Foreigners and Americans Know Too Little About Each Other

To the Editor:

Richard Pells should be congratulated for revealing the mixed results of his Fulbright-sponsored lecture tour of Indonesia (“America: Lost in Translation,” The Chronicle Review, October 14). To his dismay, Pells discovered “that Indonesians know almost nothing about the United States, beyond what they’ve seen in Hollywood’s blockbuster movies.” Such ignorance should be combated, he counsels, “by launching a sustained effort to make America more intelligible to Muslims.”

He longs for an earlier era, when American libraries overseas were well stocked, when U.S. Information Agency offices were well staffed, and when Fulbright lecturers were well paid. Given reforms along these lines, Pells believes that “Indonesia could be an ideal test case for how effectively the United States can inform people in other countries (and diminish their stereotypes) about life in America.”