What's wrong with the paradigm of winning 'hearts and minds?"

Many of the public diplomacy initiatives targeted at the Middle East focus on "winning the hearts and minds" of the people of the Middle East. To the extent that the objectives and strategies of public diplomacy initiatives are built around the goal of winning the hearts and minds of the people of the Middle East, such initiatives are most likely destined to fail.

This failure is inherent in the emphasis on persuasion built around top-down agendas directed at changing the attitudes and opinions of the targets of the message so that they would be more closely aligned with the goals of the sender of the message. Inherent in the idea of winning the hearts and minds is the notion of wanting to change the receiver of the message so that they would be more closely aligned with the sender's agendas. In the context of US public diplomacy efforts, the goal is to ultimately create positions of support for (a) US policies, (b) US corporations that might operate in the Middle East, and (c) US structures in the Middle East that would serve other US economic interests such as its need for oil.

Ultimately, the framework of wanting to win the hearts and minds of the people of the Middle East closes opportunities for dialogue. To the extent that US public diplomacy efforts engage with the Middle East only with the goals of serving US economic and geo-political interests, these efforts close opportunities for dialogue.

The culture-centered approach suggests an alternative framework by pointing out that communication initiatives in the Middle East need to begin with a commitment to dialogue that is built on opportunities for listening to the voices of the people of the Middle East. It is only by beginning to listen to the people of the Middle East that we can talk about creating possibilities for communication.

Instead of talking about "winning," US public diplomacy efforts need to begin by being interested in truly understanding what the people in the Middle East have to say.

Zionist hate mongering, the race/terror trope, and the Free Speech Union: Part 1

March 15, 2019. It was a day of terror. Unleashed by a white supremacist far-right terrorist. Driven by hate for brown people. Driven by Islamophobic hate. Earlier in the day, I had come across a hate-based hit piece targeting me, alongside other academics, the University of Auckland academic Professor Nicholas Rowe , Professor Richard Jackson at Otago University, Professor Kevin P Clements at Otago University, Dr. Rose Martin from University of Auckland and Dr. Nigel Parsons at Massey University. Titled, "More extremists in New Zealand Universities," the article threw in the labels "terror sympathisers" and "extremist views." Written by one David Cumin and hosted on the website of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, the article sought to create outrage that academics critical of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid are actually employed by universities in New Zealand. Figure 1: The web post written by David Cumin on the site of Israel Institute

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems wit

Disinformation, Zionist propaganda, and free speech: Far right cancel culture

Thursday October 12, 2023. The settler colonial occupation had unleashed its infrastructure of violence over the Palestinian people over a period of five days. Gaza was being indiscriminately bombarded, with mass civilian casualties that Amnesty International noted " must be investigated as war crimes ." At 3:32 p.m., my office phone rang. I was occupied and the call went to the voicemail. "Dutta, you are a murderous, f***ing, racist c***. Go back to where you belong...I will see to your termination in New Zealand." A couple of hours before that, an email had gone out from the Zionist Dane Giraud to the email listserv of the Free Speech Union, performed as a supposed apology for attacking my academic freedom. In the email, Giraud referred to my earlier b log post on the interlinkages between far-right Zionism, attacks on academic freedom, and the free speech union, noting how he had been enraged by the following statement on my blog: "I was therefore not surpri

Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

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