Later this month, Foreign Service families will celebrate Thanksgiving at their homes in foreign countries. Even though it can be quite costly to ship or buy a turkey overseas, there will be one at the center of the table, surrounded by each family’s favorite dishes – some American, some local. If the children are in…
Remarks of Donald M. Bishop Public Diplomacy Council First Monday Forum “The History and Future of Public Diplomacy” November 6, 2018 My colleagues on the panel will, I am confident, touch on the large issues that engage Public Diplomacy in the Foreign Service, serving America’s goals in the world – issues like democracy, exchanges, culture…
In my view, Public Diplomacy has also become the farm team for development, where it is up to Public Diplomacy to organize programs to reform journalism, run scholarship programs, and provide opportunities to the dispossessed. Let’s be candid: Public Diplomacy doesn’t have the resources to make a lasting dent in any of these areas. And…
Nontraditional U.S. Public Diplomacy: Past, Present, and Future, edited by Deborah L. Trent, Ph.D., originally published by the Public Diplomacy Council in 2016, is now available online. Soon after 9/11, the late Representative Henry Hyde, Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, saw something was awry in America’s Public Diplomacy. “Few would assert,” he said,…
Should ambassadors tweet? Perhaps Robert Gates implied the answer should be “no.” The memoir by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, published in 2015, remains required reading for everyone who worked at the embassies, consulates, and Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. The book allows readers to…
More than seven decades ago, fascism was in its death throes. Nearly three decades ago, the Berlin Wall fell, setting in motion the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. In this century, however, those world-shaking events seem to be “history” as our nation faces an array of grave new…
Some important essays and articles on Public Diplomacy in the era of the U.S. Information Agency were published in its in-house magazine, USIA World. Copies of the magazine have never been archived on the internet, so its valuable record of USIA programs and concepts is largely unavailable for reference by scholars and practitioners. In…
Every August 28, Americans mark the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. This is a short Public Diplomacy footnote to the history of the speech, a recollection from early in my career as a Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. Information Agency. The thumbnail description…
For Public Diplomacy officers of a certain generation, every ceremony marking the Battle of Gettysburg and the dedication of the cemetery at the battlefield brings back some yesteryear memories. Back when U.S. Information Service libraries and centers overseas were filled with eager students and professionals, the “Gettysburg Address Speech Contest” was an annual staple of…
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction recently issued a devastating report — Stabilization: Lessons Learned from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan — that evaluates the work of the DOD, State, and USAID in that country, especially during the “civilian surge” of 2009 and 2010. Full disclosure: I was the Public Affairs Officer at the…