All the ingredients of a possible international crisis are there: —Russia now has an estimated 100,000 troops on the border of its neighbor, Ukraine, an independent neighbor of Russia today that was previously part of the Cold War Soviet Union. —According to Washington Post correspondent Missy Ryan, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was to…
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Try to imagine for a moment that you lapsed into a coma in 2019 and were just awakening in 2021 as scores of new terms centered on COVID-19 had infected our vocabulary in just two years. Here’s my list of such terms for such a hypothetical patient: Omicron — a new, possibly more infectious variant…
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New York Times correspondent Valerie Hopkins reports from her relatively new post in Moscow that Vladimir Putin now is seeking to blur memories of the old Soviet Union’s Cold War gulag. Ms. Hopkins, daughter of a retired VOA newsroom editor, Zora Hopkins, sees current developments in Russia as part of Mr. Putin’s two-decades-long effort to…
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David Von Drehle’s column in the Washington Post’s Thanksgiving Day edition sums it all up: “Gratitude is a muscle. It strengthens us with use.” “Ultimately,” the widely-followed columnist concludes, “gratitude is somehow linked to hope and hope is the pre-requisite of action.” “One must be grateful for the Earth before one can save it. One…
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The Council on Foreign Relations, a respected observer, summarizes the summit findings in an authoritative essay entitled: “What the Summit Did and Did Not Accomplish”. Its summary: Would you consider COP26 a success? The quick response, according to the CFR, was blunt: “Yes, but barely.” The recently-concluded summit, it said, “delivered on its primary goal…
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The value of presentation skill sets in public diplomacy is more important than ever. By Loren Hurst Today’s communications environment has vastly increased the importance of presentation skill sets at all levels. Public diplomacy practitioners compete with infinite content choices, where anyone can get online and produce a blog, podcast, or even a feature film.…
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The New York Times reports Nov. 17 that the Biden administration plans to invest billions of dollars to expand United States production of coronavirus vaccines to deal with the deadly plague at home and abroad. “That goal,” according to Times correspondent Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “is a proposed first step in a new plan”, enabling the…
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In the November 1 First Monday Forum, representatives of Global Ties U.S. gave a fascinating talk about building constituencies for public diplomacy in their communities with business representatives, politicians, and with those who meet with our visitors. And it got me thinking of the role we can play in our own communities. We can all…
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According to a report released today, the U.S. remains the premier destination for international students, but as expected, overall student numbers fell during the pandemic. The Institute of International Education’s (IIE) Open Doors, released November 15, reports a total of 914,095 international students studied at American universities in the 2020/21 academic year. That number represents…
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In an article in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright describes her concerns about United States foreign policy in the 2020s. “Historically,” she says, “our republic’s claim on the global imagination has been inseparable from its identity — however imperfectly embodied — as a champion of human freedom. That…
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