[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 168 (Thursday, November 1, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2298]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


  TRIBUTE TO UNDER SECRETARY FOR PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 
                              KAREN HUGHES

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, November 1, 2007

  Mr. WOLF. Madam Speaker, I rise today to commend the important work 
of Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Karen 
Hughes, in light of the announcement that she is resigning. Under 
Secretary Hughes has led efforts to improve the image of the United 
States overseas by changing the way the United States engages with the 
Muslim world.
  Under Secretary Hughes has worked tirelessly to build a strong 
organization within the State Department that future administrations 
can rely upon. She has dramatically increased the number of Arabic 
language interviews, created three rapid response centers overseas to 
respond to news events, and nearly doubled the public diplomacy budget 
to combat negative perceptions of the United States abroad.
  During her time as head of our government's public diplomacy efforts, 
Under Secretary Hughes has shown a deep commitment to promoting freedom 
and to encouraging confidence in speaking out about the values we hold 
dear. I wish her the best in her future endeavors.
  I am inserting for the Record Under Secretary Hughes's remarks today 
at the announcement of her resignation.

                    Under Secretary Karen P. Hughes

                    Department of State, Treaty Room

       First, I want to thank President Bush and Secretary Rice 
     for giving me the great privilege of representing our country 
     abroad and reaching out to the people of the world in a 
     spirit of respect and friendship.
       It's been a special honor to work for Secretary Rice, who 
     is both a great friend and a great role model. I also want to 
     thank my outstanding team in public diplomacy--all that we 
     have been able to accomplish has been due to their work--and 
     all the people of the State Department--foreign service, 
     civil service, foreign service nationals, and presidential 
     appointees. I've learned so much from them and I've been 
     honored to serve with them in representing America across the 
     world.
       Later this year, in mid-December, I will be returning home 
     to Texas. I feel that I have done what Secretary Rice and 
     President Bush asked me to do by transforming public 
     diplomacy and making it a national security priority, central 
     to everything we do in government--while also engaging the 
     private sector more extensively than ever before.
       I have spent almost nine of the last 12 years of my career 
     in government service and after commuting between Washington 
     and Austin not nearly as often as I would like for the last 
     two-and-a-half years, I'm looking forward to returning to 
     private life and living in the same city with my husband.
       When I look back at the last couple of years, I'm very 
     proud of what our public diplomacy team has accomplished.
       We've aggressively expanded our programs, fought for and 
     won increased funding and put in place many innovations and 
     institutional reforms.
       They include aggressive and significantly expanded media 
     outreach. We've created new regional media hubs, which put 
     language qualified foreign service officers on television in 
     key regional media markets of Dubai, Brussels and London. A 
     new rapid response unit monitors international television and 
     blogs and issues a daily report to inform policy makers about 
     what is driving international news, then provides the U.S. 
     government's position on those issues. We've transformed the 
     Bureau of International Information programs into a high tech 
     hub with web sites in English and six languages, created a 
     digital outreach team that counters misinformation and myths 
     on blogs in Arabic (soon to add Farsi and Urdu)--and stood up 
     a new video production unit. Our ambassadors are now 
     empowered and expected to engage with the media, and every 
     foreign service officer is evaluated on public diplomacy 
     activities.
       We've put in place extensive new outreach to young people, 
     teaching English to thousands of high school students in more 
     than 40 Muslim majority countries. Last summer, we started a 
     new program to reach an even younger audience--8 to 14-
     year-olds, with a summer program teaching English, 
     computer, arts and sports activates and leadership 
     training. English teaching gives young people a skill they 
     desire, a marketable skill, while opening a window to a 
     wider world of knowledge.
       I'll never forget meeting a young man in one of our English 
     programs in Morocco. I asked him what difference it had made 
     in his life, and he said: ``I have a job and none of my 
     friends do.'' He was from the same neighborhood that produced 
     the Casablanca suicide bombers. In addition to a job, he now 
     has a hope, a reason to live rather than kill himself and 
     others in a suicide bombing.
       We've engaged Muslim populations through a new program 
     called citizen dialogue, which sends Muslim Americans 
     overseas to dialogue with Muslim communities--and we've 
     brought more than 600 religious clerics scholars and 
     community leaders from Muslim countries to America to get to 
     know us better.
       We've engaged the private sector more extensively than ever 
     before--leveraging more than $800 million in partnerships 
     ranging from disaster relief to education and health programs 
     to working to make our airports and embassies more welcoming.
       We've significantly expanded outreach to women, with a new 
     breast cancer initiative in the Middle East and Latin America 
     and a number of business women's mentoring initiatives.
       A new partnership with U.S. higher education helped attract 
     a record number of international students to study in America 
     and reversed the trend of decline that began in the years 
     after September 11th. We issued an all time high of 591,000 
     student visas in 2006 and traveled with university presidents 
     across the world to encourage international students to come 
     to America.
       Our flagship programs like Fulbright at record highs, we've 
     restarted exchanges with Iran for the first time since 1979 
     and participation in our education and exchange programs--
     people-to-people diplomacy--has grown from 27,000 in 2004 to 
     nearly 40,000 today.
       I've worked to set a more strategic direction for USG 
     broadcasting and recruit new leadership for the Broadcasting 
     Board of Governors and its entities.
       We launched a new Global Cultural initiative, expanded 
     sports programming, sent musical groups like the fusion funk 
     group Ozomatli abroad with a message of respect for 
     diversity. We started a new public diplomacy envoy program, 
     enlisting well known Americans including Olympic skater 
     Michelle Kwan and baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. to 
     represent America overseas.
       We have implemented a majority of the recommendations from 
     more than 30 studies of U.S. public diplomacy, including the 
     comprehensive Djerejian report, and developed the first 
     inter-agency strategic communications plan for the U.S. 
     government.
       I'm very proud of what we've started, and I will continue 
     to be a champion of public diplomacy. I will advocate for 
     more funding and more programs, because I believe it's 
     vitally important for the future of our increasingly 
     interconnected world--and especially for the future of our 
     children. I want to encourage my fellow Americans to engage 
     with the world, to study abroad, to travel--one of my own 
     goals in the years ahead is to improve my Spanish.
       Secretary Rice, thank you for this opportunity; it's been 
     an honor and privilege to work for you and with you, and I 
     thank my great public diplomacy team.

                          ____________________