Mr. Speaker, all too seldom we are blessed with a person of extraordinary talent, vision and blinding commitment to social justice who devotes his entire life--selflessly and completely--to the public interest, and to spreading the values of his nation all across the planet Penn Kemble, who died October 15th after a fierce year long struggle with brain cancer, was that rare kind of American.

Penn devoted his life to ideas. He fought with passion for what he believed, and he sometimes fought alone. He was a college socialist who battled against the Stalinists who led the Soviet Union; a hardliner on defense and foreign policy issues who came to become a leader in the fight to negotiate an end to the war in Vietnam. He was a Scoop Jackson Democrat, a Hubert Humphrey Democrat, a Bill Clinton Democrat--always a Democrat working within our Party to make it more committed to social and economic justice and more committed to a strong and realistic national security policy. Some talked change—Penn caused it: a civil rights leader who put his life on the line fighting for racial equality, but confident enough in himself and his values to lead the fight against racial quotas; an internationalist who was not afraid to confront and challenge what he perceived to be dangerous isolationism within his Party. Through the difficult decades of the 1970s and 1980s, some chose to cut and run when they did not have their way. Penn Kemble chose to stay and fight. No one fought harder and with more conviction.

And nothing exemplified his commitment to values, to ideas and to the strength of the American experience more than his work as Deputy Director and Acting Director of the United States Information Agency, where he created and executed the brilliant and unique international CIVITAS program to promote civil society and civic education around the world. Like so many things that Penn developed, he created CIVITAS to break out of the worn mold of traditional West-to-East assistance in democracy building by replacing it with an innovative participatory network to develop civil society and free markets in emerging democracies through civic education and grass roots civic participation. CIVITAS was thinking ``outside the box.'' It was, in the words of one of its Russian participants, ``a unique possibility to see the full context of what we can do to support democracy, in concrete terms, now and in the future.'' CIVITAS is an international dialogue, not a monologue by the U.S.

Penn's vision can best be summarized in his own words. In Prague, in 1995, Penn Kemble said that ``today there is an emerging recognition that what we usually think of as the civic realm and the economic realm are interlinked, and that when one is strong the other is generally strong, and that when one is weak or broken the other is in danger, too ..... One thing we surely have neglected is education. Education is the principal means for transmitting and strengthening the values and understandings--the subjective element, the culture--on which the institutions of all societies rest. Perhaps democratic society more than any other depends on the quality of its education.''

At USIA Penn Kemble saw that our embassies and public diplomacy posts abroad would work with local NGOs to foster civic education as a transformative element to grow democracy from the grass roots. He understood that a truly international movement for civic education could take an issue and give it life, a place on the international agenda of the community of democratic nations--whether it was human rights, sensible environment polices, or equal protection, treatment and opportunity for women in modern society. He internationalized national issues. He was nobly committed to the globalization of social democracy.

Participants in the most recent gathering of the CIVITAS consortium in Amman, Jordan in June 2005, were struck with the realization that the group that Penn Kemble first convened in Prague 10 years before was still at it, plugging away in the trenches to build support for teaching democracy in schools and building a culture of democracy from the bottom up.

Robert F. Kennedy once said that ``the future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society.''

That future--the future of the universal dream of social justice that should be the dream of all people everywhere—belongs to Penn Kemble. The very definition of CIVITAS is Penn's legacy: ``the concepts and values of citizenship that impart shared responsibility, common purpose and a sense of community among citizens.'' He will be missed, but the power of his ideas makes him immortal. Time, justice and the forces of history are on Penn's side.