SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:9:00-11:30 │Historical Panel: "Music and Cold-War Diplomacy" Kevin Bartig, "Behind the Iron Curtain Before the Iron Curtain: Western Musicians in the Soviet Union During the Interwar Period"In this presentation, I reconstruct the largely forgotten activities of foreign musicians and critics in Soviet Russia during the interwar period. Through concert tours and residencies, these visitors moved information and ideas across borders, shaped Soviet musical self-identity, and effected a form of cultural exchange that prefigures—and complicates conventional narratives of—later Cold War musical exchange with the Soviet Union. Bess Liu, "'Big Brother is Listening!' Music, Friendship, and the Sino-Soviet Relations during the Korean War (1950-1953)"This project studies the negotiated musicianship as represented by the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association (SSFA) in Dalian, China, during the Korean War (1950-1953). Musical diplomacy between China and the Soviet Union, at this critical historical moment, entails contrasting stories between genuine inter-personal friendship and intricate interstate politics within the Communist world. Grace Pechianu, "Diplomacy in the Ether: Radio Free Europe and Romanian Exiles as Jazz Ambassadors"The defected jazz pianist Eugen Ciceu credited jazz programs from Voice of America, Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Europe for shaping his musicianship in socialist Romania. This talk follows Ciceu's trajectory as a consumer-turned-contributor of American counterpropaganda on his Radio Free Europe interview and performance from 1964 while assessing radio's role in enabling exiles to serve as cultural diplomats. Lynn Hooker, "State Folk Ensembles: Shock Troops of the Cultural Cold War or Cash Cow?"Across the East Bloc and elsewhere, staged folkdance groups were some of the most prominent representatives of the culture of socialist states. As well as being cultural diplomats, they earned important income from Western audiences. Press coverage and oral histories from the Hungarian League of Young Communists' Rajkó Ensemble reveal the complexities of this role. Danielle Lussier-Fosler, "The Market Effects of Propaganda: Government Money and the 'New Music' Boom"When the US government used music as propaganda, the effects of those programs were noticeable at home as well as abroad. Despite claims that the government did not subsidize the arts, government funding for music propaganda established strong incentives for the creation, publication, and recording of contemporary concert music.11:45-12:45 │ "Conversations with Experts: Preserving Cultural Heritage with UNESCO Programs" Julius Heinicke and Iryna Voloshyna2:00-3:00 │ "Conversations with Experts: Building Peace through Business Initiatives" Timothy Fort and John Katsos4:30-5:30 │ "Conversations with Experts: Connecting Culture and Policy with U.S. State Department" Mark Katz and Paul Kruchoski  PARTICIPANT BIOSKevin Bartig is Professor of Musicology at Michigan State University. His research explores musical exchange, diplomacy, and border crossings in interwar Eastern Europe. He is currently writing Soviet Music under Western Eyes, a study of musical exchange between Soviet Russia and the West during the Stalin era.Timothy L. Fort holds the Eveleigh Professorship in Business Ethics at the Kelley School of Business. Fort received the 2022 Distinguished Career Faculty Award from the Academy of Legal Studies in Business. He was nominated for the 2024 and the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. Two of his books have won the Best Book Award from the Academy of Management.Danielle Fosler-Lussier is Professor of Music and University Distinguished Scholar at Ohio State University. Her most recent book, Music on the Move, is freely available online. Her 2015 book Music in America's Cold War Diplomacy is accompanied by an online database of U.S. cultural presentations.Julius Heinicke is Professor and Holder of the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy at the University of Hildesheim, Germany. He is honorary professor at the University of Toronto, Canada and the University of the Arts Belgrade, Serbia. His research areas are: Cultural Policy, Artistic Freedom and International Policies/Cultural Diplomacy.Lynn M. Hooker of Indiana University researches classical, folk, and popular music in Hungary, with particular attention to the roles of Romani performers. Her current project explores the Hungarian League of Young Communists' Rajkó Ensemble as a window into the transformation of Hungary's entertainment music industry.John E. Katsos is Professor of Management at the American University of Sharjah (UAE) and Visiting Professor at Kelley School of Business. He researches how businesses can act to promote social value through crisis and war zones, work for which he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. His new book, CRISIS: A Global Case Primer, based on fieldwork in Iraq, Ukraine, Syria, and Colombia among others, a "must-read" of the Financial Times and was the 2025 summer best seller in Business Ethics on Amazon.Mark Katz is John P. Barker Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the Founding Director of the U.S. State Department cultural diplomacy program, Next Level, and the author of several books, including Build: The Power of Hip Hop Diplomacy in a Divided World.Paul Kruchoski is a Director at Guidehouse, where he helps government agencies modernize. He served as a senior U.S. diplomat and as the chief operating officer for public diplomacy at the State Department. Prior assignments include creating and leading the Public Diplomacy Research and Evaluation Unit. Paul is also an accomplished cellist.Bess Xintong Liu is an Assistant Professor of Musicology at the Jacobs School of Music. A scholar-practitioner specializing in musical diplomacy, she began her career as an intern with the Philadelphia Orchestra's Strategic Partnership and Global Initiatives in 2017. Her direct involvement in translation, interpretation, and negotiation within transnational musical projects has deeply informed her scholarly work on cultural diplomacy.Grace Pechianu is a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research focuses on Cold War-era radio and music programming as a site of ideological confrontation. Grace's work considers networks of Romanian exiles and defected musicians, their role as contributors to Radio Free Europe, and agency in enacting cultural diplomacy in Romania.Iryna Voloshyna is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, and an Adjunct Lecturer at the Byrnes Institute at Indiana University Bloomington. She is a UNESCO-trained member of the global network of facilitators. After serving at the Award Committee for prize for safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, she recently joined the Expert Council for Intangible Cultural Heritage at the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine.