{"id":3998,"date":"2026-06-04T22:38:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T02:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3998"},"modified":"2026-06-04T22:38:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T02:38:51","slug":"what-if-jfk-had-not-been-assassinated-people-talk-about-what-would-have-been-the-impact-in-vietnam-what-interests-me-is-what-would-have-been-the-impact-on-the-american-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2026\/06\/what-if-jfk-had-not-been-assassinated-people-talk-about-what-would-have-been-the-impact-in-vietnam-what-interests-me-is-what-would-have-been-the-impact-on-the-american-arts.html","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWhat if JFK had not been assassinated? People talk about: What would have been the impact in Vietnam? What interests me is: What would have been the impact on the American arts?”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The USC Center on Public Diplomacy has published an interview with me pondering the implications of my study of the cultural Cold War, \u201cThe Propaganda of <\/a>Freedom<\/strong>.\u201d You can read the full interview here<\/a><\/strong>. Excerpts follow:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book began one day when I attended an event at the National Archives about the Kennedy White House and Arts Policy. For the first time, I became acquainted with what Kennedy had to say about the arts. And what he said was so counter-empirical, I was just staggered. He said that only in free societies can free artists create great art. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case of Kennedy, we’re dealing with somebody who’s absolutely not conversant with the arts. He’s a reader, and he’s a thinker, and he’s an intellectual, but the arts, and especially music, are a closed book for him. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The impact on American diplomacy was dramatic, and I would say very unfortunate. I mainly look at the Congress for Cultural Freedom\u2014a propaganda instrument that’s covertly funded by the CIA. The Secretary General was Nicholas Nabokov, who is a central figure in my book. Nabokov is a refugee, an exile from Russia. He’s a minor composer. And he’s obviously, I would say, suffering. I try to treat him with respect, but he’s a man who was traumatized by exile. And his trauma takes the form of demonizing the Soviet Union for ruining the arts in his Russian homeland. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What changed the ballgame was Leonard Bernstein’s trip to Russia with the New York Philharmonic in 1959<\/a>. Bernstein\u2014whose parents were both Jewish immigrants who emigrated to the U.S. from Russia\u2014delivered a message that we’re all in it together; we’re all the same, that the arts established a brotherhood of nations. He even delivered a lecture, which was televised internationally, claiming that Russians and Americans were fundamentally similar as manifest in their music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, the policy of demonizing the Soviet Union with regard to the arts was unfortunate because propaganda needs to be plausible, and this claim was implausible. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is that blind spot still in existence today\u2014that Russia is a wasteland for Culture\u2014or has it been properly updated?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was very much a product of the Cold War\u2014which undermined sound intellectual judgment. . . . I think this period has passed. We’re now living in a period where there’s no soft diplomacy, but it will pass, too. I was in South Africa with an orchestra of the University of Michigan<\/a><\/strong>\u2014an excellent orchestra. And the repertoire included music by Black composers, including the most important symphony by a Black American, the Negro Folk Symphony <\/em>by William Levi Dawson<\/a>, as well as excerpts from Porgy and Bess<\/em>, etc. This tour had no support, nor did it seek any support from the U.S. government. And yet, South Africa is a country that’s geopolitically crucial right now. And there’s no question in my mind, based on that experience, that once the Trump administration passes, and there’s a potential for resuming this kind of cultural diplomacy, sending an American orchestra to South Africa with an appropriate repertoire could have enormous benefits for American foreign policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thinking about public diplomacy professionals, how can they avoid reducing culture to these simplistic ideological narratives while still advancing national interests?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the ideological narrative is dead. No one today is going to say anything as silly as \u201conly free artists can create good art.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think that the issue facing cultural diplomacy the most today is that the culture, the arts, are being so rapidly eroded in the United States. We don’t have a Leonard Bernstein. We could certainly send an orchestra to South Africa, but we don’t have a cultural ambassador of Bernstein’s caliber. . . . Bernstein was a completely free agent. Nobody told him what to do, and he didn’t need to be told. He was a natural cultural ambassador. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s one more thing I need to say about Bernstein, which is that his relationship to Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy was beyond anything we can imagine. It’s not just that they knew one another. It’s not just that they both went to Harvard. It’s not that they knew one another before Kennedy became president. It’s not just that the Bernsteins were guests at the Kennedy White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People talk about: \u201cWhat if Kennedy had not been assassinated?\u201d What would have been the impact in Vietnam? What interests me is: what would have been the impact on the American arts?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can assure you that JFK and Bernstein would have become comrades in arms. Things would have happened that are completely unthinkable today. The day that Kennedy was assassinated, the New York Times<\/em> ran a story in the morning edition that he was about to appoint Richard Goodwin as his advisor on the arts. Goodwin, as you know, was part of the inner circle of the new frontier. This would have elevated arts policy to a White House priority. And what results would have arisen as a consequence of that? Well, one thing that impresses me is that after Kennedy died, years later, Bernstein was invited to testify at a congressional hearing about forming a council on the arts of some kind, and Bernstein had no interest in that whatsoever. And it had been done many times. So he dedicated his testimony to a priority that was never asked about, which is teaching music to young children in the public schools. And what he said was, we should make it a priority that all young Americans are musically literate\u2014something that actually happened in communist Hungary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What surprised you in researching and writing this book?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

. . . The story of Bernstein in Israel is pertinent. I’ve just written a [forthcoming] book about Bernstein and cultural leadership. And it’s heartbreaking to read about his concert in 1967 on Mount Scopus after the Six Days’ War in 1967, and unification of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teddy Kollek was the mayor of Jerusalem, and he was a visionary. Bernstein and Kollek were friends. So, somehow it was arranged, presumably by Kollek, that Bernstein would conduct\u00a0Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony, sung in Hebrew on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem to celebrate the reunification of the city. And Bernstein went to Jerusalem and was intent on visiting the religious sites of Christians, Jews, and Muslims. He and Kollek actually believed that this would be a landmark event in creating future harmony between Palestinians and Israelis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So that’s a glimpse of cultural diplomacy that, as I say, is heartbreaking today. At the end of his life, Bernstein considered moving to Israel, because he was so estranged from the United States. Estranged because of the Kennedy assassination, because of Watergate, because of Vietnam. Because of the erosion of the American arts. And in his diary, he talks about moving to Israel, because he says he feels at least as Hebraic as he does American. Which is amazing, given that this is a man who began his career as such an excited champion of the United States, the American experience, American music, Broadway. So, that’s how embittered he was. And in the same breath, he worried that Israel is sectarian. So, he’s a prophetic figure. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He came to understand the power of music, the power of the Israel Philharmonic touring the country with more dates than it could manage. The hunger for music in Israel at that moment was so great, and the power of music was so great. So, Bernstein experienced all of that before he ever went to the Soviet Union. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last question: I’m curious your reaction to President Trump renaming the Kennedy Center and musicians cancelling their shows there.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did a recent NPR show<\/a> about that, and what I said is that if Bernstein had been around and the Kennedy Center was renamed, he would have been apoplectic. If Bernstein had been asked, as the National Symphony was asked, to perform the Star Spangled Banner at the beginning of every concert, he would have said, \u201cfuck you\u201d\u2014exactly what he said to the Russians [when asked not to perform Charles Ives\u2019s The Unanswered Question<\/em>]. If Bernstein were around when the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities were decimated by DOGE<\/a>, and two imbeciles in their 20s who canceled 1,400 NEH grants\u2014one of which was my own Music Unwound grant<\/a>\u2014he would have been screaming, and he would have exercised a kind of leadership that we no longer see in the American arts community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The USC Center on Public Diplomacy has published an interview with me pondering the implications of my study of the cultural Cold War, \u201cThe Propaganda of Freedom.\u201d You can read the full interview here. Excerpts follow: The book began one day when I attended an event at the National Archives about the Kennedy White House […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3998","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-12u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3998"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4007,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998\/revisions\/4007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}