People to People Contacts Through a Shared Interest in Numismatics

I attended the American Numismatic Association (ANA) Convention in Baltimore, Maryland today. What makes this show different from others is the foreign participation. For example, I spoke with ancient coin dealers from the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland while I was there. I suspect there were also some foreign collectors in attendance, though not as many foreign dealers and collectors as those that come to the New York International Numismatic Convention (NYINC) every January. For more about the ANA and NYINC see: http://www.money.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=ANA_Conventions&Template=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=12462 and http://www.nyinc.info/

The State Department's Bureau of Educational Affairs (ECA) purports to support such people to people contacts, but typically does so through institutional exchanges. See http://exchanges.state.gov/news/2004/040204.htm ("ECA, comprises a team of 350 people who manage over 30,000 professional, academic and cultural exchanges worldwide every year.") Groups like the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute are the main beneficiaries of such federal largess. See http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2008/05/cash-and-caari-cyprus-american.html This work costs the taxpayer money.

You would think that ECA would also support activities like the ANA and NYINC as way to promote such people to people contacts between Americans and foreigners AT NO COST TO THE US TAXPAYER. Yet, import restrictions like those ECA recently imposed on "coins of Cypriot type" threaten to make foreign participation in such coin fairs as a thing of the past.

Hopefully, the ECA's new bosses, James Glassman and Goli Ameri, will avoid the "tunnel vision" of members of the archaeological community that agitate for import restrictions and instead consider all the interests at stake before imposing such a draconian remedy in the future.

Latest On ACCG, IAPN and PNG FOIA Lawsuit

Here is the latest information on the ACCG, IAPN and PNG Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit against the US State Department: http://www.accg.us/issues/news/limited-state-department-foia-releases-raise-more-questions-than-they-answer

As the report indicates, it has been almost a year since the controversial decision to impose import restrictions on Cypriot type. Yet, the little information the State Department has released raises more questions than it has answered.

Hopefully, any reports James Glassman and Goli Ameri receive about this litigation will prompt hard questions about ECA's transparency of process.

James Glassman Confirmed as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy

On June 4th, the Senate confirmed James Glassman to be Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy. Glassman and his subordinate, Goli Ameri, the Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs, have been granted authority under the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act to decide whether and to what extent to impose import restrictions on cultural artifacts.

While time is short, one can only hope that Glassman's background in journalism and Ameri's background in business will prompt each of them to ask some hard questions about how the staff of the Cultural Heritage Center process import restriction requests. As a start, I would suggest that Glassman and Ameri order the Cultural Heritage Center to release all the documents requested in the Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit filed by the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild, the International Association of Professional Numismatists and the Professional Numismatists Guild. Depending on what they show about the bias of staff against anyone not associated with the archaeological community, further action may very well be warranted.

For more about Glassman's and Ameri's background, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_K._Glassman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goli_Ameri