Category: Bruce Gregory’s Resource List

March 14, 2025

Intended for teachers of diplomacy and related courses, here is an update on resources that may be of general interest. Suggestions for future updates are welcome.

Bruce Gregory

Affiliate Scholar

Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication

George Washington University

BGregory@gwu.edu  | BGregory1@aol.com

Diplomacy’s Public Dimension Archive, Institute for Public Diplomacy & Global Communication, George Washington University

Bruce Gregory, American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Practitioners as Change Agents in Foreign Relations, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). 

eBook text and paperback here.

Kindle and paperback here.

Sean Aday, ed., Handbook on Public Diplomacy, (Edward Elgar, 2025). In this just published handbook, Sean Aday (George Washington University) has assembled a wide-ranging collection of chapters on theory and practice in diplomacy’s public dimension by a globally distributed array of scholars and scholar/practitioners. Scene setting chapters offer assessments of public diplomacy’s conceptual boundaries, soft power, strategic narratives, and literature on gender in diplomacy and nation branding. Subsequent chapters offer fresh perspectives on state-sponsored public diplomacy: Britain, China, Russia, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, Australia, the United States,African digital diplomacy, and Arab public diplomacy. Still other chapters focus on topics and issues — AI and public diplomacy, sub-state diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, science diplomacy, sports diplomacy, metrics and evaluation, disinformation, conflict in Gaza and Ukraine, and much more. This handbook is a major contribution to the study and practice of diplomacy. Aday’s introduction is available through open access. Some pages are accessible at Google books here. The eBook edition is available here.

Sean Aday, “Introduction to the Handbook on Public Diplomacy”

PART I OVERVIEW

2. Bruce Gregory, (George Washington University), Diplomacy’s public dimension. 

3. Nicholas J. Cull, (University of Southern California) ‘What’s past is prologue.’ 

4. Alister Miskimmon (Queen’s University Belfast) and Ben O’Loughlin, (Royal Holloway, University of London), Strategic narrative and public diplomacy. 

5. Nadia Kaneva (University of Denver) and Cecilia Cassinger (Lund University), Gender matters in public diplomacy and nation branding. 

PART II TRADITIONAL MAJOR POWERS 

6. Emily T. Metzgar (Kent State University), USA: Commissioning public diplomacy. 

7. Robin Brown (Archetti Brown Associates), British public diplomacy. 

8. Zhao Alexandre Huang (Université Gustave Eiffel), China’s public diplomacy. 

9. Cliff Mboya (University of Johannesburg), China in the new public diplomacy.

10. Anna Popkova (Western Michigan University), Russian public diplomacy and the public diplomacy of dissent. 

PART III GLOBAL SOUTH AND ASIA 

11. Yarik Turianskyi (Chamber of Commerce and Industry, South Australia) and Bob Wekesa (University of Witwatersrand, South Africa), Conceptual and pragmatic perspectives on African digital diplomacy. 

12. Gazala Fareedi (Southfield College Darjeeling, India), Indian public diplomacy.

13. Fabiana Gondim Mariutti and Daniel Buarque (Universidade de São Paulo), The Brazilian way. 

14. César Villanueva Rivas (Universidad Iberoamericana), The traditional paradigm of public and cultural diplomacies in Mexico.

15. William Lafi Youmans (George Washington University), Arab public diplomacy in the United States.

16. Mohamad Rosyidin (Universitas Diponegoro), Indonesia: Preserving reputation abroad.

17. Hun Shik Kim and Seow Ting Lee (University of Colorado, Boulder), Public diplomacy in South Korea. 

18. Caitlin Byrne (Griffith University), Public diplomacy for modern Australia.

PART IV TOPICS/ISSUES

19. Robin Fichtner (University of Fribourg) and Diana Ingenhoff (University of St. Gallen), Beyond borders.

20. Niedja de Andrade e Silva Forte dos Santos (University of Lisbon), City diplomacy.

21. Alberto Royo i Mariné (Special envoy, Catalonia), Catalonia’s foreign affairs. 

22. Hyesun Shin (Hongik University, Seoul), Cultural diplomacy in Northeast Asian countries. 

23. Kendra Salois (American University), Music/hip hop diplomacy 

24. Karen R. Lips and Meredith L. Gore (University of Maryland), Science diplomacy. 

25. Shawn Powers (US Department of State), International Broadcasting: From Marconi to TikTok.

26. Ramesh Ganohariti (Leiden University) and Sascha Düerkop, Sports diplomacy of non-politically sovereign territories 

PART V SPECIAL FOCUS: EMPIRICS AND MEASUREMENT 

27. Amelia Arsenault (US Department of State). The measurement dilemma in public diplomacy.

28. Diana Ingenhoff (University of St. Gallen) and Jérôme Chariatte (University of Fribourg), Reframing public diplomacy.

29. Natalia Grincheva (LASALLE University of Arts, Singapore), Digital soft power.

30. Sameera Durrani (University of Technology, Sydney), Schisms in nation brands.

PART VI SPECIAL FOCUS: DIGITAL DIPLOMACY AND DISINFORMATION 

31. Elyse Huang (University of Texas, Austin), SNS diplomatic communication model.

32. Efe Sevin (Towson University), Digital agenda-setting.

33. Erik C. Nisbet and Olga Kamenchuk (Northwestern University), Unpacking the psychology of adversarial state-sponsored disinformation campaigns and implications for public diplomacy counter-strategies.

PART VII SPECIAL FOCUS: PD, WAR, AND NATIONAL SECURITY

34. James Pamment, Martina Smedberg and Elsa Isaksson (Lund University), National security and public diplomacy.

35. Katherine Brown (President and CEO Global Ties U.S. and Georgetown University), Losing hearts and minds.

36. Rhys Crilley (Glasgow University), Public diplomacy in the age of war. 

37. Ilan Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), From Gaza to Crimea.

38. Philip Arceneaux (Miami University of Ohio), People-to-people exchange programs.

PART VIII DIPLOMATS’ PERSPECTIVES: BRIDGING THEORY AND PRACTICE

39. Thomas Miller (Retired US Foreign Service Officer, George Washington University), Lessons from Zelensky.

40. Mark Taplin, (Retired US Foreign Service Officer, George Washington University), Diplomacy comma public.

American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and The Foreign Service Journal, March 2025.  American diplomacy is in crisis. US foreign affairs practitioners and their families in the second Trump administration are facing extraordinary challenges: cruel and arbitrary personnel actions, funding and federal hiring freezes, a deluge of lies and disinformation about their work, a dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, DOGE staffers targeting data bases and agency websites, grant freezes that leave Fulbright and other international exchange participants stranded abroad, a climate of fear at the US Agency for Global Media, and more. In this chaos, leadership is coming from AFSA, the nonpartisan union and professional association of the US Foreign Service, and its Foreign Service Journal (FSJ). AFSA President Tom Yazgerdi’s “President’s Views.” FSJ’s Editorial Board Chair Vivian Walker’s and Editor-in-Chief Shawn Dorman’s “Letter from the Editor.” AFSA’s “2025 Resource Hub.” AFSA and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE)’s lawsuit challenging the dismantling of USAID. AFSA et al., v. Donald Trump et al., an emergency motion to stop destruction of evidence at USAID, and AFSA’s “Press Center.” US diplomats serve administrations of both political parties. AFSA and FSJ are not foreign policy advisors. They champion justice and due process in the employment conditions of US diplomacy’s practitioners and needed reforms in diplomatic practice. What is happening now is not reform. It is a radical ideologically motivated assault on the people and institutions of US diplomacy.

Sarah Arkin, Daniel Langenkamp, Lula Chen, and Evan Cooper, “State Department Reform Under the Second Trump Administration,”  March 6, 2025, Stimson. In this timely report from the Stimson Center think tank, four contributors, practitioners and scholars, offer ideas for improving US diplomacy and State Department operations. In “Modernizing Public Diplomacy,” Sarah Arkin and Daniel Langenkamp, the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy’s executive director and senior advisor, discuss staffing initiatives, funding priorities, timely engagement through new media and global Media Hubs, investment in AI, data-driven research, knowledge management and training, domestic engagement, and US Agency for Global Media reforms. In “Improving Data Utilization,” Lula Chen, research fellow at the think tank fp21 and a research scientist at MIT, examines a variety of ways the State Department can improve its use of data to enhance planning, decision-making, and diplomacy. In “Making Efficient Cuts,” Stimson research analyst Evan Cooper argues that instead of “broad, sweeping cuts to the bureaucracy” State should focus on consolidating duplicative positions, e.g. some special envoys, and adjust the “diplomatic footprint” to match foreign policy priorities.

Matthew K. Asada, “Lessons Learned From the Gulf’s Hosting of the Global Mega Events FIFA 2022 Doha and Expo 2020 Dubai,” Gulf International Forum, 2025. In this update of his paper, “An Inter-Event Comparison of Two Historic Global Mega Events” (CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, 2023), US diplomat Asada examines five lessons learned from the 2020 FIFA World Cup and Expo 2020 (World’s Fair) and two subsequent “global mega events” hosted by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE): Doha’s International Horticultural Exposition (Expo 2023) and Dubai’s “Conference of the Parties climate conference (COP 28). Asada argues lessons learned in planning, physical infrastructure, human capital, and diplomatic experiences in these events have application for the 2026 FIFA World Cup — to be hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico — and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

Charina Chou, James Manyika, and Hartmut Nevin, “The Race to Lead the Quantum Future,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2025, 154-167. The authors, senior executives at Google, argue that as attention focuses on advances in AI “the next computing revolution” — quantum computing, quantum communications, and quantum sensing — will transform the global economy and national security. The article describes basic differences between existing computers that use bits (0 and 1) as separate basic units of information and quantum computers that use qubits (systems that operate simultaneously in states 0 and 1). Quantum computers promise enormous computational advantages with implications for encryption, code breaking, scientific innovation, and economic growth. But quantum computers also face development and application challenges, risks, and unknowns. The quantum future will take years to achieve. Getting there involves visa, immigration, and export control policies; collaboration between academic institutions, industries, and governments; generational investments in talent and resources, and “farsighted international diplomacy.”

Kristin Anabel Eggeling, “Evocative Screens: Ethnographic Insights Into the Digitalization of Diplomacy,”  International Political Sociology, Vol. 19, Issue 1, March 11, 2025. In this cutting-edge article, Eggeling (University of Copenhagen and Danish Institute for International Studies) assesses findings from her ethnographic fieldwork in Brussels (2018-2023) on how digitalization relates to diplomatic practice. Her research focuses on the many ways Europe’s diplomacy practitioners relate to screens (e.g., smartphones, personal computers, projection surfaces in meeting rooms). How associations with screens provide insights into their lived experiences. And how they “capture pragmatic rituals, professional priorities, and formal procedures just as much as personal anxieties, power struggles, and informal relations of competence and trust.” 

In the vast literature on digitalized diplomacy, this article stands out for many reasons. (1) An innovative theoretical grounding in Sherry Turkle’s concept of screens as evocative objects that both help us know and understand (effect) and serve as companions to our emotional and social lives (affect). (2) Its stories about how diplomacy practitioners use screens and how these stories illuminate discourse on diplomacy in the digital age. (3) An examination of how micro-dynamics of technological change shape diplomatic practices. (4) Its “normatively grounded evidence” of how diplomats perceive technologies and emotional factors that affect their diplomatic practices. (5) Its clarity and narratives that put compelling evidence-based stories first and abstract theory second. (6) Its claim that diplomacy is no longer mediation of estrangement between polities; it is mediation of estrangement between polities and their digital devices. (7) Its conclusions regarding the blending of “analog” and “digital” diplomatic practices. (8) Its agenda for further research. Scholars and practitioners will find much to consider in these insights and ideas. 

Willoughby Fortunoff, Cheryl Martens, and Jenny Albarracín Méndez, “A Space for Kinship in City Diplomacy: Re-imagining Sister Cities Amid Global Migration,”  The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Online publication January 6, 2025. Fortunoff (Harvard University), Martens (Universidad San Francisco de Quito), and Méndez (Universidad de Cuenca Ecuador) examine ways sister cities bridge diaspora and origin communities in the context of migration between Ecuador and the United States. Their article poses three research questions. (1) Is the sister cities exchange model antiquated or has it been under resourced and underestimated? (2) What factors influence their effectiveness as sister cities in fostering long term collaboration? (3) Which stakeholders have been involved in and excluded from sister cities relationships? The article opens with a discussion of the power dynamics of mayors and local governments as substate actors in international partnerships, sister cities’ relationships in the context of international relations kinship theory, and the historical “rise and retreat” of sister cities partnerships. Field research was conducted using semi-structured interviews in Quito and Cuenca and quantitative survey data in 2024. The authors conclude both cities lack institutions rooted in the sister city movement of the 20th century. Yet both are aware of the need for city diplomacy and have international relations offices responsible for a range of diplomatic activities. City officials tend to prioritize short term political and project specific objectives of mayors, however, overlooking the benefits of a re-imagined sister cities approach grounded in a diaspora-led and kinship-based model. Recent sister city relations between Cuenca and Peekskill, New York, a city with a large Ecuadoran diaspora, they argue, points to a strategy for empowering diaspora and migrant communities in sister city relations.

Charles A. Goldman, et al., Intellectual Firepower: A Review of Professional Military Education in the U.S. Department of Defense, RAND Corporation, 2024. In this report, RAND describes the Defense Department’s vast Professional Military Education (PME) system, compares military educational institutions with civilian institutions, analyzes strength and limitations in policies and practices, and identifies opportunities for improvement. Unlike the State Department, US military services for generations have valued and committed substantial resources to professional education. They treat education as bodies of knowledge and habits of mind that foster “breadth of view, diverse perspectives, critical and reflective analysis, abstract reasoning, comfort with ambiguity and uncertainty, and innovative thinking, particularly with respect to complex, ill-structured or non-linear problems.” Training, in contrast, focuses on instruction that enhances “capacity to perform specific functions and tasks.” (CJCS Professional Military Education Policy, here). Education and training overlap, but they are treated as separate and essential career long development requirements. 

A few years ago, respected senior US diplomats began to argue that State should “take a cue” from PME here and here. Think tanks advanced the case for professional education in diplomacy here. State responded in 2023 with its first learning policy here and a core curriculum here. Today, incentivized career-long professional education in US diplomacy remains more aspirational than real. Resources are slim. Clearer distinctions between education and training are needed. Nevertheless, for the first time there is increasing recognition in US diplomacy that mentoring, on-the-job experience, and training are insufficient. RAND’s study of PME offers insights into its value and potential.

Peter Lohman and Dan Spokojny, “From Strategy to Action: Rethinking How the State Department Works,” War on the Rocks, February 21, 2025. Lohman (US State Department Foreign Service Officer) and Spokojny (founder and CEO, fp21) argue US diplomacy faces a paradox. The State Department is brimming with highly knowledgeable foreign affairs experts whose impact is diluted by bureaucratic inefficiencies and an organizational culture too reliant on “educated guesswork and ad hoc implementation.” The authors develop several evidence-based claims. (1) State’s traditional approach to policymaking prioritizes plans and planning that fail to incite specific, coordinated operations in the field. (2) State should adopt, teach, and refine clear methods of “policy engineering” capable of translating planning and expertise into action and continuous policy adaption. (3) State should adopt a department wide method for policy engineering and classes on its application in the Foreign Service Institute’s core curriculum. 

Rémi Meehan, “Tweeting for Influence: Analyzing France and China’s Cultural Diplomacy on Social Media: A Mixed Methods Approach,”  European Review of International Studies, Online open access publication date, November 8, 2024. Meehan (CERI-Sciences Po, Paris) examines how France and China use cultural diplomacy on social media to expand their power. His article is grounded in several conceptual claims. Cultural diplomacy can be defined as a core subset of public diplomacy, “a state-supported effort to explain itself to the world through history, education, and cultural exchange.” The term “digitalization of cultural diplomacy” better describes how states engage on social media than “digital diplomacy,” which problematically assumes it is a separate diplomatic instrument. Stephen Lukes’ three-dimensional power framework (decision-making as observable power, agenda setting, and “secur[ing] willing consent by shaping and influencing desire and beliefs”) provides a useful theoretical context for his empirical analysis. Meehan uses VADER sentiment analysis, word frequency analysis, and thematic analysis to analyze more than 67,000 tweets from the French and Chinese Ministries of Foreign Affairs and their state-sponsored cultural organizations — Institut Français, Alliance Française, and Confucius Institutes. His research examines differences and similarities in their cultural diplomacy. 

US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. For more than 75 years, this bipartisan, presidentially-appointed Commission has advised presidents, Congress, the State Department, government agencies, and the American people. Its members are drawn from a broad cross section of civil society professionals. The Commission’s statutory responsibility is to assess activities intended to understand, inform, and influence foreign publics and increase public understanding of these activities through reports and informed discussion of public diplomacy issues and events. The Commission’s annual and special reports — containing evidence-based recommendations and comprehensive program and budget information — are an enduring and essential resource for officials, lawmakers, practitioners, scholars, and citizens at home and abroad. Past reports can be accessed at the Commission’s State Department website here. For those interested, the Commission’s 2023 special report on Public Diplomacy and DEIA Promotion: Telling America’s Story to the World can be found here.

Geoffrey Wiseman, “The United States and Fragmented Multilateralism: Bookending a Century of US Ambivalence Towards Formal International Organizations,” Third World Quarterly, Published online March 3, 2025. Wiseman (DePaul University) assesses four factors that contribute to understanding a century-long ambivalence in US relations with the United Nations and other formal international organizations: (1) the actions and personalities of UN Secretaries General, (2) partisan preferences and career paths of US Permanent Representatives to the UN, (3) the UN’s location in New York City and the US role as its host country, and (4) the influence of epistemic communities, civil society groups, and high-profile individuals. His practice theory approach illuminates variations in US multilateral diplomacy from the liberal internationalism of Woodrow Wilson to the populist nationalism of Donald Trump. Added insights in this article derive from his assessment of diplomacy and politics in the context of an intersecting international and domestic dynamic — and the debate about a decline in the influence of formal international governmental organizations (FIGOs) and the rise of informal international governmental organizations (IIGOs), e.g., OPEC, the BRICS, the G-7, and the G-20. Public diplomacy scholars and practitioners will find of particular interest its attention to correlations between the politics and policies of US presidents and US membership in and withdrawals from UNESCO.  

Recent Items of Interest

Matt Armstrong, “Musk: ‘shut [VOA, RFE/RL]] Down . . . Europe is Free Now (Not Counting Stifling Bureaucracy),” February 10, 2025; “A Future of VOA and Its Sister Networks,”  February 7, 2025, Arming for the War We’re In.

Jeremy Barr and John Hudson, “State Department Orders Cancellation of News Subscriptions Around the World,”  February 18, 2025, The Washington Post.“Labor-Management Guidance from the Office of the [AFSA] General Counsel (OGC),” January 2025, American Foreign Service Association.

Linda W. Chang, et. al., “Does Counting Change What Counts? Quantification Fixation Biases Decision-making,”  October 28, 2024, PNAS.

David Bauder, “At the Voice of America, the Trump Administration is Moving Swiftlu to Assert its Vision,” March 6, 2025, AP; David Folkenflik, “Voice of America Bias Inquiry Sparks Concerns of Political Meddling,”  March 1, 2025, NPR; David Enrich and Minho Kim, “Voice of America Journalists Face Investigations for Trump Comments,”  February 28, 2025, The New York Times.

Jim Fry, “Trump Administration Actions and Words,”  February 13, 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Olivia George, “Funding Freeze Leaves Fulbright and Study-abroad Scholars Stranded,”  March 11, 2025, The Washington Post.

Bruce Gregory, “American Diplomacy in Crisis: A Time To Support Litigation And Employee Unions,”  February 13, 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Mathias Hammer, Eleanor Mueller, and Ben Smith, “Trump Will Nominate Free Speech Lawyer [Sarah Rogers] to Public Diplomacy Role,”  February 12, 2025, Semafor.

Paul Hare, “The Revolution in America’s Public Diplomacy: Is Trump Alone Now the ‘Voice of America?’”  March 6, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy. 

Jory Heckman, “Rubio Details Plan to Make State Department ‘Relevant’ Again Under Trump,”  January 15, 2025, Federal New Network.

Joseph Horowitz, “The Tangled Legacy of JFK and the Cultural Cold War,”  January 24, 2025, American Purpose.

Gordon Humphrey, “President Trump, Win the Information War! Here’s How,”  January 14, 2025, Newsmax.

Minho Kim and Chris Cameron, “Trump Picks Conservative Activist to Lead U.S. Media Agency,”  January 22, 2025, The New York Times.

Ellen Knickmeyer, “Trump Overstepped His Constitutional Authority in Freezing Congress’ Funding for USAID, Judge Says,”  March 11, 2025, AP; Edward Wong, “U.S.A.I.D. Official Orders Employees to Shred or Burn Classified and Personnel Records,”  March 11, 2025, The New York Times.

Dennis Jett, “Deprofessionalizing the State Department Is a Threat to National Security,”  January 24, 2025, Just Security.

John Lennon, “The Truth and USG Broadcasting,”  January 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Steven Levitsky and Lucian A. Way, “The Path to American Authoritarianism,”  February 11, 2025, Foreign Affairs. 

Emily M. McCabe, “USAID Under the Trump Administration,”  February 3, 2025, Insight, Congressional Research Service.

Micah McCartney, “Trump’s State Department Hire [Darren Beattie] Could Undermine Rubio on US’s China Policy,”  February 4, 2025, Newsweek; Ben Smith, “MAGA Intellectual Darren Beattie Will Fill Key State Department Role [Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs],”  February 2, 2025, Semafor.

Jenna McLaughlin, “State Dept. Staffers Get Mixed Messages on How to Serve International Students,”  March 4, 2025, NPR.

Sherry Mueller, “Diplomacy Beyond the Beltway,” March 2025; “Amidst Looming Uncertainty, Sustaining Inspiration at the Global Ties U.S. 2025 National Meeting,” February 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Public Diplomacy and the Future of Soft Power,” [YouTube, 1 hour],  January 6, 2025; Bill Wanlund, “Worth Noting: Professor Joseph Nye’s January 6 First Monday,” Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Marc A. Thiessen, “A Move So MAGA It Was Championed by . . .  Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State?”  February 6, 2025, The Washington Post.

“Marc Thiessen and Ilan Berman Join RFE/RL Board of Directors,”  February 14, 2025, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Nahal Toosi, “Trump Wants to Shrink the State Department’s Size, Reach and Focus,” February 27, 2025; “The Marco Rubio Guide to Survival is Not Working Well,”  February 17, 2025, Politico.

“U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth Receives Walter Roberts Award for Congressional Leadership in Public Diplomacy,”  January 9, 2025, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, George Washington University.

Humeyra Pamuk, Simon Lewis, and Gram Slattery, “Trump Team Asks Three US Senior Career Diplomats to Resign, Sources Say,”  January 15, 2025, Reuters.

Charles Ray, “Communicating With the People or With the Leadership Elite: A Diplomatic Juggling Act,”  February 2025, American Diplomacy.

“David Sanger Discusses Trump’s Impact on US Foreign Policy,” March 11, 2025; “New Cold Wars: A Conversation with David Sanger,” March 5, 2025, YouTube TV; Walter Roberts Annual Lecture, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, George Washington University.

Michael Schneider, “Promoting Our National Interests Through UNESCO,”  December 26, 2024, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Larry Schwartz, “Saying ‘Thank You’ to Secretary Blinken for Creative Us of Public Diplomacy,” January 14, 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America. 

US Agency for Global Media, “FY 2024 Agency Performance Report,” January 2025.

Dick Virden, “Poznan 1995: Requiem for a Diplomatic Post,”  March 2025, The Foreign Service Journal.

Edward Wong and Mattathias Schwartz, “National Endowment for Democracy Sues Trump Aides Over Funding Freeze,”  March 5, 2025, The New York Times.

Gem from the Past

Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and State, (Harvard University Press, 1970). A half century ago the acclaimed social scientist Albert Hirschman (Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies) published this slim volume on the difficult moral, political, and personal choices faced by professionals in dysfunctional and misbehaving organizations. Some choose exit — sever ties with the organization. Others choose voice — advocate change from within through communication, grievances, and reforms. Loyalty, he argued, seeks to limit exit so that voice can play an influential role in bringing about change. Hirshman wrote when the Vietnam war was generating difficult choices in government and civil society organizations. His ideas are worth revisiting as individuals and groups face difficult choices today. 

An archive ofDiplomacy’s  Public Dimension: Books, Articles, Websites  (2002-present) is maintained at George Washington University’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication.  Current issues are also posted by the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy, the Public Diplomacy Council of America, and Len Baldyga’s email listserv.

January 7, 2025

Intended for teachers of diplomacy and related courses, here is an update on resources that may be of general interest. Suggestions for future updates are welcome.

Bruce Gregory

Affiliate Scholar

Institute for Public Diplomacy 

   and Global Communication

George Washington University

BGregory@gwu.edu  | BGregory1@aol.com

Diplomacy’s Public Dimension Archive, Institute for Public Diplomacy & Global Communication, George Washington University

Bruce Gregory, American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Practitioners as Change Agents in Foreign Relations, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). 

eBook text and paperback here.                              Kindle and paperback here.

Emily Conroy-Krutz, Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century America, (Cornell University Press, 2024). Civil society groups have long partnered with government organizations to advance US diplomacy. Catholic clerics in the US war with Mexico. Journalists, clerics, and political operatives during the Civil War. Educators, philanthropists, celebrities, and Peace Corps volunteers in the twentieth century. Protestant missionaries began to bridge evangelism and diplomacy in the 1810s. Over time, it was a relationship grounded in intelligence gathering, interpreting events for publics at home and abroad, building schools, providing medical care, and collaboration and conflict with US diplomats on policy issues. 

In this deeply researched book, brimming with insights, personalities, and anecdotes, Conroy-Krutz (Michigan State University) relates the undertold story of how missionary and government interests did, and often did not, align. Missionaries played important diplomatic roles as the United States displaced Indigenous peoples in North America and grew to become an imperial power. Abroad they often worked as consuls. They served as interpreters, helped to spread democracy, expand commerce, and promote colonial reforms. However, as citizens with private agendas that blurred religion and politics, they often created what the State Department called “missionary troubles.” Missionaries, merchants, and diplomats had overlapping and often conflicting priorities, notably in China and the Ottoman empire. Her book concludes with four case studies on relations between missionaries and the Department at the end of the nineteenth century: US imperialism in the Philippines, the Boxer Rebellion, atrocities of the Congo Free State under King Leopold II, and the Armenian Genocide. Missionary Diplomacy fills a significant gap in the study of American diplomacy. Its optic is distinctly an American perspective, however. Ways in which America’s missionaries were perceived by others requires further research.

Magdalena Florek and James Pamment, eds. “Special Issue: Celebrating two decades of the Journal of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Vol. 20, November 19, 2024. For this PB&PD Special Issue, Florek (International Place Branding Association) and Pamment (Lund University) invited 15 contributors to celebrate the Journal’s 20th anniversary with reflections on the development and future of its related signature domains. Their brief contributions, currently online, provide a range of contrasting and shared perspectives.

Simon Anholt (Anholt & Co.), “Place branding: has it all been a big misunderstanding?”

Bruce Gregory (George Washington University), “Place Branding and Public Diplomacy’s third decade: trends, questions, and opportunities.”

Philip Kotler (Northwestern University), “What’s happening in place branding?”

Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California), “The value of a disciplinary platform: Place Branding and Public Diplomacy and the linkage of reputation to security.”

Nicolas Papadopoulos (Carleton University), “Place branding at 20: the history, the challenge, the promise.”

Eytan Gilboa (Bar-Ilan University), “Public diplomacy from global peace to global conflict.”

Mihalis Kavaratzis (Manchester Metropolitan University), “Place branding ‘in colours bold.’”

R.S. Zaharna (American University), “A generational tale of two public diplomacy paths: fierce competition, global collaboration.”

Keith Dinnie (University of Dundee), “Immersive, addictive, and professionalized — emerging trends and future directions in place branding and public diplomacy.”

Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, “Public diplomacy’s social turn: toward a new paradigm.”

Sebastian Zenker (Copenhagen Business School), “Size does matter: city branding versus small city, town, and rural place branding.”

Nancy Snow (California State University, Fullerton), “All women are diplomats.”

Ilan Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), “Whose reality is it anyway? The decline and fall of the common ground in public diplomacy.”

Robert Govers, (Anholt & Co.), “Twenty years of place branding and public diplomacy.”

Alisher Faizullev, Diplomatic Nexus, YouTube Channel, Launched November 2024.  Alisher Faizillev (University of World Economy and Diplomacy, Tashkent; former Uzbekistan ambassador to the UK, Benelux countries, EU, and NATO; and author of Diplomacy for Professionals and Everyone, Brill, 2022) has launched a YouTube channel featuring interviews with leading scholars on the study and practice of diplomacy. View conversations with Iver B. Neumann (The Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway), “A Social Evolutionary View of Diplomacy,” November 2024 (58 minutes); Paul Meerts (formerly at Clingendael Institute, The Hague), “Diplomatic Negotiations: The Past Can Overshadow the Present,” December 2024 (67 minutes); Marcus Holmes (William and Mary University), December 2024, “Diplomacy Meets Psychology and Neuroscience,” (80 minutes). Viewers can subscribe through his introductory video at the link.

Paula Lamoso González, “Liberal Intergovernmentalism Under Revision: The EEAS and the Creation of a Supra-State Diplomatic Body.”  The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 19 (2024), 619-655. Lamoso González (Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Spain) argues the European Union (EU) and its diplomatic service challenge the traditional interstate diplomacy model by “redefining the nature of the international order and diplomacy” – and by embodying the capability to significantly enhance EU public diplomacy. Her article posits answers to two questions. (1) Why did large Member States create a supra-state diplomatic institution, the European External Action Service (EEAS)? (2) Did institutional frameworks affect the negotiated outcome? Put differently, was creation of the EEAS effectively driven by domestic preferences of EU Member States or were outcomes influenced by the institutional framework in which their bargaining occurred? She begins with a survey of the EEAS’s development and gaps in the literature. She then examines theoretical constructs in rational choice institutionalism and liberal intergovernmentalism as a framework for her interviews with sixty negotiation participants and research on official documents. Did the negotiation process, as understood by practitioners, align with the theoretical constructs? Lamoso González concludes that unique institutional settings in which Member States and EU actors negotiated domestic preferences did affect EEAS outcomes. Additionally, she contends that preference formation was “domestic but not liberal” meaning domestic interest groups other than diplomatic corps were not involved. Her practitioner-oriented study offers insights into how an institutionalized negotiating framework influenced diplomacy, tradeoffs, and power struggles in a process that determined how a supra-state diplomatic actor could advance the goals of member states and also be controlled by them. “The bargaining was supra-state rather than intergovernmental.” 

Zhao Alexandre Huang, “@China vs. @ASEAN on X: Their Digital Mediated Diplomacy Involving the #SouthChinaSea,” CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, September 2024. In this well researched and carefully argued paper, Huang (Université Gustave Eiffel) examines how China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) managed diplomatic relations and used digitalized diplomacy in South China Sea disputes between 2022 and mid-2023. His study employed qualitative and quantitative analysis of the X (formerly Twitter) accounts of four stakeholders: China, ASEAN, one ASEAN country with a pro-China political stance, Malaysia, and one with a more adversarial stance, the Philippines. Three research questions shaped his analysis. (1) How did Beijing and ASEAN use X to establish network structures and disseminate narrative messages about their claims? (2) How did China’s diplomats conceptualize the South China Sea issue and create narrative strategies about ASEAN? (3) What was ASEAN’s narrative strategy and what similarities and differences emerged across the member countries? Huang concludes that stakeholders on both sides in the South China Sea issue displayed caution in using social media to frame geopolitical issues. Both sides were directly critical of the other, but overall “they tended to maintain a positive and friendly stance, albeit with some ambiguity, as they advanced initiatives such as negotiating a code of conduct in the South China Sea.” The value of Huang’s paper turns on its nuanced empirical analysis and illuminating discussion of its research methodology and conceptual issues in digitalized mediated diplomacy.

Sarah J. Jackson, “Book Forum: Jürgen Habermas’s A New Structural Transformation| A New Transformation of the Public Sphere? Questions on Identity, Power, and Affect,”  International Journal of Communiction, Vol. 18 (2024). The eminent and still productive Jurgen Habermas (born 1929) published the German edition of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in 1962. Its English translation by MIT Press in 1991 gave wider distribution to his ideas on the public sphere of civil society, communicative rationality, deliberative democracy, pragmatism, and mediated information and ideas. His book and works of the American philosopher John Dewey advanced theoretical concepts that influenced generations of media and communication scholars and, indirectly, informational and relational approaches in public diplomacy. 

In A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics, trans. Ciaran Cronin (Polity, 2023), Habermas reexamines his ideas in the context of digitalized communication, social media, transformation of legacy media, the rise of big tech companies, challenges of right wing populism, growing social inequality, and needed conditions for deliberative democracies to function well. He argues algorithmic control of communication flows, self-enclosed echo chambers, and the market power of large corporations necessitate appropriate regulation of digital media. For Habermas, “the deliberative character of public opinion and will formation is not a matter of political preference but a constitutional imperative” (p. 59). 

In this book forum, Sarah J. Jackson assembles brief online essays (each four pages) that take the measure of Habermas’s current thinking and responses to his critics. Together they are a gateway for scholars, students, and practitioners to revisit the thinking of one the most important social and communication theorists of our time.

Sarah J. Jackson (University of Pennsylvania), “A New Transformation of the Public Sphere? Questions on Identity, Power, and Affect.”

Ya-Wen Lei, (Harvard University), “The Decay of the Public Sphere and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy.”

Barbara Pfetsch, (Freie Universitat Berlin). “The Decline of Deliberative Democracy in the Age of Digital Capitalism: Revisiting Habermas’s New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.”

Andrea D. Wenzel (Temple University) and Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach (University of Southern California), “Can We Revitalize the Public Sphere From the Ground Up?”

Marvin Kalb, A Different Russia: Khrushchev and Kennedy on a Collision Course, (Brookings Institution Press, 2024). Veteran journalist, writer, and fluent Russian speaker, Marvin Kalb (former NBC and CBS diplomatic correspondent) looks back on tensions between the US and USSR in the early 1960s through his perspectives as lifelong observer of Russia and recollections of his days as a young CBS correspondent in Moscow. In a personal narrative that covers the Bay of Pigs, the Vienna summit, the building of the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban missile crisis, Kalb’s insights make for interesting history that invites comparison of how a Russia led by Khrushchev differs from a Russia led by Putin. 

Anna Popkova, “Indigenous Dissent and Public Diplomacy during Russia’s War in Ukraine: The Case of Free Buryatia Foundation,” CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, November 2024. Popkova (Western Michigan University) develops two claims in this study. First, she advances the theoretical claim that indigenous non-state actors engaged in political dissent and disruption of state-sponsored public diplomacy can be considered public diplomacy actors by virtue of their reliance on “diplomatic capabilities in the absence of diplomatic status.” Second, she defends the empirical claim that the Free Buryatia Foundation (FBF), institutionally located in the United States, is a non-state public diplomacy actor. The FBF engages in “dissenting public diplomacy” through its construction and dissemination of strategic narratives that challenge (1) Russia’s hegemonic narratives about the war in Ukraine and (2) the vilification of “savage Buryat warriors” disseminated by international media. Her article provides an instructive overview of recent discussion of diplomacy’s boundaries and the rationale for treating some non-state actors as diplomatic actors. Through her focus on actors attentive to conflict and dissent, she broadens a discourse dominated by finding collaborative solutions to problems. Her article usefully contributes to a fundamental question in diplomacy’s boundaries agenda. How should we distinguish between diplomacy and the interactions of large numbers of activists, political factions, and other groups engaged in domestic politics and forms of cross-cultural communication apart from diplomacy?

Daniel F. Runde and Phillip Arceneaux, “Refocusing U.S. Public Diplomacy for a Multipolar World,”CSIS Brief, Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 2024. Runde (CSIS Senior Vice President) and Arceneaux (Miami University, Ohio) call on the US to reframe its approach to public diplomacy for a future “likely to be dominated by superpower competition between the United States, China, and Russia.” Two decades of democratic backsliding and the rise of authoritarian regimes, they argue, make advancing interests, not values, a better cost-benefit strategy for dialogue and cooperation in multipolar world. Their report makes a variety of strategic and structural recommendations. (1) Adopt the “marketplace of loyalties” as a strategic choice, because “the philosophical applicability of the ‘marketplace of ideas’” is failing. (2) Leverage technologies to enhance public diplomacy’s storytelling context, elicit emotional responses, achieve persuasive outcomes, and counter disinformation and influence operations. (3) Broaden the range of foreign audiences and rethink restrictions on engagement with domestic audiences. (4) Position the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) as the central hub in whole of government public diplomacy. (5) Prioritize spending and audience research on countries and regions not aligned exclusively with China or Russia. (6) Keep US government media at arm’s length from “operational interference” by the White House and Congress. (7) Achieve advanced State Department training and professional development through partnerships with academic partners. 

This report, like many others over the years, is filled with excellent ideas. Like others, it also will spark debate and rejoinders. Consider two. First, a hard binary between interests and values does not deal with the fact that Americans since 1776 have treated their values as interests to be advanced through example and actions. Second, since 1947 presidents and the National Security Council have repeatedly tried and failed to put a durable interagency coordination hub for large government departments and military services in a State Department bureau. The GEC was terminated in December 2024, the victim of right-wing partisan attacks. Had it survived, it could have coordinated some counter propaganda and disinformation efforts. However, it could not have coordinated diplomacy’s whole of government public dimension more broadly. 

US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, “2024 Comprehensive Annual Report on Public Diplomacy & International Broadcasting,” December 16, 2024. The bipartisan Commission’s latest report is the work of new executive director Sarah Arkin, senior advisor Daniel Langenkamp, former senior advisor Jeff Ridenour, and program assistant Kristina Zamary. Arkin, an experienced foreign affairs professional, is a former staff member and Deputy Staff Director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She also held staff positions in the House of Representatives and the Department of State. Most of the 223-page report consists of in-depth budget and program information provided by the State Department’s bureaus and overseas missions and the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Particularly useful are the report’s graphics and clear presentation of public diplomacy’s complex funding categories, supplemental funding enhancements, and budget history. Kudos to Commission Chair Sim Farar and Vice Chair Bill Hybl who have served long past their expired terms as the Senate continues to dither on confirmation of their successors and other long pending presidential appointees.

The report’s six pages of recommendations (pp. 13-19) — directed to the White House, Congress, the Secretary of State and Department bureaus, and USAGM — are central to the Commission’s statutory mandate to evaluate and improve US public diplomacy’s capabilities and activities. Many are consistent with recommendations made often throughout its 76-year existence. Key recommendations include: 

(1) Increase resources over time to reach peak budget levels just after the Cold War. 

(2) Create and resource a “true strategic communications and information space directorate within the National Security Council (NSC)” and ensure greater public diplomacy participation in its PCC and sub-PCC processes. 

(3) Update Congressional authorization and appropriations laws to facilitate foreign and domestic audience engagement. 

(4) Change USAGM’s legislation to give the International Broadcasting Advisory Board authority to name an acting USAGM CEO during vacancies, exercise “meaningful oversight” to strengthen the journalistic independence of USAGM’s networks, and require that the Board approve the appointment and removal of VOA directors.

(5) Urge the Secretary of State to require greater public diplomacy engagement by senior officials and delegate more responsibility to bureau and mission spokespersons.

(6) If Congressional Republicans end statutory authority for the Global Engagement Center (GEC), State’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy (R) should divide the Center’s functions among the Under Secretariat and State’s regional bureaus. The Commission offers a detailed plan for how this should be done. [Congress terminated the GEC in December 2024.]

(7) Explore ways in which AI can reduce time consuming administration burdens and enable practitioners to prioritize high-value work.

(8) Consolidate information sharing among R’s four separate monitoring and evaluation and audience research entities and make their work more accessible to the public, practitioners, and stakeholders.

(9) Streamline management of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ programs at US missions and utilize new AI tools to reduce administrative burdens.

(10) Prioritize use of experienced Foreign Service Officers, marketing and advertising experts, and subject matter experts in public diplomacy training.

(11) Use USAGM’s move to a new building in Washington, DC to update its headquarters technology and evaluate its own and third-party infrastructure.

Mathew C. Weed, “Termination of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center,” CRS Insight, Congressional Reference Center, December 26, 2024. Because Congress failed to extend the Global Engagement Center’s (GEC) mandate to counter foreign disinformation and propaganda and coordinate related interagency activities, the GEC terminated on December 23, 2024. Veteran CRS foreign policy analyst Weed’s brief paper examines the GEC’s authority and mandate, its operations and activities, and State Department Office of Inspector General assessments of its “generally effective” performance. He also summarizes issues that led groups and Members of Congress to seek to defund the GEC based on its connections with partner organizations accused of restricting free speech on digital platforms in the United States. He concludes with a summary of efforts to extend GEC’s authorization and State Department plans to distribute its activities to other State Department bureaus. See also US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, “A Historical Overview of the Global Engagement Center [GEC]: ACPD Official Meeting Minutes,”May 15, 2024.

Recent Items of Interest

Madison Alder, “From Translation to Email Drafting, State Department Turns to AI to Assist Workforce,”  December 11, 2024, Fedscoop.

Alliance for International Exchange, “Policy Priority Recommendations for the Incoming Trump Administration,”and Fact Sheet, November 2024. 

Matt Armstrong, “Appointing Kari Lake as VOA Director?”  December 12, 2024; “Why Do We Still Have VOA, RFE/RL, and Other Broadcasters under USAGM?”  December 5, 2024; “Considering the Marketplace of Loyalty,” November 28, 2024; “Reviewing a Past Attempt to ‘Reform’ US International Broadcasting,”  November 20, 2024, Arming for the War We’re In.

Matt Armstrong, “Part I: Why We Have a Voice of America,”  December 23, 2024, Arming for the War We’re In.

Mark L. Asquino, “Why a Loyal Opposition is Essential to Democracy,”  November 15, 2024, Fulcrum.

Martha Bayles, “The Diplomat Shows Why Soft Power is Hard,”  December 19, 2024, National Review.

Maria Briana, “Public Diplomacy Through Networks of Care: The Case of Platforms Project,”  November 13, 2024. CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

“Building a Better Diplomatic Service with Curiosity, Optimism, and Perseverance,” [Conversation with Amb. (ret.) Marc Grossman, winner of the 2024 American Foreign Service Association’s Award for Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy], December 2024, Foreign Service Journal.

CPD, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, “Annual Report, 2023-2024,” January 2025.

Nicholas J. Cull, “Gregory, Bruce (2024), American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Practitioners as Change Agents in Foreign Relations, London, Palgrave,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Book Review, published October 12, 2024, pp. 572-573.

Nicholas J. Cull, “Refocusing Public Diplomacy for a Dangerous World,”  November 5, 2024, YouTube (approx. 1 hour), USC Center on Public Diplomacy and Center on Communication Leadership and Policy.

Gordon Duguid, “Advice for New Political Ambassadors from a Foreign Service Veteran,”  December 29, 2024, Washington International Diplomatic Academy.

Sarah Ellison, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, and Andrew Jeong, “Trump Wants Prominent Election Denier Kari Lake to Run Voice of America,” December 12, 2024, The Washington Post.

Bar Fishman and Ilan Manor, “Will Diplomats Join the X-odus?”  November 21, 2024, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Andrew Gawthorpe, “The US’s Foreign Broadcasters May Soon Be Forced to Become Pro-Trump Propaganda,”  December 19, 2024, The Guardian.

Rebecca Heilweil and Derek B. Johnson, “Can the Global Engagement Center Make the Case for Itself,”  November 18, 2024, Fedscoop.

Kristin Edgreen Kaufman, “Why the Next Trump Administration May Prioritize City-Level Diplomacy,”  December 18, 2024, Forbes.

Thomas Kent, “Combating Russia’s Global Disinformation Campaign,”  December 9, 2024, The National Interest.

John Lenczowski, “To Win Without War, State Department Reform is Necessary: The US Must Tell Its Story to the World,”  December 14, 2024, Fox News.

Jaycob P. Maldonado, “Costa Rica’s Ambassador to US Talks Forging Bilateral Policies,” Ambassadorial Perspectives on Public Diplomacy Series, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, George Washington University, December 9, 2024,The GW Hatchet.

Sherry Mueller, “Special Gifts,”  December 2024, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Will Oremus, “State Department Disinfo Unit Faces Shutdown Amid the GOP’s War on Censorship,”  December 12, 2024, The Washington Post.

Dan Robinson, “A New Trump Administration Faces Decision on Global Media Agency,”  January 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Manuel Roig-Franzia, “Inside an American Reporter’s [RFE/RL] Russian Prison Ordeal,”  November 22, 2024, The Washington Post.

Charlie Savage, “Trump Moves to Replace Officials Whom New Presidents Traditionally Leave Alone,”[Includes USAGM and VOA], December 20, 2024, The New York Times.

Michael Schneider, “Promoting Our National Interests Through UNESCO,”  December 2024, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Dan Spokojny, “Can We Monitor and Evaluate US Foreign Policy Strategy,”  December 9, 2024; “The Benefits and Challenges of M&E Strategy,” December 16, 2021, Foreign Policy Expertise Substack.

Nahal Toosi, “Trump Pick’s Fox’s Tammy Bruce as State Spokesperson,”  January 4, 2025, Politico.

Bill Wanlund, “What Might Kari Lake Have in Mind for VOA?”  December 2024, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Gem from the Past

Andrew F. Cooper, “Adapting Public Diplomacy to the Populist Challenge,”  The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Online publication April 22, 2019, open access. Six years ago, diplomacy scholar Andrew Cooper (University of Waterloo, Canada) examined anti-diplomatic impulses in “systematically important states.” He wrote in an era of insurgent populism — Narendra Modi’s populism in India, Jair Bolsonaro’s in Brazil, the Brexit referendum, and threats to diplomacy presented in the first Trump administration. He described it as an operational style characterized by personalism, bilateral one-on-ones, constant surprises, and direct and highly targeted communication with domestic supporters. Cooper proposed a recalibrated model of public diplomacy. His menu listed five ingredients for adaptation to populism’s challenge. 

(1) Direct diplomacy toward domestic as well as foreign audiences. 

(2) Accept that “the personalistic public diplomatic brand of leaders” can be just as important as the brand of country. 

(3) Incorporate and prioritize a transactional component that targets localized interests at home and abroad. 

(4) Revitalize some traditional public diplomacy practices including cultural exchanges that place greater emphasis on instrumental motives and means. 

(5) Convey positive narratives of how diplomats and diplomacy create value for the activities of domestic citizens. 

No longer can public diplomacy be regarded as only externally directed, he argued, it “must embrace an accentuated and responsive domestic turn.” Cooper’s ideas are worth discussion and a fresh look in 2025. 

An archive ofDiplomacy’s  Public Dimension: Books, Articles, Websites  (2002-present) is maintained at George Washington University’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication.  Current issues are also posted by the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy, the Public Diplomacy Council of America, and Len Baldyga’s email listserv.