The Foreign Service Journal, June 2009

J U N E 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 9 Tweaking U.S. Democracy Promotion Policy “Support, do not promote, democ- racy” is the watchword of the final re- port of the Center for Strategic & International Studies’ Democracy in U.S. Security Strategy Project, re- leased on March 11 ( www.csis.org/ media/csis/pubs/090310_lennnon_ democracy_web.pdf ). According to project director Alex- ander T.J. Lennon, democracy promo- tion efforts lost credibility as a result of “the gap between U.S. rhetoric and public action in places like Egypt, Pak- istan and Saudi Arabia, and not launch- ing a democracy crusade in Iraq.” Moreover, he adds, “promoting demo- cracy has become synonymous with imposing it.” In a related development, also on March 11, a bipartisan group of promi- nent scholars and experts issued an open letter to President Barack Obama urging him to make democracy in the Middle East a top priority ( www.csi donline.org ) . “Because of its associa- tion with the Bush administration, there is a temptation to move away from any discussion of democracy pro- motion in theMiddle East. That would be a mistake,” says Shadi Hamid, di- rector of research at the Project on Middle East Democracy ( http://pom ed.org/ ) . — Susan Brady Maitra, Senior Editor A Slice of FS History Wesleyan University’s Academic Media Studio launched an educational Web site inMarch on the life and work of Henry Merritt Wriston (1889-1978), the distinguished professor, college president and foreign policy expert who was instrumental in shaping the modern Foreign Service ( www.henry merrittwriston.org ) . The Wriston family funded cre- ation of the site, which is designed to provide information about the life and work of the Wesleyan Class of 1911 graduate and to be a research portal for scholars. Henry Merritt Wriston advanced the ideals of liberal education and in- ternationalism throughout his life as a dynamic speaker, prolific author and professor; the president of Lawrence College (1925-1937) and Brown Uni- versity (1937-1955); and a foreign pol- icy expert. His doctoral dissertation, Executive Agents in American Foreign Relations (Harvard University, 1922), has become a standard text in the U.S. Department of State. Among several tours of duty in Washington, D.C., Wriston served as chairman of the Secretary of State’s Committee on Personnel (1954) and as a member of the U.S. Department of State’s Advisory Committee on the Foreign Service (1956-1958). There he earned a reputation as the architect of the reorganization of the State De- partment’s Foreign Service. He also served as president of the American Assembly (1957-1963) and president of the Council on Foreign Relations (1951-1964). — Susan Brady Maitra, Senior Editor Google Helps Dig for Government Data On April 28, Google launched a new search tool to help users find and compare public data more easily. “Google Public Data” is meant to make information from federal, state and local governments accessible to citi- C YBERNOTES T he president [George W. Bush] instructed us that noth- ing we would do would be out- side of our obligations, legal obligations, under the Convention Against Torture. And so, by defi- nition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture. —Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State, speaking at Stanford University on April 27, www.allgov.com/ ViewNews