Thirty years ago, a group of retired and active foreign service officers founded the Public Diplomacy Foundation. Their successors held a round-table November 5 at George Washington University (GWU), a close-up assessment of the state of this fine art of people-to- people dialogues today. The event was co-sponsored by the Public Diplomacy Council, successor to…
Details
If you have voted for a new parliament in Afghanistan, or are a U.S. citizen planning to cast your ballot November 8, pause — and consider the contrasts. These came to mind at a briefing by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which surveys its audiences and shares results. In Afghanistan, half of eligible…
Details
The announcement that the State Department may merge the Bureau of Public Affairs and the calls to mind George Santayana’s warning that “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Let’s master the information needs of the twenty-first century without forgetting the lessons of the twentieth. Efforts to co-mingle foreign and…
Details
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…
Details
The darkest clouds hovering over the slaying of a noted Saudi journalist at the country’s consulate in Istanbul are multiplying daily. However, the immediate question remains: what’s next, and when and where will the murderers be brought to justice? To sum up latest developments: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed the Turkish parliament Tuesday to confirm that…
Details
Fresh from his world order wrecking tour of Europe in July 2018, President Donald J. Trump has clarified what diplomatic culture is by displaying the countercultural variant at every turn. At his prizefight in Helsinki, he delivered the final blow to the essence of diplomacy which former American Ambassador Chas W. Freeman calls: “the processes…
Details
Saudi Arabia, in an official statement, confirmed on October 19 the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate. This occurred, the statement said, after discussions by Saudi officials with Khashoggi “did not go as required and developed in a negative way (that) led to a fight and a quarrel between some…
Details
The State Department brought John Matel out of retirement to manage public diplomacy activities in São Paulo for 42 days in August and September, 2018, as “while actually employed.” Before his retirement from the Foreign Service he was Country Public Affairs Officer for Brazil from 2011 to 2014. It was gratifying to meet Jeremy Buzzell,…
Details
Jamal Khashoggi is only the latest journalist to lose life or freedom as a result of Saudi Arabia’s actions. Since January 2017, more than 15 Saudi journalists have been killed or imprisoned by authorities in Saudi Arabia. Their crime: reporting in detail a severe crackdown against advocates of a free press and democratic reforms in…
Details
On Friday morning, January 18, 1957, Arthur Larson gave a lengthy and wide-ranging presentation on the United States Information Agency to President Eisenhower’s cabinet. After 22 months as under secretary at the Labor Department, and now one month as USIA Director, Larson used charts, maps, and film clips to describe the barely four-year-old agency. The nearly three dozen attendees…
Details