A Wider World View
5/12/2003By Maureen M. Smith
You might say J. Brian Atwood stumbled on his first stepping-stone to international diplomacy at age 16. It was in 1959 in Europe, with post–World War II reconstruction still fresh, psychological wounds still tender. As an exchange student living with a butcher’s family in Luxembourg, Atwood habitually pointed out Coca-Cola signs and everything else American until the butcher’s son couldn’t take it anymore.
“‘You Americans and Russians are all the same. You just want to dominate,’” Atwood recalls the boy’s words. “I was shocked, I went to my room, I cried, I tried to explain to him that we respect human liberties.
“We really need to speak carefully and softly with people,” Atwood says today. “A big person doesn’t need to speak loudly, and a big nation doesn’t either.”
Lessons from that early confrontation led Atwood on a political career path crossing many borders and meeting minds of prominent world leaders. Former colleagues credit him with nurturing budding democracies worldwide when he presided over the nonprofit National Democratic Institute (NDI) in the late 1980s, and with saving the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from elimination while its director in the 1990s.
Those experiences helped Atwood land the job as dean of the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. He will lead the school in the same spirit of international peace fought for by its namesake, late vice president and legislator Hubert H. Humphrey. Though not the first internationally seasoned dean, Atwood arrives when the institute needs a more global approach than ever before to prepare students for public leadership in fields as varied as urban planning and foreign policy.
“This place has become more and more international, and now having a dean . . . with a distinguished international career, it’s bound to be even more true,” says John Brandl, the institute’s director in the late 1960s and dean from 1997 to 2002. “It’s especially important at this time in the country’s history.”
Although this is not his first foray into academics, Atwood was sought more for his experience and ability to elevate the institute’s international image than for his scholarly background. (He’s been an adjunct lecturer at Harvard University since 1991 and was dean at the Foreign Service Institute in 1981. He received an honorary doctorate from American University in 1994.)
The Humphrey Institute, which enrolled 275 master’s degree students this year, ranks in the top 18 of more than 100 public affairs graduate programs in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report. To hone the institute’s reputation, Atwood has proposed strengthening the curriculum, particularly in politics, and sharpening focus on more than a dozen research and outreach programs that have grown in spurts over the years. That may mean combining or cutting. The missions and finances of each are under review.
“If you asked a hundred different people what the Humphrey Institute was, they’d come up with a hundred different answers,” Atwood says. “We haven’t integrated things well enough.”
Although some centers may be streamlined, Atwood has proposed his own brainchild. A new Center for the Study of Politics—modeled on a similar program at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government—could offer classes in comparative politics, electoral systems, and politics of budget. It would also house existing policy fellows and speaker programs. “It will hopefully inspire students to get into politics,” Atwood says. Faculty have also proposed a center on nonprofit management and philanthropy. If created, both new centers could become umbrellas for other existing programs.
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Since he started in October 2002, Atwood has brought visibility to the institute by speaking on radio and television about the need for stronger U.S. diplomacy. In a commentary on Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), he opposed war in Iraq: “Democracy cannot be exported and only rarely has it been imposed at the end of a gun.” His comments about prospects for post-war reconstruction have aired on National Public Radio and appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
“Wanna hear me on the radio?” Atwood asks a colleague just before his first-ever radio commentary aired on MPR in March. A team of coworkers huddles to hear Atwood defending European reluctance to support a U.S attack on Iraq. As he listens, his eyes flicker with thought. The dark suit typical of Capitol Hill attire hides broad shoulders that helped win him a football scholarship to Boston University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history and government. His pepper gray hair hints at wisdom.
One colleague jokingly dubs Atwood the next Tom Brokaw.
“Yeah, right,” Atwood guffaws, blushing as the corners of his lips turn into a grin.
During a brownbag lunch with students, Atwood shares his thoughts about the war in Iraq. He meets regularly with students and hosts student panel discussions about hot world topics such as the role of the United Nations, democracy in Africa, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and U.S.-European relations. He taught a Saturday course on foreign assistance programs. “That’s the most pleasure I get out of this job; I love the students,” Atwood says.
At the lunch, students’ faces look fresh and hopeful as they ask Atwood about the politics of oil and war. Between his thoughtful answers and subtle jokes, he only swallows a spoonful or two of yogurt. After their ceasefire of questions, he asks their opinion of grades, teaching methods, and curriculum changes. He says he wants the Humphrey Institute to be a training ground for solid leaders, not just midlevel bureaucrats.
Atwood’s political career began after college and several years in the foreign service. He first worked for former U.S. Senator Tom Eagleton (D-Missouri), who fought to end the war in Vietnam, then for former U.S. Senator Ed Muskie (D-Maine), a running mate in Humphrey’s unsuccessful 1968 campaign for president.
Despite his outwardly liberal Democratic stance, Atwood insists that he’s a nonpartisan dean of an academic institution where rousing debate should flourish between every shade of the political spectrum. “I believe Humphrey wanted that.”
For instance, the Policy Forum sponsors speeches, debates, and conferences about current issues and aims for political balance among speakers and panelists. It’s led by co-directors Vin Weber, a Republican former U.S. Representative, and Tim Penny (M.P.A. ’75), Minnesota’s recent Independent gubernatorial candidate.
But Mitch Pearlstein (M.A. ’79, Ph.D. ’80), president of the Center of the American Experiment, a conservative Minneapolis think tank, says that the school, “like most public policy programs at major research universities, leans left.”
Weber says most students attracted to government careers tend toward the left or center. But, he says, “that doesn’t mean that the program itself is encouraging a left-wing or partisan democratic approach to problem-solving.”
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Despite his characteristic modesty, Atwood is not bashful when discussing his accomplishments. In his office, photographs of him with world leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Democrats such as Hillary Clinton stand like trophies on mostly empty shelves. He points out late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who won Nobel prizes for Middle East peace negotiations before they were assassinated. “Those two people I admire a great deal because they both lost their lives for the cause of peace,” says the softspoken Atwood.
His international contacts may serve well in his proposed “signature studies” on major policies each year to reinforce the school’s interdisciplinary approach and attract top students. International and local experts would collaborate on research and devise recommendations in reports and conferences. “It will, I think, give the institute the reputation it deserves as a policy think tank as well as a school,” Atwood says. A study is proposed on globalization; the first will examine climate change.
“That’s an issue that’s not bound by borders,” says Chuck Denny, a dean’s advisory council member and retired ADC Telecommunications CEO. “He has opened the window on the world for us.”
With the strained University budget and projected decreases in the institute’s current $14 million budget, Atwood’s experience revamping USAID, the federal foreign aid agency, should prove useful, says Geri Joseph (B.A. ’46), the advisory council chair and former senior fellow.
The multi-billion-dollar budget at USAID was cut a total of 35 percent during his years there, and Atwood cites his biggest achievement as defending it from congressional proposals to abolish it altogether. “I just sort of laid down in front of the train,” he says.
“Brian took it over, shook it up, strengthened relations on the Hill to get it working in a way that had respect,” says former vice president Walter Mondale (B.A. ’51, J.D. ’56), who was ambassador to Japan at the time and NDI board chairman while Atwood was its president. Atwood says Mondale and Joseph both submitted his name as a candidate for dean.
Atwood still advocates increasing foreign aid over its current level: one-half of 1 percent of the federal budget. In 10 years, the world population will climb from 6 billion to 7 billion, and four of five people will live in the developing world, he says during a speech sponsored by the Minnesota International Center.
“Will these additional people be consumers and voters in democratic, market-based economies . . . [or] the foot soldiers for terrorism?” Atwood asks, echoing a question he posed before September 11, 2001, in a Washington Post editorial. “We Americans are more prosperous than ever before, but . . . in a world where 10 percent of the people controls 90 percent of the wealth, we cannot feel safe. It’s a small world. So we should invest in it.”
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So far Atwood seems to have inspired confidence among colleagues and students.
“The thing I like most about him is the transparency. He tells the truth,” says Professor Samuel Myers, who chairs the Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice. Before meeting the new dean, Myers, along with the institute’s Public Affairs Student Association, voiced skepticism when the search committee chose four white, male finalists. But after talking with him, Myers says, “Any bit of doubt or concern I had washed away.”
Students still want Atwood to improve diversity among faculty and students and keep financial aid to recruit them as the shrinking budget leads to tuition increases. Some 12 percent are students of color (compared with about 15 percent international students, many of whom are on fellowships). More than two-dozen faculty and fellows include several African Americans, an Egyptian, and a recently recruited Chinese professor.
Alyssa Burhans, an American Indian and first-year master’s of public policy candidate, says the public sector can address issues such as racism and poverty by employing people who’ve experienced those problems. She kept asking Atwood to increase diversity, until his suggestion that she help prompted her to run for and win office as the student association president. “It’s very similar to what our elders say in our communities: We expect the young people to be the leaders,” Burhans says.
Atwood restored some cuts in financial aid and hopes to increase it. “A public affairs school in particular can’t just give lip service to diversity. It really has to get out there and bring them in.” Changes will take time and consultation, Atwood says. “If we presume to teach democratic values, we must give a voice to every member of our community,” he said in a December speech.
In his office, Atwood reminisces about teaching those values as NDI president. He rattles off names of political parties, elections, and plebiscites supported in the Philippines, Chile, Taiwan, Panama, and elsewhere. “We were on the cutting edge,” as democracy swept across several continents, he says. “That was a fun job.” Under Atwood’s leadership, NDI grew dramatically and gained an international reputation for successfully promoting democracy, says Ken Wollack, current NDI president.
During that time, Atwood met his match, Susan, who also promoted democracy worldwide, as director of the London-based Liberal International. Together they observed multiparty elections in Hungary, Bulgaria, and Zambia. Brought together by a love of international work, they married in 1991 and spent their first anniversary on different continents.
Though they both speak several languages, Brian’s attempts at proper British English did not initially impress his new bride’s parents. During the wedding reception outside their English home, Atwood blundered by calling their garden a “backyard,” where the British throw their trash. “There was this dead silence,” laughs Susan Atwood, now a University international alumni coordinator and global leadership instructor. “No one knew if he deliberately made a mistake or he didn’t know. My mother sort of glared at him.”
The Atwoods live in Edina with their 6-year-old daughter, who lately has been asking her parents tough questions about war, Atwood says somberly.
Then again, earlier wars and casualties formed a path of stepping-stones of sorts for his future. Growing up in Wareham, Massachussets, he helped his father deliver tombstones to cemeteries. In the Vietnam War, he lost a cousin who was like a brother. After the Second World War, his four months in Luxembourg with the American Field Service, an exchange program started by World War I volunteer ambulance drivers, got him where he is today, he says.
“I worked out a way of dealing with people as a result of that experience. That really did open my eyes to the world.”
Maureen M. Smith (M.A. ’97) is a Minneapolis freelance writer and former U.S. Peace Corps volunteer.
 | | | |  | | A Humphrey Institute Timeline | Hubert H. Humphrey (B.A. ’39) graduated from the University of Minnesota three decades before the School of Public Affairs was created, but he spent his career embodying the type of service and leadership that would inspire public affairs training at the University.
As a U.S. senator from 1949 to 1964 and 1971 to 1978, Humphrey pushed for civil rights, medical care for the aged, and nuclear weapons control. He proposed a federal Food for Peace program to provide U.S. farm goods to poor countries, and he was the first to propose the U.S. Peace Corps, to assist developing countries. From 1965 to 1969, he was U.S. vice president to Lyndon B. Johnson.
After Harvard and the University of Texas named public affairs schools after John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, respectively, Minnesota’s school was named after Humphrey. He died months later. “He was pleased to think of the memorial to him as being a school rather than a building or a monument,” says John Brandl, former dean and current faculty member at the institute.
Former deans Harlan Cleveland and G. Edward Schuh both had extensive international experience and added many programs and centers to the institute. “If you look at almost any policy area, there are strong international dimensions,” says Schuh, now a faculty member.
• 1931: The U held a government service training conference
• 1936: Public Administration Training Center formed
• 1943: Center became part of political science department
• 1957–61: As head of U.S. Foreign Operations Administration, Harold Stassen (B.A. ’27, J.D. ’29) initiated Korean training program at the center to help rebuild government after Korean War
• 1968: School of Public Affairs created. Director John Brandl revamped school to focus on policy issues, expanded interdisciplinary curriculum and faculty
• 1977: School named for Senator Humphrey
• 1978: Humphrey died at his home in Waverly, Minnesota; Hubert H. Humphrey International Fellowship program initiated to bring mid-career professionals from developing countries, emerging democracies
• 1980: Institute established as University collegiate level unit
• 1980–87: Dean Harlan Cleveland formerly served as assistant secretary of state for international affairs under John F. Kennedy, U.S. Ambassador to NATO under presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon
• 1987–97: Dean G. Edward Schuh formerly served on the president’s Council of Economic Advisors, as World Bank director of agricultural and rural development, and as deputy undersecretary for international affairs and commodity programs for the U.S. Department of Agriculture
• 1997–2002: Dean John Brandl, former Minnesota Democratic legislator
• 2002–present: Dean J. Brian Atwood, served as director of the U.S. Agency for International Development and president of National Democratic Institute
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