{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/cj87h1fs3g/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Interview with Cameron Munter, December 5, 2022"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/212/original/LOHI_aviarybanner2.jpg?1741032082","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2022-12-05 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Interviewer"]},"value":{"en":["Whalen, Emily"]}},{"label":{"en":["Interviewee"]},"value":{"en":["Munter, Cameron"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCameron Munter recalls his long career in the United States Foreign Service and his decades-long contact with John Mroz and the EastWest Institute. Munter served as EWI's CEO after Mroz's death, and he discusses the evolution of the Institute in the mid-2010s as well as the challenges it faced in the United States from a changing philanthropic culture and increasing political polarization. Munter concludes with reflections on the importance of public diplomacy and his assessment of future prospects for organizations like EWI. \u003c/p\u003e (abstract)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Contributing Institution"]},"value":{"en":["College of Charleston Libraries"]}},{"label":{"en":["Media Type"]},"value":{"en":["Oral History"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject - Personal or Corporate"]},"value":{"en":["EastWest Institute","Foreign Service Officer Program (U.S.)","Mroz, John Edwin","Wałęsa, Lech"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject - Topical"]},"value":{"en":["Cold War","Democratization","Diplomacy","Diplomatic and consular service","European Union","Fund raising","Geopolitics","International relations","Internationalism","Leadership","Non-governmental organizations","Philanthropinism","Track two diplomacy"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject - Geographic"]},"value":{"en":["Afghanistan","Czechoslovakia","Czech Republic","Europe, Central","Lebanon","Middle East","Pakistan","Prague (Czech Republic)","Slovakia"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type IMT"]},"value":{"en":["audio/m4a"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCopyright © College of Charleston\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date Digital"]},"value":{"en":["2022-01-27"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCameron Munter recalls his long career in the United States Foreign Service and his decades-long contact with John Mroz and the EastWest Institute. Munter served as EWI's CEO after Mroz's death, and he discusses the evolution of the Institute in the mid-2010s as well as the challenges it faced in the United States from a changing philanthropic culture and increasing political polarization. Munter concludes with reflections on the importance of public diplomacy and his assessment of future prospects for organizations like EWI.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCopyright \u0026copy; College of Charleston\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Lowcountry Digital Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Lowcountry Digital Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/212/original/LOHI_aviarybanner2.jpg?1741032082","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Munter_Cameron_5_Dec_2022.m4a"]},"duration":2238.528,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-cofc.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/174/063/original/Munter_Cameron_5_Dec_2022.m4a?1674675814","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mp3","duration":2238.528,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Transcript of Interview with Cameron Munter, December 5, 2022 [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nGreat. So if you could start with your name, your position, and your relationship with the EastWest Institute.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=2.0,11.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nMy name is Cameron Munter. I'm the former president of the EastWest Institute. I was there between 2015 and 2019. I'm currently retired. I had previously been a diplomat before I came to EWI. Now living in Prague as a consultant.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=11.0,28.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nGreat. How did you first hear of the EastWest Institute?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=28.0,32.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nI first met John Mroz, and when I think of the EastWest Institute at those times, John Mroz was the EastWest Institute. He was the towering personality and kind of character who was identified with EWI. I was a first tour officer in Poland in the US Diplomatic Service, and John was in central and Eastern Europe in the 1980s, jumping back and forth between reform communists in places like Hungary and kind of progressives in places like Germany. So the EastWest Institute at that time was east being Budapest and west being Frankfurt. It later became a much more broadly understood EastWest Institute, but at that time it was a Cold War institution and we at the embassy helped John to try to make contacts with progressive people at that time, kind of the waning of communism in Poland where I worked.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=32.0,88.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nThat's great. And you said that there was a sense that communism was kind of waning. Tell me a little bit more about that. What was it like to be in Central Europe at that time?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=88.0,98.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nYeah, I don't want to overestimate how brilliant we were in foreseen all of the Berlin Wall, but it was pretty clear, especially in Poland, which was just a terribly dysfunctional country. People didn't have enough to eat. It was a country where nothing worked well, and even the communist officials would kind of make deep ironic jokes about why things didn't work. One of the great losses we have at the end of communism was the black humor that was pervasive everywhere in the 1980s. So we knew that things didn't work, we didn't know what would happen, but there were a couple of ways of looking this. One was that there would be a gradual process by which people of goodwill would adjust, and I think we kind of expected that. And John Mroz fit into that vision that there would be so-called reform communists. People like Gorbachev, people like I've mentioned, the goulash communists from Hungary. But in addition, some communist or former communists who we know in Poland.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=98.0,157.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"That was one strand. The other strand were the less compromising people, but people of kind of moral stature like Lech Wałęsa or Václav Havel who basically said, you can't compromise with this system. This system is basically bad. And as diplomats, we tended to support them, but our hearts were with the idea of gradual change. We knew change would come, and that's what John represented. Now, when the Berlin Wall fell, when everything kind of collapsed thanks to Gorbachev, John had to sprint to catch up because he had been kind of a, well, let's not be too precipitous. And people like Havel had been way out in front, people like Lech Wałęsa had been way out in front of John calling for the end of communism.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=157.0,206.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So John had to kind of sprint to put himself ahead of that parade. And he did a masterful job of that because he had made such good contacts in the last years of the 80s that in the communist world, he was someone who had paid attention to the dissidents. And indeed, after about 1990, 1991, he became identified as one of the people who really understood the transition that was going on.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=206.0,232.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nSo you encountered the EastWest Institute in Europe in the 80s, and I wonder if you can just sort of trace for us that in broad strokes, how your career evolved and where you found yourself in the early 2010s and or the mid 2010s.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=232.0,252.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nTo put it very, very quickly in the last decade of the 20th century with the kind of, I hate to say it, triumphalism, that we had, the end of communism, the almost Fukuyama style feeling that liberal democracy was going to succeed, there were many institutions like the EastWest Institute that diplomats worked with to try to foster the building of western institutions in the former east. I became the desk officer for Czechoslovakia at the time of the end of communism and worked with John and then later with Stephen Heintz to open the first office of EWI in Prague in 1991 at the Štiřín Castle. And throughout the 1990s, there were a number of major conferences and efforts by John funded by all of the big, I assume the big idealists in the west, who wanted to see the integration of countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary into the west throughout the 1990s. Then I served at the American Embassy in Prague from 1992 to 1995, worked closely with Stephen Heintz, et cetera, and worked on these programs and on NATO enlargement, UN enlargement, et cetera.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=252.0,337.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nYeah. Actually, if I can ask you a quick follow-up question to that. How would you describe the relationship between the U.S. Embassy and the EastWest Institute's European Study Center?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=337.0,352.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nYeah, well, I can be very blunt about it. Everyone thought that John Mroz thought that he was more important than he actually was, right?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=352.0,360.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nYeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=360.0,361.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nIt's kind of like the John Mroz was, do you know who I think I am, kind of thing. That said, his utter confidence, almost too much confidence, gave him the energy to pursue projects, which were actually very good. How do you put this, even if his reach exceeded his grasp, he was visionary and inspiring, even though he would come and say, my contact with people in the East, in Russia is the most important contact that's happened in the last decade. We would all nod our heads and say, thank you, John. But on the other hand, he did great things. So we were glad to have him as a partner and we were always skeptical about his claims. All right, so he overshot, but he was very valuable as someone who was hugely energetic and came up with great programs.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=361.0,423.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"By the time the century ended, he had expanded the EastWest Institute. There were offices all over different parts of Europe and a lot of very senior people, kind of Steve Larrabee and other kind of intellectuals jumping in and working with him so that he was a force to be reckoned with. And he was, I think by the time I was working in the White House at the turn of the century, it was clear that EastWest through its ties had a real impact for example, on the turn to democracy in Serbia, in the former Yugoslavia. This was not just helping, it was influencing. It was very major. My problem was at that time that everyone else in the Foreign Service, after 9/11, what had been my focus, which was Central and Eastern Europe and kind of democratization turned towards counter-terrorism, I spent the next 10 years or so in various back and forth, in places like Iraq and lost track in many ways of what EastWest did.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=423.0,489.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"My understanding was that EastWest stayed very, very engaged in the first years of the 21st century in southeastern Europe in Ukraine, there were pro projects that had to do with regions, the Transcarpathian region, getting way down in the weeds that they were involved with. And this was all wonderful, but I think it was all on the idea that there was going to be an organic growth of the countries of the East to integrate into the countries of the west. Part of what we understand now is kind of the false dawn of globalization. And we really believed from a distance, I believed from a distance that would work. By the time I became Ambassador to Serbia in 2007, EastWest was no longer active there. And there were funny things that would happen every once in a while, like reports by the Greek government of something that had been a little fishy that was associated with the name of the EastWest Institute.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=489.0,551.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I later got explanations about these kinds of things. But there was this, do you remember this funny organization, the shadowy organization, the EastWest Institute that is no longer active? That's what I remember when I was ambassador. But I was still in touch with people like Stephen Heintz, who by that time had moved on to Dēmos and then onto the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. And we were still supportive of what John did. After I had gone off, again, to Iraq and then to Pakistan, I really had lost track of what had happened. And when I retired from the foreign service after being in Pakistan in 2012, I remembered the EWI fondly. And I remember John as a very inspirational kind of person, but I didn't think twice really about EastWest. When John died, I was teaching on the West Coast and I met with Stephen Heintz during a trip to New York and he said, we're looking for a new leader for the EastWest Institute.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=551.0,613.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I said, well, this is the one Institute basically that I would leave academia for. And he said, why is that? And I said, because it's not an advocacy organization, it's an organization that tries, as far as I understand it, to find common ground. And the only other organization that I knew that had kind of a similar pedigree was the Washington organization called Search for Common Ground, which basically just tried to work on dialogue. And I was very captivated by that. So that in 2014, I think 2014 was when John died, by 2015, I was very enthusiastic about coming in and seeing how it would work worldwide.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=613.0,658.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nAnd tell me a little bit about the recruitment process.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=658.0,662.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nThe recruitment process was a bit of a surprise to me because I had not paid attention. And I think one of the things that was kind of new for me was I hadn't really followed how philanthropy had changed from the 1990s to the 2010s. That is, there was a time, and I may be oversimplifying this somewhat, where I think of gentlemen in nice suits in New York, wrote large checks to John and said, you're doing great work, John, keep it up. By the time they were looking for a successor for John, there was more of what people refer to now as impact philanthropy. There were people who were the board members and other friends of the institute who wanted to be intimately involved in what the institute did.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=662.0,714.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so there were a number of strong-willed people who had very specific ideas about the way they wanted the EastWest Institute to go. And when I talked to them about my vision of the EastWest Institute, I probably in retrospect struck them as being a little bit naive that I was looking for the EastWest Institute to continue the work of trying to bring people of different positions together and not basically, to put it crudely, not to be an organization that was an activity organization for rich people who were donors to the EastWest Institute. Right?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=714.0,760.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nYeah, yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=760.0,762.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nI don't want to overstate this, but I mean there was much more of a sense that people wanted to be involved, they wanted to get out in the field to go off and talk to people. And so we balanced that. But in the application process, and I think thanks again to Steven, he's guidance and help, I was able to get the job. But I think this was something that during my tenure was always something that I was always expecting, maybe because I was a diplomat who was used to running an embassy, I thought that I would get my instructions and that and my team would carry them out. And I think during the time I was there, I misread my donors who wanted to be included in the process. And that's something that I believe is different from the 1990s.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=762.0,821.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nWhy do you think that is?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=821.0,821.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nWhy do I think that happened?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=821.0,822.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nYeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=822.0,823.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nThat philanthropy changed?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=823.0,826.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nMm-hmm.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=826.0,827.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nA lot of very broad trends. You could just talk about the Davos world of people who are very wealthy, who want to make an impact. You made a fortune, you're 40 years old and you want to say, is this all there is? Do I just buy another house or do I make a difference? And I think a lot of these people wanted to say, I want to go and talk to Erdoğan and make sure that Erdoğan does the right thing, or I want to get engaged with the Chinese so that we can avoid World War III. I mean, these were laudable ambitions, but it was a different kind of thing than hiring experts to run an institution institute that studies these problems and tries to solve them, if you understand what I mean.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=827.0,876.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nI do. Yeah. So tell me about.. you've been hired by the board, you're working on balancing all of these different spiting plates. What was your approach in the first few years of your tenure as president?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=876.0,890.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nThe first couple of years, what I tried to do is say what works and what doesn't. That is to say what things that John had been doing had been successful. And what I thought was very important was that we had a reputation, especially in the big countries where we had an office in Russia and we had a very robust program in China that we were able to bring together senior people from the United States and those two countries to talk about issues. That is to say we could sponsor back channel, we could sponsor kind of academic study, we could sponsor even just feel good meetings. So the first thing that I noticed was that what John had been able to expand to in the first decade of the 20th century away from the EastWest, meaning Budapest and Vienna and towards EastWest being the Big East and the Big West, was that we were able to talk to the big countries, and those countries...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=890.0,959.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I always would like to tell people from foreign countries when I came into EastWest, EastWest is not an American organization, it's an organization based in America, but it's global. And I realized very quickly that no, the Russians took us seriously and the Chinese took us seriously because they not only wanted to have dialogue, but they thought we had access to the Americans. And so that was something I had to realize is that they wanted us for our access to the United States. Now after I came in, and it was no secret to the people who hired me, I was very close to the Democratic administration that lost the election in 2016. And it was much more difficult for me to get the inside contacts, me and my team to get the inside context with the Trump administration that we had had and would've had had Hillary Clinton been elected president.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=959.0,1021.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So that inside baseball that I hadn't expected when I took the job was very, very important and very difficult. Ironically, there was a whole different dimension to the EastWest Institute, this kind of second half of your question, which is that we were very effective on specific sharp shooting of different projects. We did some things with India and Pakistan. We did some things with Lebanon. I think that shared with you at the time, we did some projects having to do with Turkey, with Iran. We did projects that had Iran, Armenia. We had a major Armenian figure on our board who helped us try to get Iranians, Russians and Americans together, because Armenia is one of the places they can go without visas. We could do these specific kinds of projects and I felt that those were opportunistic, but very often successful. So there was the broad kind of thing that we were doing, which was basically big power EastWest. And then there were the specific elements of back channel, which were opportunistic and which sometimes led to success.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1021.0,1108.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nSo this is where you come in, this is kind of the early moment of your tenure as president. What changed over the course of the next few years for you, and what stayed the same?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1108.0,1122.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nWhat changed was the world changed around us? It's one of these things where sometimes I think back to those years and I say, wow, what happened? My assumptions in 2015 about how China would develop were very different than my understanding of China by 2019, by the time I left. That is the impact of Xi Jinping's changes made it very difficult for us. Much more difficult even in just those couple of years to have military to military or party to party talks because the Chinese attitude was hardening and at the same time, the American attitude was hardening. By the time I left the EastWest Institute, there was a broad consensus in Washington Democrat, Republican, \"screw the Chinese.\" And that was simply not the case in 2015.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1122.0,1173.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Similarly, there was the difficulty of the hardening with Russia. In 2015, 2016, when I would go to Moscow, we would talk to young scholars at Moscow State University, we would talk to people at TASS, we would talk to people who, in retrospect you might have said, well, these were people who were playing you, but there were people who were following what they thought were some sort of liberal agenda where we could find interlocutors with them in the west.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1173.0,1206.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"By 2019, that was much, much tougher. So that calcification of the international relations, the development, which I don't blame entirely on Trump, but that Trump I think accelerated the idea of the kind of great power competition made the work of EastWest very, very, very difficult because the whole motion of EastWest is based on the premise that you can imagine from 1988 liberal communists in places like Budapest saying, we actually have a lot in common. Let's focus on the things we have in common and try to develop the things that we can do. And by the time we come 2019 comes around, there was a lot of focus on what separates us rather than what unites us.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1206.0,1252.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nYeah. So even though that you were operating in this really tremendously difficult environment, as you mentioned, there were still some pretty important successes for the Institute under your tenure, what are you proudest of with respect to your time?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1252.0,1268.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nWell, I'm not sure in the long run it was the right thing, because you never know. But when we were in Lebanon, we were engaged in the effort to try to figure out how to make the constitutional arrangement in Lebanon work. And that involved trying to see whether there was going to be a common agreement on who could be president of the Republic. And it turned out that we were part of the discussions that led to the election of Michelle Owen. Now you can argue, oh my God, look what you did. But the notion was that unless you had a president, you couldn't have elections, you couldn't have a new prime minister, you couldn't function. So that-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1268.0,1311.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nYeah. Which is what's happening in Lebanon right now, by the way. They're not able to elect a president.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1311.0,1319.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nYeah. And so that kind of discussion where we would go to all sides and clearly we didn't have an axe to grind. And clearly we were kind of able to pass on messages that were helpful not only to them, but also to the people like the French and the Americans who were the watchers. That was, I think, the best kind of back channel that we could do. We did discussions with the Chinese that were, to just give you one example, there was one time when we were talking with the Chinese at an army base in Northern China where we had an American team and a Chinese team talking in great detail about security and North Korea. Now, whether or not we were authoritative enough for the Chinese, the Chinese went out of their way to try to communicate to us what they thought the possibilities were for peace with North Korea.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1319.0,1379.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"We then go back to the American, American government and try to pass that information on. By the time the Trump administration came in, there was, how do I say this gently, we were not always greeted with open arms or with comprehension, but we did our best to try to say at least the Chinese believe that a lasting peace or stability with the North Koreans depends on these three or four issues that they've brought up to us and repeated to us at length. Take it if you will. And I'm not sure that we were terribly effective in getting the Americans to take the Chinese seriously. By this time things were going badly enough that I think there was skepticism about the honesty on the Chinese side. The point was we were getting into very, very detailed discussions that could have been the basis for certain agreements that would at least make a accident or conflict less likely.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1379.0,1449.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So I would point to the structure of what we tried to do in the broad talks with the Chinese on such issues as North Korea, the structures of when we were in Lebanon talking with the Lebanese, or for example, when we went to Turkey and were able to talk to the people in 2017 or 2018 who ran the refugee camps to try to figure out in which ways could we talk to other NGOs such as the International Rescue Committee to try to coordinate on what is the best way to address refugee issues or to at least understand refugee issues in Turkey, which of course were of a great interest to our European friends who were afraid of a continuation of the 2015 crisis.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1449.0,1493.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So let's throw those three examples out that we got very much into the weeds of issues and tried to share ideas that would lead to common understanding whether or not this led to the world being safer. It's hard to prove a negative, it's hard to prove that. There's always the old joke that people say, which is my job is to pass out pieces of paper on Fifth Avenue so that there won't be an elephant stampede. And people say, well, why would you pass pieces of paper out on Fifth Avenue to prevent an elephant stamped? You say, well, you haven't seen any elephant stampedes on Fifth Avenue lately, have you?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1493.0,1533.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nYeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1533.0,1536.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nIt was that kind of thing. Did we help? We like to think so. We at least addressed issues. How very hard to say though, whether we turned the tide in a fundamental way on these kinds of adventures.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1536.0,1551.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nSo maybe briefly you could give me a sense of when and why you decided to move on from the institute.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1551.0,1559.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nYeah, it's a tricky thing. One is that the fundraising was much more difficult after about 20... I mean, again, it's hard for me to give a date, but after about 2017, I noticed that many of the traditional donors who were, again, I want to say one-worlders, people who believed that there was a prospect for international peace and understanding-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1559.0,1596.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nSort of traditional internationalists.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1596.0,1599.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nLet's call them traditional internationalists. The traditional internationalists became less optimistic in general. Secondly, there were people who came to the EastWest Institute and they were more common. People who came to the EastWest Institute, but then you would find out that they had an agenda. We had a Korean group that came to us for a while and then we finally realized they were tied to various Christian, kind of very religious proselytizing in the north, which they had hidden when they first came to us. So I think the thing that I will leave fuzzy because it's still fuzzy in my mind, I became aware that fundraising and the world of philanthropy was changing in addition to what I mentioned to you about the attitude of the philanthropists who work with us and their desire to be hands-on, there was also kind of a change going on in philanthropy.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1599.0,1668.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I'll confess that I didn't catch onto that very quickly. That was something that I felt was a failure on my part. I didn't catch on that kind of the big grants from George Soros or the big grants from the traditional big companies, they were being dwarfed now by private offices and other people who came in with other ways of dealing things. So that's one thing that set me off that I realized I was missing it. And then second of all, once the leadership of the EastWest Institute decided that it didn't want to be seen with a number of unpleasant characters, because it might be bad in domestic politics, and I say this very, very carefully, some of the senior funders and board members said, well, we don't want to be seen with person X, say a Chinese person, say a Turkish leader, say an Iranian, because that might hurt our standing with American leaders.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1668.0,1735.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And my argument was always, we are in the business of meeting unpleasant leaders. Anyone can talk to the Canadians. The fact that we host Erdoğan in Washington, the fact that we host, what was the guest's name, Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister. That's what we do. We are not saying that we agree with them. We are talking with them. We are trying to find common ground. And the attitude of being, having that open conversation left and was fading. And that was the point at which I realized I was not going to be able to do the things I wanted to do at EastWest. And so by early 2019, that was clear.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1735.0,1790.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nGotcha. I want to ask a little bit about what your post EWI life has looked like. Before we do that, you've told some great stories already. I don't know if you have any other quintessential EWI stories or anything you remember really vividly about your time there?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1790.0,1809.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nWell, I mean, one thing that I think is really important is that I was a very different guy than John, and this is important for understanding EastWest. John was very, very inspirational. And John was the kind of guy who could get people in a room to get really excited and pound the table. And I would hear from even his best friends that they would say, well, oh, that's only John. He's all smoke and mirrors. But he was extraordinarily charismatic and able to inspire people to donate and to work hard on projects. I have to say one thing that when you inherit an organization like this that has been the brainchild of one person, in all honesty, I am, I think, less charismatic and less visionary than John. I think I'm probably way more organized than he was. And I'm not sure that the people who were associated with the institution were always... They're saying, well, where's the thrill that John gave us? And I was not in the business of giving thrills.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1809.0,1880.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So I think that's part of the lesson about the way that institutions change. Any other stories that I would say, I would just think that we had people who would come to us who would have fantastic ideas, and there were people who came to us about investments in Jordan and they said, we have the Israelis backing us now. We were seen as kind of a clearing house for creative either geniuses or lunatics. So many people would come and knock on our door and come up with their plan for world peace. If we just put this hut at the top of the glacier between Pakistan and India, we can then beam out messages to everyone that Kashmir should be peaceful. So we had a lot of things that...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1880.0,1940.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"We had a lot of people coming to us because John, to his credit, had gotten the reputation of being someone who could talk to all sides. People came to us with all kinds of crackpot ideas. And I have to say in retrospect, that was one of the most fun parts of the job was listening to these groups and some of whom were very sincere, some of whom were very interesting. But that was, again, part of what we did was being a magnet for ideas of that sort that were wacky, many of them.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1940.0,1970.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nYeah. Okay. So give us a quick sense of where you are now and what you're doing and then to wrap up, I would love to know if you have any advice. This oral history archive, we're seeing it as a resource for students at College of Charleston. So if you have any advice to give to students of international relations…?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1970.0,1999.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nSo my leaving EastWest happened to coincide with COVID, so it's very hard to draw kind of distinct measures. I had been divorced for many years. I came to New York alone and I had a relationship with a woman who lived in the Czech Republic. And so we had had a wonderful time commuting back and forth across the ocean. And when COVID came and I was no longer kind of going to an office at nine o’clock in the morning to do my work as president of EastWest, I realized I can either do this here or I can do it somewhere else. Long and short, I moved to take my consulting and my work to Prague, got married again.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=1999.0,2046.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so I live in Prague. I am on the board of a number of companies as well as institutions. Just as an example, the only liberal arts university in Pakistan is located in Karachi, the Habib University. I'm at the board of that organization. And so these kinds of things, both educational and business, take me around the world. And I consult for companies and other groups. Even here in the Czech Republic, I consult for some people who are talking about the future of nuclear energy in Central and Eastern Europe, in the wake of the Russian attack on Ukraine, things like that. So I'm many things, but I don't have any one thing that I do. So that's where I've been since I left EastWest.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=2046.0,2097.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"EMILY WHALEN\n\nWonderful.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=2097.0,2098.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CAMERON MUNTER\n\nNow when you ask about the question of what is the advice I have for people, one lesson that I would always emphasize is there's a famous quote from the French president, Georges Clemenceau, at the First World War it says, \"War is too important to be left to the generals\". And I would add to this that diplomacy is way too important to be left to the diplomats. And I think I'm allowed to say that as a former ambassador. And what I mean by that is that diplomacy has become something much broader than messages between governments. It's not only enormously complicated in the multilateral sphere, but in the nonofficial sphere, there is enormous diplomacy that takes place, whether it's a university engaging in another university, if it's a civic group, talking to another civic group of women's group, gay groups, things like this, whether it's nonprofit like the EastWest Institute or other institutes like Bill Gates trying to eliminate polio or whether it's a business, you can be in business or in journalism.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=2098.0,2163.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"That is a career in diplomacy need not be as a nominal diplomat. You can be a diplomat in many ways, and especially if you're the kind of person who really cares about advocacy. If you really care about an issue, you can be much more forceful in your advocacy if you worked for the International Rescue Committee or for Human Rights Watch than you can as American diplomat where you've got to watch what you say because you represent a government. Similarly, a journalist can do many of the things that a diplomat can do, and you're part of that world. So do not limit your understanding of diplomacy to the actions that governments take with other governments. Diplomacy is a much bigger thing than that. And I think one of the things we owe John Mroz a debt of gratitude is that what his work showed is how important that could be, not only at the end of the Cold War, but for the next few decades that outside of traditional diplomacy, you can do a lot of diplomatic work.\n\nEMILY WHALEN","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=2163.0,2232.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063/transcript/41550/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Great. Well, that's a wonderful spot to end. I'm just going to stop our recording. Thank you so much, Cameron. I appreciate it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1894/collection_resources/85862/file/174063#t=2232.0,2238.528"}]}]}]}