Documentaries & Podcasts using ADST audio

NPR: 

–Nixon at War, written and produced by Kurt Andersen of Studio 360, is the third installment of an NEH-funded audio documentary series, distributed by PRX. It features several audio excerpts from ADST’s archives. 

–Here and Now, Afghanistan Papers–Craig Whitlock. NPR’s Scott Tong interviewed Craig Whitlock, author of The Afghanistan Papers, which cites ADST oral histories. The interview also included audio from our oral history archives.

–Here and Now, 2/7/22, The Great Wager podcast series–Nixon in China: For the 50th Anniversary of Nixon’s historic trip to China, Jane Perlez and Scott Tong co-host this five-episode podcast series. ADST provided several audio excerpts. 

C-SPAN:

–Former Iran Hostage John Limbert Oral History Interview: American History TV looked back 40 years to November 1979, when Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy and took 66 Americans hostage. This interview with a former U.S. Foreign Service officer talks about his time as a hostage in Iran.

Independent Filmmakers: 

– Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat: ADST provided audio files for director Johan Grimonprez’s documentary on international tensions in 1960 as the United Nations Security Council, a coup in the Congo, the State Department’s Jazz Ambassadors program, and the emerging U.S. civil rights movement collided.  The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024.

AFSA

– On June 18, at this year’s awards ceremony, AFSA conferred its Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy Award on Charles Stuart Kennedy, in recognition of his distinguished Foreign Service career and lifetime of public service: Charles Stuart Kennedy, 2014 winner of AFSA’s Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy Award, talks about his Foreign Service career and pioneering work creating American diplomacy’s oral history program.

– Excerpts from the oral histories of six diplomats give a flavor of the challenges, as well as the lighter moments, of a Foreign Service career: Here we present excerpts (with light editing for clarity) from the oral histories of six Foreign Service officers recorded by the Foreign Affairs Oral History program of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. The selections, one from each decade between 1940 and 2000, give a window into the challenges, as well as the lighter moments, of a diplomatic career.

– Working a Presidential Transition First-Person Accounts: Stories from past presidential transitions, as told by Foreign Service officers who worked through them.

– A Century of Service Firsthand Accounts from U.S. Diplomats: Tom Selinger is a career Foreign Service officer on detail as executive director of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. He and his tandem spouse have served in five countries across three continents and counting.

– A Century of Service: Firsthand Accounts from U.S. Diplomats: Drawing from ADST’s collection of more than 2,600 oral histories, these accounts from across a century of service illustrate the breadth of the work individual American diplomats do at home and abroad and the challenges they routinely overcome. Evacuating citizens, controlling immigration, negotiating alliances, promoting trade, protecting farms, preserving jobs, defending health, responding to crises, fostering peace, reuniting families, and sometimes simply living up to the ideal America represents to the rest of the world—the list of their duties is long, their dedication exemplary.

– Working a Presidential Transition: First-Person Accounts: The oral history collection managed by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) contains numerous personal accounts of successful transitions told by diplomats who used the transition of power from one administration to another as an opportunity to recommend new initiatives and policy changes that would increase efficiency and fix problems.

American Diplomacy

– The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection: A National Treasure: Since its founding in 1986 as a nongovernmental, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization by retired foreign service officers, the late Charles Stuart Kennedy, the late Victor Wolf Jr., and the late Ambassador Richard B. Parker, ADST has built the world’s largest diplomatic oral history collection. 

– Diplomacy and the Mysteries of the How: The ‘Craft’ in Statecraft: Practical leadership has two dimensions. The first dimension is one we know well: choosing what to do. The second dimension is less well known. How to do it? If leaders provide guidance about what is to be done, and how to do it, the rest is management and execution.

– Recognizing a Century of Service and Sacrifice by America’s Diplomats: One hundred years ago this month, US Representative John Jacob Rogers of Massachusetts secured congressional passage of his “Act for the reorganization and improvement of the Foreign Service of the United States, and for other purposes,” now known as the Rogers Act, and President Calvin Coolidge signed it into law.