but still had relatively large staffs of higher competent colleagues accustomed to running programs. Essentially, we provided management and got other people to provide money.  It was very much like the sponsorship of old except that there were more sponsors.  We were still clearly the lead in most cases.  It still could be patronizing (in a negative sense) however, in that it often carried the connotation that expert Americans had arrived to explain who things were, or should be. I did a lot of this in Poland in the 1990s.  Poles were eager to learn about the workings of the free market and a free press, and private firms were eager to co-sponsor to get their foot in what looked like a great market.    But even then, I could see the window closing, as Poles became savvier and thought that their experiences should be included more in discussions and we faced a problem with American presenters not understanding the quick improvements and lecturing our Polish friends about things they already knew.  

How we do public diplomacy now in Brazil reflect both our changed constraints and opportunities. We don’t need to “pitch” America to Brazil and the millions of Brazilians who visit the U.S each year and the exponentially rising numbers of academic and professional exchanging vastly overwhelm our small ability to add or detract from our overall image in this country of 200 million. There is nothing that we could bring to Brazil that Brazilians have not already seen or experienced, but this does not mean that we can do nothing.  We just need to work with the tides and currents and not fight them. 

Our paradigm is true partnerships based on the belief that you don’t make lasting friends face-to-face as much as shoulder-to-shoulder, working together toward common goals.  This works well within our constraints of budget and more importantly people, since it conserves both those resources and concentrated on what we have in most abundance – expertise and knowledge. Our task is not so much to do programs or give things to our friends, but to know how their systems work and understand their aspirations so that we can apply maximum leverage at key places and times.  This means giving up some control, since our partners will have some say, perhaps the dominant say in what is happening. We exercise our options in deciding who, where, what and when to engage. Then we work with our friends; put our shoulders to the wheel together in support of their aspirations and ours.  Since we are depending primarily on their resources and doing what they want to do, it is sustainable.  And for these same reasons produces gratitude and appreciation rather than dependency and resentment. 

We have done this on several occasions with spectacular success.  Science w/o Borders is a primary example.  Our Brazilian friends effuse about our help.  I recently attended an event about education at the Brazilian Senate.  On a panel of seven presenters, three specifically mentioned the U.S. as the example of what cooperation should look like.  I was only a guest sitting in the audience and was a little embarrassed by the attention, but gratified. It is much better, IMO, to be mentioned as great partners than as “generous benefactors,” no matter how beneficent.  It is part of the more mature paradigm. We are partners doing what we both want done.

When we patronize a program, no matter how grand, we can reach perhaps hundreds of people. We talk about ripple effects and word of mouth and I have no doubt they are effective.  But consider a leveraged program such as working with SwB or English w/o Borders, where we deeply and continually work with thousands of influential Brazilian and reach literally millions more directly.  Our Brazilian partners estimate that English w/o Borders will directly influence 7 million young Brazilians in the next four years.   The ripples from 7 million is bigger.

Our new paradigm requires that we be agile and opportunistic. It also requires that we have the courage and confidence to shift our resources quickly to places of maximum leverage.  This will mean that our programs are never well-balanced or well-rounded and some good programs will be neglected for a time, maybe forever.  

I liken SwB and the related English w/o Borders to the discovery of a gold mine.  The gold will not last forever, but while it serves we would be foolish to stay “balanced” by devoting equal attention to our tin mine.  In fact, the gold mine analogy breaks down and makes our activity even more urgent.  Gold, presumably, will stay in the ground until you are ready to go and get it.  SwB will have its season.  If we miss it, it will not come again.