Click here to read Senator Feingold's excellent speech given earlier this week at the University of Wisconsin on "Public and Private Diplomacy
for the 21st Century."

Speech of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
Reaching Out to the World - Public and Private Diplomacy
for the 21st Century

University of Wisconsin, Madison
March 24, 2008

Gilles, thank you for that kind introduction, and for your leadership in international education here at UW-Madison. I’m very proud that my alma mater has such strong programs in this area.

I would also like to thank Aaron McKean and everyone at the Distinguished Lecture Series, Global Connections, the UW Division of International Studies, and AIESEC for their work to make this event possible.

Finally, I thank everyone here for your interest in the world beyond our borders. As I talk tonight about the importance of citizen diplomacy, I know that many of you are already reaching out to people in other countries through volunteer and exchange programs, or by hosting someone from overseas. I applaud the work you are already doing, and I will do my best to support your efforts.

Thirty three years ago, like many of you here today, I was preparing to graduate from this campus. I was a kid from Janesville, looking forward to the extraordinary opportunity of living and studying in England for two years as a Rhodes Scholar. The prospect of going abroad presented a new horizon for me. I couldn’t know then what lay over that horizon, but I knew it would be a challenge, and an adventure. At age 22, that sounded about perfect.

Today, among other Senate duties, I serve on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and chair the Africa Subcommittee. My daily responsibilities are now intertwined with people in countries that, as a UW student, I would not have imagined I would engage. Recent and ongoing events in Iraq, Sudan, Kenya, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Cuba alone are a testament to how closely we are connected to that wider world beyond the horizon.

Despite many years of service on the Foreign Relations Committee, and the international activities and travel associated with those duties, however, September 11, 2001, was a transformative date for me. That day made clear that America’s top national security priority must be combating the threat posed by al Qaeda. And in order to combat that threat, America would need to engage with the world in new ways. Like Pearl Harbor, 9-11 painfully established that what happens abroad is directly relevant to our lives and that we ignore at our peril threats beyond our boundaries.

We must meet those threats with the military action we have taken – and are still taking -- against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. But we cannot simply rely on our troops in this fight. Since 9-11, it has also become clear to me that some of the most powerful tools we have to counter al Qaeda and its allies are the American people. The extremists who threaten us rally their followers by drawing an ugly caricature – if not an outright false portrait – of America. Sadly, they are able to succeed, in part, because not enough people abroad really know us personally -- know our interests, values and aspirations as Americans.

As I have often reflected on this in the years since 9-11, I have felt an increasing urgency for us to reach out to the world to make these interests, values and aspirations evident –with a human face - because at their root, many of them are the common interests and aspirations of humanity. Our nation must be engaged in this common cause. It is in our personal and national security interests that we, as Americans, show the rest of the world the true principles for which our nation stands – democracy, tolerance, diversity, freedom, and the rule of law.

Two Wisconsin stories stick with me. One of them is from Sue Nelson who comes from my hometown of Janesville. She shared this story with me about her experience in an Arab culture:

We were sitting in a small cafe in Zarzis, Tunisia just a stone's throw from the Libyan border. It was January, 1989 barely a week after the U.S. had bombed Libya. My daughter . . . then a Fulbright Scholar doing research in Tunisia, and I were the only non-Arab folks in the cafe. It was soon apparent that we were noticed.

For a while we continued sipping our sodas trying to ignore the commotion we were generating, hoping we would soon be viewed as the thirsty travelers we were. Finally, when the agitation reached a crescendo, we realized that the people in the cafe were afraid of us.

Afraid of us?

With this new information we picked up our belongings and left the cafe astonished that two pacifists would be viewed in such a light. Where we had visited and the people knew us, we had always been well received. Many of the customers in the cafe were Libyans.

This experience made a major impact on the formation of the Habiba Chaouch Foundation in 1991. In reality, we know Americans make the same unreasonable assumptions about Arabs that the people in the cafe made about us.

Since the foundation was created, we have helped to give information to Americans and when traveling, we have opened the dialogue to the people on the other side of the world and we have hosted a Tunisian this past spring.

Sue is here in the audience tonight with her husband Gordy, and I thank them for their work to replace fear with understanding and friendship, and to bring us closer to people in a seemingly distant part of the world.

The second story comes from one of my listening sessions, which are town hall meetings that I hold in each Wisconsin county every year. People at the session were talking about our system of law and how it should apply to suspected foreign terrorists. Specifically the issue was whether we should suspend the writ of habeas corpus – the eight hundred year old right to challenge the legal basis for one’s detention that is a fundamental part of our legal tradition, and keeps us from becoming an authoritarian state. And I was pained to hear someone simply say: “If they have a name from the mid-east they should be in prison.” That’s a direct quote. It’s a viewpoint that is hard to hear, and fortunately it’s not one I hear often in this state, but it’s something we have to contend with as we do the hard work of changing minds not just overseas, but here at home.

I am here today to discuss how you at UW see your own horizons in a world that is still deeply affected by the events and aftermath of September 11, 2001. These are personal concerns to me. How as individuals, as Americans, do we fit into this post 9-11 world -- a world that is considerably more interconnected than the world I ventured into when I graduated from UW Madison? Can we ensure that the qualities that we and our families cherish most in our country will remain strong? Can we -- can you -- overcome the disaffection, mistrust, and even anger and violence, that al Qaeda has been so skillful in exploiting?

I ask you to explore these themes with me tonight. I have no doubt that the world you will live in will be shaped by how you respond to events and people beyond our borders. As one American from Wisconsin I would like to suggest ways in which we not only can but must reach out on behalf of our country.

I can’t begin to talk about how we can reach out, however, before I talk about something that stands in our way, and that’s the war in Iraq.

At my listening sessions I get a chance to hear what people in Wisconsin are thinking, what concerns them. It rejuvenates me and keeps me grounded in what I do in the Senate.

In recent years the most significant theme I have heard at my Wisconsin listening sessions is about what is happening abroad, including the war in Iraq. Many of you are concerned that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks we suffered on 9-11 from al Qaeda and that our continued engagement in Iraq is a serious and dangerous distraction from the threats we continue to face from al Qaeda and its affiliated groups. A majority of Wisconsin citizens, like a majority of Americans, is deeply concerned about the terrible burden borne by our troops – in loss of human life and limb and in mental health -- and the massive drain on our financial resources caused by this misguided war. I share these concerns. They underpin my efforts in the Senate today to change our mistaken course in Iraq so that we can focus on the neglected threats we face elsewhere, including in Pakistan, Afghanistan, North Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Let’s make no mistake about it – the continuing threat of al Qaeda and its affiliates to our physical safety here at home is real and active. Our most recent National Intelligence Estimate of July 2007 tells us that al Qaeda has regenerated and reconstituted itself in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The Director of National Intelligence recently testified that “al Qaeda’s central leadership based in the border area of Pakistan is al Qaeda’s most dangerous component” and that it is improving its ability to attack the United States through “the identification, training, and positioning of operatives for an attack in the homeland.” As this very real threat grows, and as we continue to spend over $10 billion a month in direct costs in Iraq alone while our troops, including our National Guard, are stretched beyond their limit, it is clear that our national security requires us to redeploy from Iraq. By ending our current massive, open-ended presence in Iraq we can start to put our resources in the right places to address the threats facing us.

Today, however, I want to focus on a separate, though related, concern. Americans are suffering other very serious casualties from the war in Iraq – ones that damage our standing and long term relationships with our partners and prospective partners in combating al Qaeda. The June 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Project, which surveyed over 45,000 people in 47 countries, tells us that five years into the Iraq War, Americans are now disliked by people who used to count us as friends and allies. And the poll tells us that this dislike is driven, in great part, by the war in Iraq.

These reactions are a barometer of our country’s global standing and influence. They do not bode well for our prospects to secure the needed global partners to realize our own security and interests -- whether that requires enhanced military efforts in Afghanistan or coordination to curb nuclear weapons risks in Iran.

This is also having a spillover effect on how we are viewed, not just as a country, but as a people. The Pew Global Attitudes Survey tells us that “[o]verall, the image of American people has declined since 2002.” Many of you probably have a friend or have heard of an American who has placed a Canadian flag on his or her backpack to make it more comfortable to travel in a foreign country. These narratives don’t sit well with me and, I suspect, not with you. They are not reflective of what America is or who Americans are – and we have to change that.

The traditions of this campus offer fertile ground for change. UW Madison has consistently been near, if not at, the top of this nation’s campuses in generating Peace Corps volunteers. And Madison is home to one of the largest, most proactive communities of returned Peace Corps volunteers. Through its award-winning international calendar, the Madison-based graduates of Peace Corps programs have contributed more to Peace Corps community projects abroad than any other group in the country. As someone fortunate enough to represent Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate, I’m deeply proud of that commitment, among so many people in our state, to help and learn from others in communities around the world.

UW and Madison have a rich tradition of reaching out to the world, not only to improve the lives of disadvantaged people abroad, but to enrich yourselves and build personal and cultural relationships that bring a human face to our global interconnectedness. I am a strong champion of the Peace Corps. I have joined Senate colleagues in calling for a doubling of the Peace Corps, and for a robust Peace Corps budget. But even with the tremendous efforts of Peace Corps volunteers, we need greater, more varied and more flexible outreach and interaction in both our public and private diplomacy initiatives.

The time has come to revisit, renew and redouble our commitment to reaching out to the world. History and sentiment are with us. There is a growing bi-partisan and non-partisan chorus of voices that recognize that we have over-militarized our response to the global challenges of the 21st century and that we have to reach out in other ways to understand and shape what is happening beyond our borders. We increasingly are hearing phrases like “smart power” and “soft power”, or the concept of a “3D” foreign policy that recognizes the need for a range of defense, diplomacy and development efforts. These broader efforts include not only the traditional diplomatic art of sustained dialogue among government representatives; they also include collecting covert intelligence and public information about events in healthy and failing states; development efforts to support fair and responsive government, human survival and dignity; and people to people communication and interaction.

Yet, despite this call for change, large deficits remain in the sheer numbers of people who engage in diplomacy, whether as employees of our Department of State, as members of a sister cities delegation, or as volunteers in a church-based foreign community development project. We are not reaching out to the world the way we can and should – and while government certainly has a role to play in increasing its support for these activities, all of us have a personal responsibility, too, as citizens of this country.

Government Diplomacy – Foreign Service Officers

Let me suggest to you today a framework for how we should be strengthening the full range of diplomatic efforts. First -- and I am not saying anything new here – we need to increase the number of Foreign Service officers and enhance their skills. We don’t have enough of these people in the field. We don’t have enough diplomats keeping their ears to the ground, so that we can head off crises before they happen, and only put boots on the ground as a last resort.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in his speech at Kansas State University last December, made it clear that we have a duty to dramatically increase our 21st century investments, as a nation, in the civilian instruments of national power, including diplomacy. When the Secretary of Defense makes an explicit push for the use of non-military power, it’s a sign that it’s time, probably long past time, for significant change.

Gates has famously said that we have fewer Foreign Service officers than it would take to man a single aircraft carrier strike force – and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has noted that there are twice as many lawyers in the Defense Department as there are Foreign Service officers. To begin to address this gap, Secretary Rice recently submitted a fiscal year 2009 budget that calls for more Foreign Service officers -- though it is unclear after expected attrition and the demands of Iraq and Afghanistan, whether we will have a significant net increase in experienced personnel in places where a diplomatic presence is needed. The point is, we have to dramatically increase the number of diplomats and place them in regions we have ignored. And we need to do this in a fiscally responsible way by, for example, making a shift in our investment priorities from outmoded military hardware to human resource “software.”

We also have to improve skills in our diplomatic corps, especially so-called “super hard” language skills like Chinese, Arabic, Urdu, and Swahili. The President should be commended for creating the National Security Language Initiative – this program is a good start to addressing this need. And we also need to strengthen traditional language programming in our schools to provide a strong foundation for global awareness and communication.

Public Diplomacy

To reach the new constituencies of our 21st century global community – to convey the true character of this country and its citizens -- we also need to realign our outreach and our strategies. That means strengthening not only our state-to-state diplomacy, but also our public diplomacy.

Public diplomacy seeks to enhance the national interests of this country through understanding, informing and influencing foreign public audiences. It is our government, and the resources at its disposal, reaching out to “ordinary people” abroad to convey this nation’s principles and beliefs and influence their perception of this country. It is a tradition and effort as old as our nation. Members of our Continental Congress -- Ben Franklin, John Jay, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson among them -- wrote letters intended for the people of other countries, including the people of Great Britain, explaining their efforts to form a representative government “ruled by laws” and not the “edicts of men.” They sought public approval for their efforts – that others “may incline your minds to approve our equitable and necessary measures.” Our Declaration of Independence, itself, was a message from our early government leaders to the people of the world of the fundamental principles that underpinned our grand and revolutionary experiment in democratic governance. Today, our leading State Department award for public diplomacy is named after Benjamin Franklin, in recognition of this longstanding American value and tradition of reaching out to the world.

We need to reshape and enhance these efforts in a 21st century world. We have to increase the ranks of diplomats who are devoted, not just to supporting or negotiating economic, military and political agreements, but to more fully depicting who we are as a culture and a people, rooted in the democratic values of our founding documents and as ethnically, politically and spiritually varied as the nation of immigrants that we are.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently highlighted this continued deficit in our public diplomacy efforts:

[P]ublic relations [he said] was invented in the United States, yet we are miserable at communicating to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and a culture, about freedom and democracy, about our policies and our goals. It is just plain embarrassing that al-Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the internet than America. As one foreign diplomat asked a couple of years ago, “How has one man in a cave managed to out-communicate the world’s greatest communication society?” Speed, agility, and cultural relevance are not terms that come readily to mind when discussing U.S. strategic communications.

Karen Hughes, the most recent Under Secretary of State of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, had the right idea. That office, established in 1999, now seeks to implement a comprehensive public diplomacy strategy based on three objectives:

* Offer people throughout the world a positive vision of hope and opportunity that is rooted in America's belief in freedom, justice, opportunity and respect for all;

* Isolate and marginalize the violent extremists; confront their ideology of tyranny and hate. Undermine their efforts to portray the west as in conflict with Islam by empowering mainstream voices and demonstrating respect for Muslim cultures and contributions; and

* Foster a sense of common interests and common values between Americans and people of different countries, cultures and faiths throughout the world.

I support these objectives. I believe our country continues to have a role in this world to share our democratic vision with other people.

So why do we need to fix and enhance our public diplomacy? In part because this Administration’s actions have spoken louder than any of its words and, in so doing, have reduced the credibility of public diplomacy efforts. One of the reasons Karen Hughes had a hard sell was the fact that she was part of an administration that launched a misguided and globally resented war in Iraq that, as an afterthought, was cynically marketed as an effort to bring freedom and democracy to the people of Iraq. It is difficult for our public diplomats to promote this country and its principles of freedom and democracy when, to people in other countries, our words and best intentions about supporting democracy are undermined by our actions. And Iraq is not the only problems – we are also paying a price for our continued support for a Pakistani leader who sacks the head of his country’s supreme court to preserve his power despite popular opposition, to give just one example.

So, we have to recognize that our public diplomacy efforts face barriers from both our Iraq legacy and from an inconsistent foreign policy that pays homage to democracy in lofty rhetoric but continues to support authoritarian leaders in places like Pakistan and Egypt.

All this is not to say that we must discard or diminish our public diplomacy efforts. Quite the contrary. We must reshape and enhance them into a more meaningful and coherent strategy. We must, as democracy expert Thomas Carothers suggests, “decontaminate” democracy promotion by ending its close association with military intervention and regime change. And, as another noted international democracy scholar, Larry Diamond, emphasizes, we must continue to “engage societies directly through a web of educational, economic, cultural, social and scientific exchanges.”

To do this we have to extend our international relationships beyond the myopic theme of Iraq and beyond an effort to sell our unilateral effort there as an exercise in democracy building. We need to update our public diplomacy to address 21st century realities. Jan Melissen, a diplomatic studies and international relations expert, puts it well:

Modern public diplomacy is a ‘two-way street’, even though the diplomat practicing it will of course always have his own country’s interests and foreign policy goals in mind . . . . It is persuasion by means of dialogue. [I]t is fundamentally different from [propaganda] in the sense that diplomacy . . . is not one-way messaging.

Dialogue is a critical element of effective public diplomacy. We must reach out to understand others as well as share what we stand for and believe in.

Lastly, as Professor Diamond notes, our country’s leaders must, with some humility, recognize that we have ongoing work at home to perfect our own democratic systems and performance. For our public diplomats to effectively model and promote freedom, justice, opportunity and respect for all, we must acknowledge that building and maintaining a vibrant democracy is an ongoing effort, including here at home. Simply acknowledging that our own democracy is not perfect and that it needs our ongoing involvement and support is a strong message about the importance of citizen participation and responsibility. That self-recognition alone resonates with global audiences and makes us a more credible partner and champion of the systems and values we seek to model and promote.

Citizen Diplomacy

Our third, and perhaps most important diplomatic initiative, must be to encourage and support individual citizens to reach out across our borders in their private and personal lives. Our best diplomats in the world today are our private citizens. This is especially true, given again what Carothers calls the “contamination” of our public diplomacy by the war in Iraq.

The Pew Global Attitudes poll tells us that, while our popularity may have declined, Americans as a people are still consistently more popular than our country. Our diplomacy must draw on individual Americans, who best convey the human face, the human character, of who we are and what we believe. In an ethnically and religiously fractured world, we can show how our democracy accommodates us in all our diversity and disagreement, including in our occasional disagreement with our own government.

Studies have shown that, in areas where U.S. citizens have contributed their time, money, and services, opinions of the United States have improved. A 2006 Terror Free Tomorrow poll found that, “[i]n Indonesia, almost two years after the tsunami, American aid to tsunami victims continues to be the single biggest factor resulting in favorable opinion towards the United States. Almost 60 percent of Indonesians surveyed nationwide in August 2006 said that American assistance gave them a favorable view of the United States. This number has remained solid following tsunami relief, despite a growing number of Indonesians who oppose American-led efforts to fight terrorism.”

Here in Wisconsin, in River Falls, elementary school students contributed $623 in pennies to fund the construction of girls’ schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Those pennies launched a national effort, Pennies for Peace, which has made a tangible impact in one of the most difficult areas on earth. And, in his best-selling book, Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson describes how he tried to give something back to the people who nursed him back to health after a challenging mountaineering experience on K2, the world’s second highest mountain.

In a speech about his book, Mortenson explains the title as follows:

I learned a very important lesson in 1996. I had been working for three years to get the first school built . . . . I was doing what we call in the West "micromanaging." One day a wise, old village chief named Haji Ali took me aside and said, "We are grateful that you are going to build the first school in the area and bring education to our people. But you need to do one thing: You need to shut up, sit down and let us do the work. You need to let go and give empowerment to the local villagers." Late that evening, we were drinking . . . salt green tea with rancid yak butter. Haji Ali told me, "In our culture it takes three cups of tea to do business. On the first cup you are a stranger. The second cup you become a friend, and the third cup you become family. The process takes years." Later, on my own, I compared it with 30 minute power lunches in America. Over there, I have learned, it's about relationships.

It is about relationships – and it is about respecting the initiative and pride of ownership of others. It is not just about money or building projects, though those are important contributions that bring very real tangible benefits to those in need. It is about personal experiences, personal interaction – and mutual benefits -- not just the dispensation of charity. It is through private, people-to-people contact and exchanges, that these relationships are built, mutual understanding and respect reached, and opportunities identified, developed and sustained.

You may know that Greg is one of this year’s first ever recipients of the National Award from the U. S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy. You are lucky to be hosting Greg here at UW Madison a week from today.

Our history is filled with citizen efforts that helped to literally change the world. Many of you know the story of how Americans participated in table tennis tournaments in China in the early 1970’s and how this ping pong diplomacy contributed to a re-establishment of relations after decades of enmity and estrangement. Or you will have followed the recent privately funded travels of the New York Philharmonic in its concert tour of North Korea as it played the New World Symphony and Gershwin’s American in Paris – in Pyongyang. Or the series of baseball games between the Baltimore Orioles and Cuban baseball teams.

We must allow, encourage, and support these types of initiatives. They are in our national interest as well as in our personal interests. Instead of limiting people-to-people exchanges, as this administration did with Cuba in 2004, for example, we should be increasing them, especially at this time of transition in that country. The passage of Fidel Castro from active leadership presents us with a golden opportunity to promote democracy and new relations through a free exchange of people and ideas. It is clear that our decades old policies and limitations on US travel and exchange programs have had no impact on Cuba’s leadership. People to people exchanges, however, offer a real and meaningful opportunity for citizen dialogue. Congressman Jim McGovern tells us from a meeting with Fidel Castro that Castro’s two most feared words in the English language are “spring break.” Democracy travels best in person.

Though we have important programs already in place – the Peace Corps, programs administered through the Department of State’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, the Fulbright program that took Sue’s daughter to Tunisia, USAID’s Volunteers for Prosperity, and most recently their Service Incentive Program – we can and should be doing more. We need to enhance the opportunities of our university students to have meaningful international experiences. In this vein I support the proposed Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act which is aimed at increasing participation in study abroad programs and encouraging diversity in student participation and in locations, with a particular emphasis on developing countries.

But it is not just our students and young people who should have opportunities for interaction with others abroad. Many of the people I meet in this state are unable to volunteer overseas because of financial or time-related barriers. As much as we might like to, few of us can easily take the time or afford to take off for a year or two, especially once we have a family and professional lives.

In an effort to reduce these barriers, I recently reintroduced, along with Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota, the Global Service Fellowship Act. This bill would fund travel, housing and other appropriate expenses up to $7,500, associated with an international program designed by the recipient. By providing flexibility in timing and programming, this approach expands the pool of those who might be interested in engaging in such an initiative but would otherwise not be able to do so. For those selected, all we ask is that you share your stories and thoughts with your community and your government representatives when you return so others can gain from your own experience. I was pleased to learn that Volunteers for Prosperity announced a smaller, but similar program called VFP Serve and it is my hope that my bill will complement and strengthen this type of programming.

For those for whom even a week or two abroad is not possible, it is not necessary to ever leave home to personally experience our world’s varied and rich cultures – and I am not just referring to Madison’s diverse restaurants. We can also reach out across our borders when we welcome someone from abroad into our communities, our classrooms and our homes. In opening your homes to exchange students, perceptions are changed, maybe long term bonds and relationships developed – and in so doing you reach out to the world and help shape its views of this country, its people and its ideals. You also provide experiences to people from other countries that may become some of the most meaningful and memorable of their lives. Think about it. If I picked a random date ten or even five years ago and asked you where you were and what you were doing on that day, you probably would have no idea. But if you happened to be traveling outside of the U.S. on that day, I bet you’d remember, perhaps in great detail.

Experiences we have with people and cultures outside of our own are seared into our memories. They stay with us forever. And each visitor to this country who you encounter and share your life with is having that kind of experience. Small kindnesses, just a little bit of effort, can have a powerful and lasting impact on someone.

People-to-people contact offers our foreign visitors the chance to see past the stereotypes and to know us as we really are. The Pew Global Attitudes Project found that “those individuals who have traveled to the U.S. have more favorable views of [our] country than those who have not.” It also notes that

[T]he image of America tends to be more positive among those who have friends or relatives in the U.S. whom they regularly call, write to, or visit. . . . People with friends or relatives in the U.S. are generally more likely to have a favorable opinion of the country than those who do not have personal connections in the U.S.

These personal encounters with people from other cultures have a lasting impact and importance because they can change perceptions of the world going forward. We have seen that with Peace Corps volunteers whose few years of service inform their world view for the rest of their lives. The same thing can happen to people who have contact with foreign visitors here in the United States.

For some, reaching out beyond our boundaries literally changes and continues to shape our lives and relationships. That’s certainly the case for Mike and Kathy Anderson from Marathon, Wisconsin, who have hosted so many people from around the world over the years. They are here tonight and I want to thank them for their wonderful work. They recently shared their story with me:

We have been hosting folks from all over the world through a variety of programs for nearly 35 years. We started with programs offered through the University of Minnesota while we lived in Minneapolis, and have continued for the last 15 years with programs sponsored by North Central Technical College in Wausau.

Our children have grown up with dinner guests and “extended family” from countries as remote as Lesotho and Ivory Coast, Siberia and Turkmenistan, as old as Egypt and China, and as close as Wales and Germany. They discussed security arrangements for the Seoul Olympic Games with the man who was in charge. They have discussed the arts in China, education in Ukraine, and trade unions in Africa.

Along the way we seemed to become an unofficial embassy for Morocco in Minneapolis, with students passing along our names to other students coming in following years. We just crossed the generational gap with a guest last month from the University of Morocco in Rabat, where one of our original “kids” is now a professor.

It wasn’t and isn’t at all atypical to have 10 to 15 folks from other countries over for dinner and conversation at the same time.

We aren’t sure of the reason, but our youngest son is now an Anthropologist. Perhaps it was a result of having multi-cultural dinner table stimulation for years.

Kathy had an opportunity to return the favor, when she was selected for a two week trip to Ukraine to discuss farming methods with folks under the Community Connections program.

We have also traveled to Morocco to look up former guests from long ago, and were treated like royalty. All the neighbors came over for introductions, kids everywhere, all talking in Arabic and Berber, no one understanding each other, and everyone having a great time. Laughter needs no translation.

We have lots and lots of stories, but the headline may be that people interact with people at a very different level than countries interact with countries. I may not like what your country is doing, but if I get to know you as an individual, I can still build a connection. Programs like these put a face on the country, making it less abstract and impersonal. Once the guests get to know a farmer from Wisconsin, I’m sure they also have a better understanding that our country is more than the image they see presented by the politicians, or the sports figures, or the media folks. It’s real folks with the same kind of dreams, hopes, and wishes for the future that they have. And perhaps we get a bit closer, one relationship at a time.

There are many other Wisconsin stories like those shared by the Andersons. Just last week I introduced a new webpage for citizen diplomats to share their experiences overseas and for prospective citizen diplomats to seek out federal government volunteer opportunities. I invite you to share your story on my website at www.feingold.senate.gov.

These are the faces and voices of Wisconsin’s private citizen diplomats. They reflect the traditions of Americans, in our ethnic and cultural diversity, reaching out to the world – and the world responding. They reflect, too, the opportunities we have, following in the traditions of our founding fathers, to define who we are as Americans and to establish who we are as a country and as a culture. Through our personal outreach we have an opportunity to re-establish our nation’s role as a champion of freedom and democracy, and to enhance respect for the values we represent. In so doing, not only can we learn and gain pleasure from these life affirming experiences, we have an opportunity to forge human bonds among ordinary people, disarm narrow-minded ideological opponents and strengthen both the values and security of this country.

I suppose the simplest way to summarize my aspirations for you here today is that I hope you will be proud to place an American flag on your backpack when you travel to Asia, Africa or Europe – and equally proud to share your home and your community and your daily lives with someone who knows little of them. And as you do this, I hope you will reflect both our confidence and our humility, as you support the common aspirations of an increasingly interconnected and interdependent global world.