President Obama has renewed the appointment of a UCLA Chinese archaeology and art history professor to a White House committee.
Professor Lothar von Falkenhausen was appointed Wednesday for another three years, after previously serving five years on the Cultural Property Advisory Committee. The body is responsible for advising government officials to make agreements to help protect foreign countries’ cultural heritage and prevent the looting of antiquities abroad, von Falkenhausen said.
He is still unsure how he was originally selected to join the committee under the Obama administration. Von Falkenhausen received an unforeseen email from the White House Office of Presidential Personnel in 2012 inviting him to serve on the 11-person Cultural Property Advisory Committee.
The Daily Bruin’s Emily McCormick spoke with von Falkenhausen about his duties as a member of the committee, his contributions as an archaeologist and academic and his ideas about the committee’s direction in the coming years.
Daily Bruin: Given your background as an archaeologist and professor of Chinese archaeology and art history, why do you think you were initially selected to become part of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee?
Lothar von Falkenhausen: China is one of the 17 nations who have financial agreements with the U.S. under the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Convention, and so it’s obviously one of the more important countries with which the United States conducts diplomacy. So it may have been thought that it would be good to have a China specialist there. But there are other China specialists around – I’m certainly not the only one. I’m not sure how they then decided that I might be the right one.
DB: What are some of your duties as part of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, and what types of agreements do you deal with?
LvF: That depends on the country, since every country has its own historical past and priorities. For instance, in the case of China, they really don’t want antiquities to leave the country, so they have drawn up a very extensive list of things that are protected.
And as an archaeologist, I am particularly concerned with the fact that so many archaeological sites are being destroyed by treasure hunters who simply rip the stuff out of the ground without any context and thereby destroy all the cultural information that there might be to really understand it. So in order to stop this, it is essential to make sure that at least in the U.S. there is a legal market for this kind of stuff … Whoever wants to buy a Chinese antique needs to prove the antique has been outside of China since before the U.S. concluded an agreement with China to prevent the illicit trade of this material.
DB: How do you anticipate your position and duties will evolve with the incoming political administration?
LvF: Some of the people who are on the committee now have been on the committee from before Obama became president, so the committee operates sort of independently of who is the president at any given moment. And in any case, we don’t make policy decisions – we only offer advice. We are experts and we know certain things that are relevant to particular aspects of the foreign policy, but then the State Department officials will have to decide what to do with this information.
Normally so far, they have taken our advice very seriously, and that apparently was also the case under Republican administration. So I don’t see any reason why that should change. Cultural relics protection and cultural heritage protection isn’t something that would necessarily be politically all that loaded.
DB: Has it been difficult balancing your involvement with the Cultural Property Advisory Committee with your work as a professor at UCLA?
LvF: Fortunately these meetings in Washington, D.C. are scheduled well in advance. I know usually at the beginning of a quarter when I may have to be in Washington, so I schedule the class in such a way that there is no impact. And there is usually no more than one occurrence per quarter – there are usually three meetings a year.
DB: What has been the most rewarding part of being on the Cultural Property Advisory Committee?
LvF: I learn a lot about the reality of cultural heritage projects all over the world in all these different countries – that’s really fascinating. And since I am normally rather specialized in one country, it’s very interesting to get this broader comparative perspective.
It’s also been very rewarding to interact with the other members of the committee who are all very interesting people, and also to work with the State Department. The committee is run through the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which specializes in cultural heritage protection and has been doing a great deal of good work all around the world in helping this cause.