Author: Craig Charney, President, Charney Research
Updated: February 2007
The issue of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world offers an ideal case study of the issue of “soft power.” This involves the aspects of international relations and foreign policy that focus on leadership through prestige, persuasion, and cultural and economic power, rather than hard power, the “bombs and rockets” that make up much of the traditional introductory international relations course or specialized course on US foreign policy.
By Craig Charney
The Council on Foreign Relations’ Special Report on U.S. public diplomacy in the Muslim world can be a useful resource for a variety of undergraduate or graduate courses. These notes offer some suggestions for using the report in four types of courses:
GENERAL COURSES ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
SPECIALIZED COURSES ON US FOREIGN POLICY OR PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
The issue of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world offers an ideal case study of the issue of “soft power.” This involves the aspects of international relations and foreign policy that focus on leadership through prestige, persuasion, and cultural and economic power, rather than hard power, the “bombs and rockets” that make up much of the traditional introductory international relations course or specialized course on US foreign policy. On the one hand, the loss of American prestige and increased anti-Americanism in Muslim countries is increasingly regarded as a serious problem for U.S. international relations and foreign policy. On the other, a superpower which also uses the instruments of hard power, as America has in Iraq and Afghanistan, may face serious tensions between its uses of hard and soft power. These issues are well illustrated by the report and its analyses of focus group reactions of Muslims in Morocco, Egypt, and Indonesia to American policies and information about America.
Discussion Questions
SPECIALIZED AREA STUDIES COURSES ON THE MIDDLE EAST OR SOUTHEAST ASIA
SPECIALIZED COURSES ON ISLAM AND POLITICS
Discussion Questions
ASSIGNMENTS
Any of the discussion questions above could be used as an essay topic instead. Other possible assignments for students in any of the above types of classes would include:
1. Public Debate
Assign students to argue publicly the case for and against the United States from the perspective of citizens of one of the countries in the study and a representative of the United States government. To prepare they should draw both on the Council Special Report and other sources of information. To maximize learning you may wish to assign students to defend the opposite of the viewpoint they actually hold.
2. Content and/or Discourse Analysis
Assign students to take a week or month’s worth of a Muslim news medium and analyze all references to the United States. Content analysis would involve rating them as positive, negative, or neutral. Discourse analysis involves analysis of their meaning, tone, metaphors, and context.
English-speaking students can look at Al-Ahram English weekly, the English section of aljazeera.net, or the Jakarta Post. French-speakers can look at the Moroccan weeklies Le Journal and Telquel. Speakers of Arabic or Indonesian should be encouraged to look at major dailies in those languages. All these are available on the web.
An alternative way to set up the assignment would be to base it on a particular event rather than a time period and compare coverage in the Muslim medium and a major U.S. paper.
3. Public Opinion and Aspirations
Students should take one of the three countries in the Council Special Report (Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia) and review as much as possible of the other reports and information available on the opinions and aspirations of citizens there, reporting on their findings regarding the society in general or a particular aspect (economic development, women, democracy, Islam). Topline findings from the Pew surveys are available on the Pew website, in addition to the Pew reports. Numerate advanced students can also download and run the dataset from the large 2002 to 2003 Pew study.
4. Policy Memo
Students should take one or more of the countries in the Council Special Report as a basis and write a memo to Karen Hughes, the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, on how the image of the United States could be improved there, drawing on the Council Special Report and other recommended readings and surveys.
Academic Modules—featuring teaching notes by the authors of CFR publications—are designed to assist educators in creating or supplementing a course syllabus. The modules are customized packages built around a primary CFR text, such as a book or report, and include teaching notes; additional readings; video, audio, and transcripts of CFR meetings; Foreign Affairs articles; and other online resources. Use of these modules is free of charge. They may be used in part or in their entirety.
National Interest's Paul R. Pillar discusses three problems with the fear of Islamist threat to democratization in Arab countries.
Mohamad Bazzi reviews Robin Wright's Rock the Casbah.
Reza Aslan, writer and scholar of religions, discussed the recent wave of political protests throughout Egypt, Iran, and across the Middle...
Justin Elliot provides an explanantion for Islamic, or Sharia, law.
Print
Email
Share