Category: Bruce Gregory’s Resource List

September 16, 2025

Intended for teachers of diplomacy and related courses and for diplomacy practitioners, 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

American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Practitioners as Change Agents in Foreign Relations, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). eBook text and paperback here.                              Kindle and paperback here.

Practitioners, scholars, and journalists continue to create an abundance of content on the dismantling of US diplomacy and the Trump administration’s adverse actions directed at individuals, instruments, and institutions. This list begins again with selected items available on the date of publication.

US State Department

“Service Disrupted: Firsthand Accounts from the Field,”  September/October, The Foreign Service Journal.

William J. Burns, “A Letter to America’s Discarded Public Servants: You All Deserved Better,”  August 20, 2025, The Atlantic.

Eric Ruben, “The Way Ahead.” | John “Dink” Dinkelman, “AFSA Carries On, With You.” | September/October, The Foreign Service Journal.

Abigail Williams and Dan De Luce, “U.S. Diplomats Say They’re Reluctant to Share Inconvenient Truths With the Trump Administration,”  September 11, 2025, Newsweek.

“AFSA Statement on Foreign Service Officer Test Changes,”  September 5, 2025, American Foreign Service Association.

Maren Brooks, “The Challenges of Reorganizing the State Department.” | Evan Cooper, “Congress: The Missing Link in State Department Reform.” | Dan Spokojny, “A Curriculum for the Foreign Service.”  | Lee Voth-Gaeddert, “A Practitioner’s Framework: Science and Technology Integration at State.”  September/October, The Foreign Service Journal.

John Dinkelman, “American Diplomacy Is Being Dismantled Before Our Eyes: Opinion,”  August 19, 20-25, Newsweek.  

John Dinkelman, “Trump’s State Department Cuts Are a Self-Inflicted Wound,”  August 14, 2025. | Matthew Kroenig, “Trump’s State Department Reforms Are Necessary,”  August 8, 2025, Foreign Policy.

Michael Gfoeller and David H. Rundell, “Marco Rubio’s Quest to Make the State Department Great Again | Opinion,”  August 8, 2025, Newsweek.

Michael Rigas, “Opening Statement on Reforming the State Department to Compete in the 21^st Century,” July 16, 2025, Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

International Exchanges

Mark Overmann and Paul Foldi, “Foreign Exchange Programs Under the Trump Administration,”  September 8, 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America, C-SPAN.

Tara Sonenshine, “Fewer International Students Are Coming to the US, Costing Universities and Communities that Benefit From These Visitors,”  September 12, 2025, The Conversation.

Anemona Hartocollis, “Trump’s Tactics Mean Many International Students Won’t Make It to Campus,”  August 20, 2025, The New York Times. | Dan Gooding, “Fears Over Fulbright’s Future as Trump Admin Cuts Exchange Programs,”  August 15, 2025, Newsweek.

Karin Fischer, “White House Uses Back Door to Axe Approved Funds for Exchange Programs,” August 14, 2025, The Chronicle of Higher Education. | Lydia DePillis and Jin Yu Young, “As Trump Pushes International Students Away, Asian Schools Scoop Them Up,”  August 14, 2025, The New York Times.

“Save State Department International Exchange Programs,” August 2025, Alliance for International Exchange.

US Agency for Global Media 

Anne Applebaum, “America Surrenders in the Global Information Wars,”  September 8, 2025, The Atlantic.

Larry Diamond, Orville Schell, and Robert Daly, “Kari Lake’s Accusations About VOA and China Are Bad for the Country,”  August 31, 2025, The Washington Post.

Minho Kim, “Judge Blocks Trump’s Firing of the Head of Voice of America,”  August 28, 2025, the New York Times. 

David Folkenflik, “Judge Orders Kari Lake to Answer Questions about Voice of America Under Oath,”  August 26, 2025, NPR. | Scott Nover, “Judge Blocks Kari Lake, Tasked to Dismantle VOA, From Firing Its Director,”  August 28, 2025, The Washington Post.

“An Interview with VOA Veteran John Lennon, by Bill Wanlund,”  August 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

David Folkenflik, “Is Kari Lake a CEO? Her Agency Said So. The Law Suggests Not,” August 13, 2025, NPR. | Toluse Olorunnipa, “Kari Lake’s Attempt to Deport Her Own Employees,”  August 12. 2025, The Atlantic.

David Folkenflik, “Voice of America Director Says Trump Officials Are Illegally Ousting Him,”  August 6, 2025, NPR. | Scott Nover, “VOA Director Fired After Declining Reassignment to Low-level Post,”  August 4, 2025, The Washington Post. | “Declaration of Michael Abramowitz,” Michael Abramowitz et al., v Kari Lake et. al., August 4, 2025, US District Court for the District of Columbia.

Daniel Golden, “Joseph McCarthy’s War on Voice of America,”  August 4, 2025, Columbia Journalism Review.

US Institute of Peace

Laura Kelly, “Controversial Trump Official Appointed US Institute of Peace Chief,” July 28, 2025, The Hill. | Steve Benen, “Why the Trump Administration’s Choice to Lead the U.S. Institute of Peace is So Ridiculous,”  July 28, 2025, MSNBC. | Alishvarya Kavi, “Fired Speechwriter From First Trump Term Appointed to Lead the Institute of Peace,” July 25, 2025, The New York Times.

Aishvarya Kavi, “Fired Speechwriter from First Trump Term [Darren Beattie] Appointed to Lead the Institute of Peace,”  July 25, 2025, The New York Times. | “US Institute for Peace Taps State Dept Official and Right-wing Ideologue for Top Post,”  July 26, 2025, Reuters.

American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) — Union Busting 

Day Mount, “AFSA: A Union That Can’t Strike – Letter,”  September 12, 2025, The Enterprise.

Eileen Sullivan, “Trump Orders Have Stripped Nearly Half a Million Federal Workers of Union Rights,”  September 1, 2025, The New York Times.

Ralph R. Smith, “‘It’s Going to Be Devastating’: Court Order Oks Trump Order Impacting Federal Union Dues and Bargaining Power,”  July 17, 2025, FedSmith.

Corneliu Bjola and Markus Kornprobst, “Studying Tech Diplomacy — Introduction to the Special Issue on Tech Diplomacy,”  Global Policy, July 3, 2025. Bjola (University of Oxford) and Kornprobst (Diplomatic Academy of Vienna) explore three ideas in this article. First, they provide a “refined definition” of tech diplomacy as a knowledge category that is (1) focused on “innovation power,” (2) distinct from digital and science diplomacy and “inherently dynamic”, and (3) polylateral, meaning not limited to state actors. Second, they introduce an analytical framework containing three interrelated elements (order, agency, and technology) for studying tech diplomacy. Third, they summarize chapters in this special collection that examine tech diplomacy through state-led strategies, multistakeholder engagement, and regulatory initiatives intended to change global governance and address inequalities brought by technological disruption. The author’s conclude that “tech diplomacy” is both an “arena where global norms are contested, negotiated and established and a “tool for building a more adaptive and equitable global governance system.”

Charlotte Epstein and Ole Wæver, “The Turn to Turns in International Relations,”  European Journal of International Relations, 2025, 1-28. Epstein (Danish Institute for International Studies) and Wæver (University of Copenhagen) examine the meaning of turns as modes of organizing knowledge distinct from theories and schools in international relations (IR). Examples include turns toward things that are practiced, emotional, quantic, aesthetic, visual, and material. Part one of their article examines turn orientations: turns that build on what’s going on, turns that re-code for what has been overlooked, and turns that register changes in direction. Part two explores values, implicit and explicit, in varieties of turns. What’s new is valorized over what’s old. What’s wide and inclusive is better than narrow domains of traditional IR. What’s concrete and particular is prioritized over what’s abstract and general. What’s politicized or depoliticized by critical IR scholars in critiques of mainstream IR’s understudied inequalities of race, class, and gender. Part three identifies research risks and poses five “slow-down questions” for turn scholars to consider. 

(1) Does a new turn sufficiently deconstruct what was foreclosed in earlier analysis? 

(2) What structures of social power underwrite a proposed turn and what has been contested in epistemological tools imported from other fields? 

(3) Where does a proposed turn (re)allocate politics? 

(4) To what extent does scholarly responsibility require human subjects and language? (5) How central is the novelty claim to the proposed turn? 

Epstein and Wæver have written a deeply researched interrogation of turns in IR. Scholars who espouse the practice turn and the public turn in diplomacy studies will find it a valuable critique against which to test their ideas. (Article suggested by Geoffrey Wiseman)

Elsa Hedling, “Coping With Digitalization in Diplomacy: Autonomy and Discretion at the Digital Frontlines,”  European Journal of International Relations, June 12, 2025. Hedling (Lund University) examines (1) digital stress — brought by bureaucratic processes, government instructions, and organizational change — and (2) coping strategies of diplomacy practitioners defined as “knowledge workers” who create particular kinds of practical knowledge and who communicate and negotiate on behalf of governments. Her article begins with a review of studies on ways diplomats are adapting to digitalization through organizational change and “spontaneous and tacit appropriations” of digital technologies in the field. Wide ranging citations focus on the role of digital tools in crisis management, support for citizens abroad, analysis and reporting, communication outside negotiations, public diplomacy, and other activities. Drawing on Michael Lipsky’s workon “street-level bureaucrats,” she discusses a variety of coping strategies used by diplomacy practitioners: seeking support from others, avoiding situations, adopting routines, engaging in problem solving, subtle non-compliance, creative interpretation of policies, and resistance to directives perceived as unjust, ineffective, or not in the best interest of those served. 

Hedling’s findings are based on fieldwork and interviews with diplomats in 13 European Union member states from 2016 to 2024. For her purposes, they were frontline in the sense of being “tasked with ‘digital knowledge work’ while operating at a relative distance from the strategic decisions and commitments partly driving digitalization in diplomacy.” She synthesizes their coping strategies in three broad patterns: routinization, prioritizing, and risk-taking. She concludes with observations on what can be learned from coping strategies, the need for further research, and the value of bridging digital diplomacy studies with the emerging study of international public administration. This is a cutting-edge article with considerable value for teachers, scholars, and practitioners. 

Mitchell Hobbs, Mei Li, Zhao Alexandre Huang, and Lucile Desmoulins, “Storytelling and Grand Strategy in Public Diplomacy: A Case Study of the Speeches of President Xi Jinping,”  Public Relations Review, Vol. 51, Issue 4, November 25, 2025. Hobbs and Li (University of Sydney) and Huang and Desmoulins (Gustave Eiffel University, France) argue that leaders, including those in authoritarian states, use stories and strategic narratives to gain domestic support, define adversaries, and influence foreign publics. Drawing on shared conceptual and practical foundations of public diplomacy and public relations, they analyze speeches of President Xi Jinping to show how storytelling advances China’s grand strategy. Stories embedded with national histories, cultural values, and aspirations, they conclude, allow political leaders to foster identification through invitational rhetoric rather than overt persuasion.

Zhao Alexandre Huang and Xiang Meng, “China’s Strategic Approach to Tech Diplomacy in a Time of Global Uncertainty,”  Global Policy, July 14, 2025. Huang (Gustave Eiffel University, France) and Meng (Hong Kong Polytechnic University) write about the concept of tech diplomacy — which they explain is the dissemination of knowledge and diplomatic practice at the intersection of scientific and technological development to promote interests and shape international relations. They investigate its use by China to respond to geopolitical challenges and institutionalize global technological norms. They conclude from their analysis that the Chinese government’s approach to tech diplomacy contains multiple dimensions: a tripartite separation of science diplomacy, technology diplomacy, and digital diplomacy; the importance of ideology in shaping and disseminating knowledge; the significant influence of technology companies; and interpretations of tech diplomacy framed by a critique of Western efforts to monopolize technology and block Chinese technological development.

Donald Kilburg, AI Use Cases for Diplomats: Applying Artificial Intelligence to Diplomacy, Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2025. DonKilburg, a retired US Foreign Service officer (2003-2025), draws on his public diplomacy assignments and expertise in technology and the social sciences to examine ways in which AI challenges diplomacy and sovereignty. AI technology “can streamline diplomacy” if used wisely, he argues, “but only humans can bring the empathy and intuition that make negotiations succeed.” His book interrogates AI’s uses in a broad range of diplomatic categories: political, economic, public affairs and consular affairs, management, diplomatic security, using technology and smart tools, and leveraging AI for whole of government diplomacy. An appendix with 100 AI cases, a glossary of AI terms for diplomats, and his book’s themes of cautious use and careful monitoring add to its value as a field manual for practitioners and policymakers. A table of contents with chapter abstracts is available here.

Kevin Maloney and James Ketterer, “Illiberal Narratives and Shifting Values: Examining Competing Visions of the U.S. and Its Role in the World,” Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, August, 2025. Maloney (Carnegie Council) and Ketterer (Bard College) draw on the “strategic narratives” scholarship of Alister Miskimmon, Ben O’Loughlin, and Laura Rosen (Forging the World, 2017) to argue that the values consensus and soft power institutions, supported by liberal narratives for nearly 80 years, have fractured. New illiberal values-based narratives are emerging in the second Trump administration that systematically seek to leverage, manipulate, and obscure the language of liberal values to achieve illiberal political ends. Their report cites the dismantling of soft power institutions and the rhetoric of Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It then summarizes the views of scholars and practitioners assembled by the Council in June 2025 in four areas. First, the emergence of illiberal narratives, the condition of American soft power, and the authoritarian sympathies of the Trump administration. Second, the media and misinformation ecosystem in the context of anti-media narratives, the lure of community over truth, and “strategic poisoning” in the era of AI. Third, the illiberal turn in norms regarding the rule of law. Fourth, the combination of malign information and truth in illiberal narratives deployed in the contested geopolitical terrain between autocracies and democracies.

Ilan Manor, “A ‘Tech First’ Approach to Foreign Policy? The Three Meanings of Tech Diplomacy,”  Global Policy, June 23, 2025. Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev) continues his pioneering research on digitalization and diplomacy with this open access article in which he conceptualizes tech diplomacy, not as a new kind of diplomacy, but as the use of technologies to facilitate bilateral and multilateral diplomacy in the context of “Permacrisis” — described as a condition of enduring instability driven by technological innovation and growing estrangement between states. For Manor, tech diplomacy has three meanings. First, it is a form of “proactive digitalization” signifying how diplomats and foreign ministries contend with new digital technologies. Second, it means ways in which diplomats manage tech-related issues. Third, it denotes a “Tech First” approach to policies in which tech-based negotiations are a first step in resolving broader issues in conflict. Manor explores each in detail, discusses their implications using a case study of a cryptocurrency regulation agreement negotiated by the US and China, and discusses tech diplomacy’s potential and limitations. 

There is much on offer for practitioners in this article, including suggestions for institutional change in foreign ministries. An issue that deserves greater attention is the problem of complexity and cross-category knowledge. As technologies and policy domains multiply and become more complex, diplomats and ministries in whole of government diplomacy cannot possess sufficient operational knowledge in each domain. They need broad issue awareness and lateral skills to leverage outside expertise in ways that are diplomatically productive. The US Defense Department has long managed demand for technology expertise through affiliation with government funded research and development organizations. The US State Department endorsed a similar approach for the first time in the Biden administration. It was a good idea that warrants continued support.

“The Price of Retreat: America Cedes Global Leadership to China,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Minority Report, July 2025. Led by Ranking Member Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the ten Democratic members of the Committee signed this 91-page staff-written report. It warns that President Trump’s “sweeping and non-strategic cuts to our diplomatic tools and international standing” present a strategic challenge distinct from any in US history and a retreat from global leadership. Although pegged to “deeply undermined U.S. competitiveness” with China, the report adopts a global perspective. Its recommendations address the Trump administration’s chaotic weakening of diplomatic tools, methods, and resources. Included are the following. (1) Reconstitute essential capabilities in foreign assistance. (2) Reject downsizing and potential elimination of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. (3) Prepare a National Intelligence Assessment of the impact of foreign assistance dismantling on national security. (4) Re-establish counter-disinformation functions and support for global independent media. (5) Robust funding for US-led international educational and cultural exchange programs. (6) Legislation requiring justification of large-scale reductions of diplomatic personnel. As with many Congressional reports, it is long on goals and short on road maps leading to institutional reforms. Nevertheless, its numerous case studies, compelling visuals, hundreds of footnotes, and rich grounding in open-source data make it an exceptionally useful document for students, scholars, and policy analysts. 

U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, “Subcommittee on Research and Evaluation Annual Report to Congress,” May 2025. In 2021, Congress mandated that the Commission create a subcommittee on Research and Evaluation to advise the State Department’s Public Diplomacy Undersecretariat (R) on audience research, digital analytics, and impact evaluations carried out by State and the US Agency for Global Media. The subcommittee’s first report summarizes R’s “State of PD Baseline Report;” provides a descriptive overview of eight PD offices responsible for most PD audience research, measurement and evaluation, and digital analytics; and makes six recommendations. Subcommittee members include Matt Baum (Harvard University), Chelsey Kilzer (Analytics, Publicis Media), Dan Spokojny (Founder and CEO, fp21), Maureen Taylor (University of Technology, Sidney), and Richard Wike, (Pew Research Center).

Geoffrey Wiseman, “Book Review: Delegated Diplomacy: How Ambassadors Establish Trust in International Relations,” Australian Institute of International Affairs,” July 4, 2024. In Delegated Diplomacy (2023), political scientist David Lindsey (City University of New York) draws on extensive quantitative and qualitative research to support his claim that credibility, building trust, and balancing home and host country interests are “the primary diplomatic challenge” for practicing diplomats. In his review, Wiseman (DePaul University) focuses on Lindsey’s assertion that diplomats should not be “excessively sympathetic to their hosts,” but rather should convey a situationally appropriate “intermediate” sympathy. His review sheds light on Lindsey’s attention to the neglected concept of “localitis,” or clientitis, in diplomacy studies, motives of leaders in choosing ambassadors, and a “loyalty paradox” in which diplomats can effectively serve national interests with divided loyalties. Wiseman suggests the argument for “a kind of measured localitis” is being tested in the second Trump administration where loyalty to the president is paramount. Lindsey’s and Wiseman’s reflections prompt an additional consideration: the need for scholars to explore the complex trust and empathy challenges for public diplomats. They must attend not only to the wishes of political leaders at home but often must communicate simultaneously with leaders in power and publics out of power abroad.

Recent Items of Interest

Amr Aljowaily, “Publications By Diplomats: Public Diplomacy Par Excellence,”  September 10, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Mark L. Asquino and Patricia H. Kushlis, “Foreign Service Budget Cuts Should Be Reversed,”  July 26, 2025, Santa Fe New Mexican.

Mieczyslaw Boduszynski, “When Messaging Undermines the Messenger: How the Second Trump Adminstration is Squandering America’s Greatest Public Diplomacy Asset in Europe,”  July 15, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

James L. Bullock, “Politization of Military Public Affairs?”  August 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Myoung-Gi Chon, “From Korean Wave to Cultural Diplomacy: Proposing the Cultural Anchoring Model for Identifying Global Publics,”  September 4, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Nicholas J. Cull, “Looking for God at the Osaka Expo,”  September 15, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Christopher Datta, “The Effectiveness of American Libraries in Promoting American Values and Diplomacy,”  September, 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America. 

Charlie English, “‘1984’ Hasn’t Changed, But America Has,”  July 27, 2025, The New York Times.

Julie Gerstein and Margaret Sullivan, “Is Objectivity Still Worth Pursuing?”  July 10, 2025, Columbia Journalism Review.

James B. Greenberg, “What Makes Protest Matter,”  August 4, 2025, Substack.

Joe Johnson, “New Public Diplomacy Meets Trump Diplomacy,”  August 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Thomas Kent, “Russia Prepares to Fill the USAID Gap,”  July 21, 2025, The National Interest.

Paul Hare, “Why Trump’s ‘Truth Social Public Diplomacy’ Leads to Few Diplomatic Wins,”  August 18, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Michael Hurley, “Shifting Sands for Public Diplomacy in the USSR and Russia,”  August 2025, American Diplomacy.

Ilan Manor, “AI’s Country of Origin Effect,”  September 10, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Najmedin Meshkati and Bright (Dokyeong) Lee, “Beyond Hard and Soft Power,”  September 4, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Mike Pence and Ed Feulner, “Rediscovering Order in an Age of Populism,”  Summer 2025, National Affairs.

“Q&A With CPD: Sherry Lee Mueller,”  July 14, 2025, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Amro Shubair, “The Engine of Diplomacy,”  August 7, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy. 

Dan Spokojny, “The Art of Foreign Policy — and the Limits of Science,” August 25, 2025 | “‘Old’ Versus ‘New’ Public Diplomacy,” [Conversation with Paul Kruchoski], August 11, 2025, Substack.   

Karl Stoltz, “The Fog of Hybrid War (Part One),”  June 24, 2025. | “The Fog of Hybrid War (Part Two),”  July 22, 2025, Deft9 Solutions.

Alex Thurston, “The State Department Between Rubio’s Cuts and Structural Limitations,”  July 16, 2025, Substack.

Matthew Wallin, “Carelessly Reducing the Size of the State Department is a Profound Mistake,”  July 16, 2025, American Security Project.

Amy B. Wang, “Trump Administration Pulling U.S. Out of Cultural Agency UNESCO Again,” July 22, 2025, The Washington Post.

Bill Wanlund, “Please Don’t Look Away,”  July 2025. PDCA.

Lamia Zia and Shane McNeil, “From Silk Routes to Silicon Routes: The New Map of Data Diplomacy,”  July 15, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Gem from the Past

Sherry Lee Mueller and Mark Overmann, Working World: Careers in International Education Exchange and Development, Georgetown University Press (2nd ed), 2014.Occasionally practice-oriented books become indispensable, filled with wisdom and valuable insights that hold up in changed circumstances. Working World is such a book. Mueller (American University, Public Diplomacy Council of America) and Overmann (Alliance for International Exchange), outstanding leaders and models of professional excellence in the field of exchanges, provide sage counsel for those making career choices. Among their many topics: entry level and mid-career strategies, shaping a career philosophy, the art of networking, the value of mentors, internships and volunteer opportunities, and profiles of successful careers in a wide range of government, civil society, and multinational domains. 

Working World has enduring value as a roadmap for those navigating change in an era of great uncertainty for people, programs, and institutions in international exchanges. 

 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.

July 16, 2025

Intended for teachers of diplomacy and related courses and for diplomacy practitioners, 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

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

eBook text and paperback here.                              Kindle and paperback here.

Practitioners, scholars, and journalists are generating an abundance of content on the Trump administration’s threats and adverse actions directed at US diplomacy’s professionals, instruments, and institutions. This list begins again with selected items available on the date of publication categorized by practitioner community.

Scholars and practitioners need to make strong evidence-based conceptual arguments, prioritize compelling roadmaps to transformational change, work to preserve proven practices, engage in collective action, support all legal remedies, and address not only the current upheaval but neglected problems with deeper roots. 

US State Department 

William H. McRaven, “Soft Power for a Tough World,”  July 15, 2025, The Washington Post. | Trygve Olson, “Firing the Front Line: Why Hollowing Out the State Department Destroys American Power,”  July 12, 2025, Substack.

Michael Crowley, Greg Jaffe, and Julian E. Barnes, “State Dept. Layoffs Hit Russia and Ukraine Analysts,” July16, 2025, The New York Times. | Hannah Natanson, Ellen Nakashima, and Cate Cadell, “State Department Cuts China Policy Staff Amid Major Overhaul,”  July 14, 2025, The Washington Post.

Abigail Williams, “Veteran U.S. Diplomats Baffled After Mass Layoffs at State Department,” July 12, 2025, NBC News. | Michael Crowley, “Rubio’s Cuts at State Department Demote Longtime U.S. Values,”  July 11, 2025, The New York Times.

Eric Katz, “Federal Agencies Can Resume Mass Layoffs, Supreme Court Rules,”  July 8, 2025, Government Executive. | Sareen Habeshian, “Supreme Court Allows Trump to Fire Federal Workers,”  July 7, 2025, Axios. | SCOTUS stay of preliminary injunction. Donald J. Trump et al., v. American Federation of Government Employees, et. al., July 8, 2025.

Jory Heckman, “‘Fidelity’ to Trump Policies Now Part of Criteria for Foreign Service Promotions,”  July 3, 2025, Federal News Network.

Dan Spokojny, “The Right Way to Improve Efficiency in the State Department,”  June 30, 2025, Substack.

Adam Taylor, John Hudson, and Hannah Natanson, “Morale Craters at State Department as Mass Layoffs Loom,”  June 28, 2025, The Washington Post. | Eric Katz, “State Dept. Further Prepares for Mass Layoffs Even as Court Block Remains,”  June 25, 2025, Government Executive. 

Shawn Dorman, Editor, “Standing Up For Service,” | Talking Points, “Rubio Reorg at State” and “Untenured FSO Appointed to Lead Global Talent Bureau” | Cover Story, “Service Disrupted: What We’ve Lost, First Hand Accounts from the Field,” June 2025, The Foreign Service Journal.

Eric Nelson, “A Requiem for Innovation: Bidding Farewell to State’s Office of eDiplomacy,”  June 2, 2025, FedScoop.

“Merit Hiring Plan,”  Memorandum to Heads and Acting Heads of Departments and Agencies, May 29, 2025, Office of Personnel Management. | Ian Smith, “From DEI to Meritocracy: The Federal Government’s Shift in Hiring Practices,”  May 30, 2025, FedSmith. 

“Next Steps on Building an America First State Department,” May 29, 2025, Press Statement, US Department of State. | New organization chart for State Department, May 29, 2025.

International Exchanges

Sammy Westfall, “To Study in the U.S. Under Trump, International Students Scrub Their Accounts,”  July 9, 2025, The Washington Post.

Stephanie Saul and Alan Binder, “Judge Blocks a Trump Effort to Prevent International Students at Harvard,”  June 20, 2025, The New York Times. | Humeyra Pamuk, “US State Dept Resumes Processing Harvard Student Visas After Judges Ruling,”  June 9, 2025, Reuters.

Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, and Justine McDaniel, “State Dept. Restarts Student Visa Interviews With Tougher Social Media Rules,”  June 18, 2025, The Washington Post.

Leah Sarnoff, “Entire Fulbright Scholarship Board Quits, Citing Trump Admin Actions,”  June 11, 2025, AP. | “Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board Resignation Statement,”  June 11, 2025, Substack. “Why the Fulbright Board Members Resigned in Mass Last Week,”  June 17, 2025, PBS Newshour Interview with former Board member and Democratic Congressman from North Carolina David Price.

Lori A. Felton, “Educational and Cultural Exchange Is in Trouble,”  June 6, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

“Enhancing National Security By Addressing Risks at Harvard University,”  June 4, 2025, Proclamation by Donald Trump. | “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Restricts Foreign Student Visas at Harvard University,” June 4, 2025, The White House.

David Bell, “Don’t Let Trump’s Brutality Fool You. The Internationalization of American Schools Is a Real Issue,”  June 1, 2025, The New York Times. | Jim Geraghty, “The Big Business of Foreign Students at American Universities,”  June 10, 2025, National Review. | “What International Students Bring to Campuses,”  June 14, 2025, Letters, The New York Times.

Deborah Cohn, “Higher Education, Research, and the International Image of the United States in the Second Trump Administration,”  June 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

US Agency for Global Media 

AFSA Lawsuit Tracker: The Dismantling of USAGM. 

Jeffrey Trimble, “The Sound of Silence,”  July 10, 2025, Substack.

Ben Johansen, “Embattled Voice of America Employees Face Termination ‘Whiplash,’”  June 28, 2025, Politico.

Joel Simon, “A Secret Program Allowed VOA to Broadcast Television into North Korea. Now It’s Gone,”  June 26, 2025, Columbia Journalism Review.

Kari Lake (USAGM), Prepared Statement,  House Committee on Foreign Affairs, June 25, 2025. | Minho Kim and Megan Mineiro, “Trump Urges Congess to ‘Kill’ Voice of America as Its Leader Defends Gutting It,”  June 25, 2026, The New York Times. | Scott Nover, “At Committee Hearing, Kari Lake Defends Dismantling VOA,”  June 25, 2026, The Washington Post.

Tiffany Hsu, “As U.S. Dismantles Voice of America, Rival Powers Hope to Fill the Void,”  June 24, 2025, The New York Times.

David Folkenflik, “Reporters for Voice of America and other U.S. Networks Fear What’s Next,”  June 23, 2025, NPR. | Minho Kim, “Hundreds of Federal Workers at Voice of America Receive Layoff Notices,”  June 20, 2025,  The New York Times. | “Kari Lake Enforces President Trump’s Executive Order . . .” June 20, 2025, X. | Steve Herman, “Zombie Version of VOA Slain Again,”  June 20, 2025, Substack.  

Minho Kim and Chris Cameron, “Voice of America Recalls Staff for Iranian Language News Service From Leave,”  June 13, 2025, The New York Times. | Scott Nover, “Voice of America Brings Back 75 Staffers Amid Iran-Israel Conflict,”  June 13, 2025, The Washington Post.

USAGM Letters, Kari Lake to Senator James Risch and Office of CEO, June 3, 2024.

Sarah Ellison and Cate Cadell, “Chinese Propaganda Surges as the U.S. Defunds Radio Free Asia,”  June 6, 2025, The Washington Post.  | Liam Scott, “Q&A: Tamara Bralo on Fighting to Protect Radio Free Asia’s Journalists,”  June 4, 2025, Columbia Journalism Review.

“EU Will Provide Emergency Funds to Help Keep Radio Free Europe Afloat After US Cuts,”  May 20, 2025, AP.

US Agency for International Development

AFSA Lawsuit Tracker: The Dismantling of USAID.

Christopher Flavelle, Nicholas Nehamas, and Julie Tate, “Missteps, Confusion and ‘Viral Waste’: The 14 Days that Doomed U.S.A.I.D.,”  June 22, 2025; Amy Schoenfeld Walker, Malika Khurana, and Christine Zhang, “What Remains of U.S.A.I.D.,”  June 22, 2025, The New York Times.

Dan Spokojny, “Why Philanthropy Should Help Build a Better State Department [in the wake of USAID’s closure],”  June 3, 2025, The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

“Evaluation of the Department of State’s Approach to Realigning U.S. Agency for International Development Functions,” May 2025, Office of Inspector General, US Department of State. | Sean Michael Newhouse, “Potential Shortcomings in USAID-State Department Merger Raises Concerns,”  June 3, 2025, Government Executive. 

American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) — Union Busting 

AFSA Lawsuit Tracker: Union-Busting

Ralph R. Smith, “National Security vs. Union Rights: Court of Appeals Sides with National Security,”  June 22, 2025, FedSmith.

Erich Wagner, “Appeals Court Issues Stay of Judge’s Decision Blocking Trump’s Anti-Union Order,”  May 16, 2025, Government Executive.

Tom Arnold-Forster, Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography, (Princeton University Press, 2025). The 20th century journalist, political theorist, and public intellectual Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) had a profound influence on theories of public opinion, liberalism, democracy, foreign affairs, media, communication, propaganda, public relations, and public diplomacy. Ronald Steel’s Walter Lippmann and the American Century (1980, 1999), remains an indispensable account of his personal life and celebrated career. Now Arnold-Forster (Oxford University) has written a deeply researched biography grounded in assessments of ideas that shaped Lippmann’s thinking, his immense body of work, and the ways his writings influenced public debates in the past and resonate today. Diplomacy and media scholars will learn from Arnold-Forster’s close examination of Lippmann’s views on stereotypes, pseudo-environments, and the social psychology of opinion formation. His reconstruction of the Lippmann-Dewey debate on the problems of mediated complexity. And his in-depth analysis of Lippmann’s views on truth, journalism, propaganda, and free speech. He also credits Lippmann with an understanding of public diplomacy, although he never used the term. In his book, The Stakes of Diplomacy (1915), Lippmann called for “publicity” in world politics and a public facing “broader base for diplomacy.” For Arnold-Forster, Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech framing US war aims, to which Lippmann contributed, was “a liberal manifesto for self-determination and public diplomacy.” A version of today’s societization of diplomacy can be found in Lippmann’s claim that “By increasing the number of people concerned in diplomacy, publicity, criticism, and discussion must follow.” The young Lippmann also wrote that “The real effect of democracy on foreign affairs will be to make them no longer foreign” (The Stakes of Diplomacy, 194 and 195).

Thomas Carothers, Rachel Kleinfeld, and Richard Youngs, “What Future for International Democracy Support,”  Carnegie Endowment, July, 2025. Carnegie’s veteran democracy scholars and policy analysts take the measure of severe disruption in international democracy support and the Trump administration’s “radical deconstruction of U.S. aid and policies” as the major driver. The report divides into three parts. Part one examines the Trump administration’s actions and developments relating to other democracy donors. Part two looks at two trends: the rising assertiveness of authoritarian powers and the weakening of democracies from within. Part three analyzes major challenges in reimagining and renovating democracy support and a change agenda for moving forward. The authors understand that, as with other soft power instruments and institutions, the current disruption sits on longstanding organizational shortcomings and neglect of needed reforms in professional practice. 

Senem B. Çevik, Gaye Aslı Sancar Demren, and Yaşar Şekerci, “Where Places of Worship Have No Congregation: Heritage Restoration in Turkey as Public Diplomacy,”  International Journal of Heritage Studies, Published online, June 18, 2025, 1-20. Çevik (Woodbury University, Burbank, CA), Demren, and Şekerci (Galatasaray University, Istanbul) explore how Turkey uses heritage restoration as an instrument of public diplomacy and reputation management. Their article, grounded in strategic narrative theory and narratives of multiculturalism and coexistence, focuses on connections between heritage diplomacy, performative multiculturalism, and status-seeking in the context of public diplomacy. The authors advance their claims through a careful examination of four heritage restoration projects: two Jewish projects, the Edirne Grand Synagogue and the Bergama Synagogue, and two Armenian projects, Ani and Akhtamar Church of the Holy Cross (Surp Khatch). They argue that by reviving its multicultural heritage Turkey seeks to project an image of tolerance and inclusivity abroad and promote national unity and legitimacy domestically. They conclude, however, that while Turkey has invested significantly in cultural heritage projects, the impact on improved diplomatic relations with Israel and Armenia, and on better communal relations domestically, has been largely symbolic in the absence of substantive political commitments and concrete steps to address historical grievances. In addition to its careful research, their well written article contains an extensive list of references and thoughtful assessments of strategic narrative theory, reputation management, and public diplomacy’s foreign and expanding domestic dimensions. 

Charlie English, The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War With Forbidden Literature,(Random House, 2025). Through compelling stories written with the flair of an accomplished journalist, English (formerly, The Guardian) provides a vivid account of the CIA-financed book smuggling and printing activities led by the Romanian exile and CIA operative George Minden and courageous resisters in Europe. Based on extensive archival research and numerous in-depth interviews, English focuses his history on Poland and the careers of seven activists: Mirosław Chojecki, publisher and film producer; Helena Łuczywo, editor, Mazovia Weekly; George Minden; Jerzy Giedroyc, publisher, Literary Institute; Gregorz Boguta, publisher, NOWa; Marian Kaleta and Józef Lebenbaum, Sweden-based book distributors and smugglers; and Joanna Szczęsna, deputy editor, Mazovia Weekly. Other personalities and institutions appear throughout the book. Jan Nowak. Lech Walesa. Zbigniew Brzezinski. William Casey. Richard Pipes. Frankfort Book Fair. Samizdat. Voice of America. Radio Free Europe. Solidarity. And more. Technologies were different in this era before digitalization and before information scarcity gave way to information plenitude. But censorship, disinformation, book bans, and influence campaigns endure as instruments of political power. There are timely lessons in this account of what was achieved through books, globally sourced high-quality literature selected without regard to cultural imperialism, a belief in the value of “free, honest thinking,” and recognition that “soft power” can also be an effective instrument of political power.

Loso Judijanto and Nural Fadhilah, “The Evolution of Public Diplomacy: A New Strategy for Enhancing State Image,”  Synergisia (SG), Vol. 2, No. 1, May 2025. Judijanto (IPOSS Jakarta) and Fadhilah (Universitas Muhammadiyah Luwuk) add to the growing Asian literature on public diplomacy in this open access article. They examine public diplomacy as “a subfield of political science and international relations” that evolved to include communication with foreign publics by state and non-state actors on a broad range of transborder political, economic, and social issues. Their objectives are to identify new and effective strategies for improving a country’s image, strengthening its soft power, and utilizing digital technologies and social media. Examples are drawn primarily from the public diplomacy practices of Ukraine, South Korea, China, Turkey, Qatar, and the European Union. The article includes an extensive list of references, much from non-Western sources. 

Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “The End of the American Century: Trump and the Sources of U.S. Power,” Foreign Affairs, July/August, 2025, 68-79. In this essay, longtime collaborators Robert Keohane (Princeton University) and the late Joseph Nye (Harvard University) advance two broad claims. First, by undermining interdependence and misusing the hard power associated with trade in erratic and counterproductive ways, President Trump is undercutting “the very foundation of American power.” Second, Trump’s policies are eroding America’s soft power in the short run and in what in the long run is a losing strategy. By weakening trust with allies, voicing imperial ambitions, destroying USAID, silencing the Voice of America, and challenging the rule of law at home he is recklessly “making a tragic bet on weakness,” not making America great again.

James Pamment and Darejan Tsurtsumia, Beyond Operation Doppelgänger: A Capability Assessment of the Social Design Agency (SDA), Psychological Defense Research Institute, Lund University. In this detailed report based on more than 3,000 leaked documents from the SDA and other sources, Pamment and Tsurtsumia (Lund University) assess Russia’s malign influence Doppelgänger campaign intended to undermine international support for Ukraine. The report examines the purpose and scope of the campaign, whose impact it considers to be overestimated, SDA’s capabilities, and its operations described as the use of mirror sites for disseminating disinformation against Western countermeasures levied on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. The authors argue that SDA’s “goal became market share for the Russia Federation’s talking points regardless of framing and context.” It “doesn’t matter who is the messenger and what is the message, so long as the Russian Federation’s thematic lines seize a share of the marketplace of ideas.” The authors conclude their 215-page report with recommendations for addressing vulnerabilities and possible countermeasures.

Robert G. Parkinson, Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier,  (W.W. Norton, 2024). Parkinson (Binghamton University) has written a deeply researched account of imperial ambition, competing colonial land claims, ascendant violence, and diplomacy between colonists and Native Americans in the Ohio River Valley during the three decades (1763-1794) after the Seven Years War. Two themes frame the book. (1) The intertwined struggles of power centers in London and Paris, Williamsburg, Philadelphia and Albany, the Six Nations Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, and two families — the colonial Cresaps in western Maryland and Virginia and the Indigenous Shikellamy family in western Pennsylvania. (2) The “double dispossession” of Natives through their forceable removal and the intentional destruction of their history. Although the book focuses considerably on colonial and Native violence, it also provides fascinating accounts of diplomats representing the Six Nations Confederacy: the Oneida’s Scarouyady and Tachnedorous (John Logan Shickellamy), the Shawnee’s Cornstalk, and the Seneca’s Cornplanter and Guyasuta. Profiles of colonial diplomats include New York Indian Agent William Johnson and his deputy George Croghan, Pennsylvania Indian Agents Conrad Weiser and James Logan, and Virginia’s John Gibson. Parkinson adds considerably to our understanding of imperialism in frontier America and to the origins story of US diplomacy (and public diplomacy).

S. L. Price, “They Invented the Game. Now Will They Be Allowed to Play It In the Olympics?”  New York Times Magazine, May 18, 2025, 29-37. As diplomacy becomes more societized, discourse on conceptual and operational questions continues to grow. Who is a diplomatic actor? What are the boundaries between diplomacy and other forms of cross-societal engagement? Why are some non-state actors independent diplomacy actors and others not? Author and former Sports Illustrated writer S. L. Price unintentionally provides grist for diplomacy scholars in his article on the Haudenosaunee Nationals lacrosse team’s so far unsuccessful bid to participate in the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles. Although the International Olympic Committee (IOC) admitted lacrosse to the Games in 2023 after an 80-year absence, the Nationals – the talented team of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee (formerly Iroquois) Confederacy – and other indigenous nations have been denied eligibility under the IOC’s interpretation of the Olympic Charter. The IOC contends that Haudenosaunee athletes can compete to play on the US or Canada’s teams. Price discusses the Haudenosaunee’s bid to participate, their efforts to influence public opinion, their meetings with President Biden and senior US officials, and briefly their autonomy as an Indigenous Nation recognized annually pursuant to a treaty signed by George Washington in 1794. The article is based on Price’s book, The American Game: History and Hope in the Country of Lacrosse, (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025).

Peter van der Knaap, “What Makes Diplomacy Successful?”  The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 20 (2025), 337-351, published online June 10, 2025. In this practitioner’s article, the director of the independent evaluation directorate (IOB) in the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) examines criteria for evaluating successful diplomacy, provides an overview of the IOB’s structure and recent evaluations, and profiles a case study of Dutch diplomacy leading to avoidance of an oil spill in the Red Sea. The article’s primary focus is on factors contributing to effective diplomacy: mission, capacity, commitment, teamwork, timing, and reputations. Van der Knaap’s knowledgeable analysis of evaluation methods used by the foreign ministry of a middle power is a welcome contribution to the literature on evaluating diplomatic practice.

Vivian S. Walker, “The Propaganda Apocalypse,”  The Foreign Service Journal, June 2025, 78-80.Walker (Georgetown University, Chair of FSJ’s Editorial Board) writes positive reviews of three books that stand out for their balanced and accessible analyses in the “firehouse of alarmist commentary on propaganda, disinformation, and fake news.” Sarah Oates and Gordon Neil Ramsay, Seeing Red: Russian Propaganda and American News, (Oxford University Press, 2024). Peter Pomerantsev, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler, (Public Affairs, 2024). Nancy Snow, Garth S. Jowett, and Victoria J. O’Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion, 8th edition, (Sage Publications, 2024). Walker provides informed summaries of their content and her overall assessment. Unlike much current literature, she concludes, they avoid “handwringing” and provide reasoned, evidence-based “approaches to defining propaganda’s scope, nature, and impacts.” 

Recent Items of Interest

Marc Caputo, “The Rare Minerals Battle Behind Rubio’s Ban on Chinese Students,”  May 31, 2025, Axios. 

Nicholas J. Cull, “The Hidden Power of Cultural Exchanges in Countering Propaganda and Fostering International Goodwill,”  May 28, 2025, The Conversation.

Gordon Duguid, “Effective Public Diplomacy During NATO Enlargement,” June/July, 2025, The Foreign Service Journal.

James Glanz, “World Scientists Look Elsewhere as US Labs Stagger Under Trump’s Cuts,”  May 31, 2025, The New York Times.

John Hudson and Hannah Natanson, “A Marco Rubio Imposter Is Using AI Voice to Call High-Level Officials,”  July 8, 2025, The Washington Post.

James Miller, Seyed Mohammad Reza Hashemian, and Amin Talebi Bezmin Abadi, “Health and Science Diplomacy Could Pave the Way to New US-Iran Relations,”  May 20, 2025, Stimson. 

A. Wess Mitchell, “The State Department Overhaul is Long Overdue,”  July 8, 2025, Foreign Policy.

Suzanne Nossel, “Does the United States Need a More Militant Democracy?”  May 30, 2025, Foreign Policy.

Scott Nover, “Kari Lake Won Awards for Overseas Reporting. Now She Has the Job of Cutting It.”  May 30, 2025, The Washington Post.

Lisa Sorush, “Pulling the Plug on RFE/RL and Voice of America,”  June 2025, The Foreign Service Journal.

Giles Strachan and Ilan Manor, “Quantum Mechanics and the Future of Public Diplomacy,”  May 22, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

David Wallace-Wells, “The $200 Billion Gamble: Bill Gates’s Plan to Wind Down His Foundation,”  The New York Times Magazine, May 18, 2025, 22-27, 47-48.

Richard Wike, Janell Fetterolf, and Jonathan Schulman, “Dissatisfaction With Democracy Remains Widespread In Many Nations,”  June 30, 2025, Pew Research Center.

Lamia Zia and Leah Waks, “Rethinking Diplomatic Negotiations in the Age of AI,”  June 11, 2025. | Lamia Zia, “Negotiating With Algorithms: The Future of AI-Powered Diplomacy,” CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.    

Gem from the Past

George F. Kennan, “Training for Statesmanship,”  The Atlantic, May 1953. In US diplomat George Kennan’s speech to Princeton’s alumni, published during the McCarthy Red Scare and the early years of the Cold War, some things do not hold up. Its gendered prose. Its unalloyed grounding of a liberal arts curriculum in the Western canon.

Some claims can be debated. No institution can provide “complete vocational training” for dealing with “the most amazing diversity of problems” in international affairs. Knowledge and skills can be mentored and learned in diplomatic practice. International relations courses should be corollaries to “basic instruction in the humanities.”

Other claims have enduring value. Good diplomats require intellect, character, and “general qualities of understanding, adaptability, tact, and common sense.” Problems of power, freedom, and order exist in all politics, foreign and domestic. 

One claim, central to his speech, has special relevance. Malicious attacks on professional diplomats, civil servants, and government organizations do damage to public confidence and public policy and “play very dangerously” to foreign adversaries.” Kennan’s extended critique of the societal tensions “whipping our established institutions about like trees in a storm” holds up very well.

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.

May 16, 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.

Practitioners, scholars, and journalists are generating an abundance of content as they struggle to assess the Trump administration’s actions directed at US diplomacy’s professionals, instruments, and institutions. This issue of “Diplomacy’s Public Dimension” begins with selected items available on the date of publication categorized by practitioner community.

Episodic commitment to diplomacy’s public dimension has been a characteristic of the American way of diplomacy for centuries. The challenge now as in the past is to embrace principled and effective responses and reform strategies. Scholars and practitioners need to make strong evidence-based conceptual arguments, prioritize compelling roadmaps to transformational change, work to preserve proven practices, engage in collective action, and support all legal remedies.

US State Department 

“Court Issues Widescale Ban on RIFs, Reorganizations; Administration Appeals,”  May 13, 2025, Fedweek.

“AFSA Raises Alarm Over Indefinite Delay of 2025 Selection Boards,”  May 2025, American Foreign Service Association.

Marco Rubio, “100 Days of an America First State Department,”  April 30, 2025, US Department of State.

Edward Wong and Michael Crowley, “Rubio Announces Major Cuts at State Dept., Accusing it of ‘Radical’ Ideology,” April 22, 2025, The New York Times. 

“Building an America First State Department” | “New Org Chart,”  April 22, 2025, Press Statement, US Department of State.    

Dani Schulkin, Tess Bridgeman, and Andrew Miller, “What Just Happened: The Trump Administration’s Reorganization of the State Department — And How It Got Here,”  April 22, 2025, Just Security.   

Dan Spokojny, “How to Make Rubio’s State Department Reform a Success,”  April 29, 2025; “Reactions to the State Department’s Reorganization Plan from Rubio: Does this Amount to a Drastic Overhaul or Simply a Streamlining?” April 22, 2025, fp21. 

Edward Wong, “Trump Aides Close State Dept. Office on Foreign Disinformation,”  April 16, 2025, The New York Times; “Protecting and Championing Free Speech at the State Department,”  April 16, 2025, Press Statement, US Department of State.

Tom Nichols, “A Witch Hunt at the State Department: Trump’s Commissars are Looking for Ideological Enemies,”  May 1, 2025, The Atlantic.

Anne Applebaum, “The State Department Makes an Enemies List, and I’m on It,”  May 3, 2025, Substack.

Curt Mills, “Trump’s Free Speech Warrior: Behind the Curtain with Darren Beattie, One of the New President’s Most Provocative Personnel Picks,”  April 15, 2025, The American Conservative.

International Exchanges

Mark Overmann, “President’s FY26 Budget Proposes to Essentially Eliminate State Department Exchange Programs,”  May 2, 2025, “Take Action,” Alliance for International Exchange.

Susan Svrugla, Maham Javaid, and Mikhail Kilmentov, “As Trump Attacks Higher Education, Some Students Avoid U.S. Colleges,”  May 2, 2025, The Washington Post.

Zach Montague and Hamed Aleaziz, “U.S. Restores Legal Status for Many International Students, but Warns of Removal to Come,”  April, 25, 2025, The New York Times.

“Policy Update: ECA Remains Intact Amidst Major State Department Reorganization,” April 22, 2025, | “Alliance Commentary.” Alliance for International Exchange.

Deborah Cohn, “International Education Under Trump 2.0,”  April 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

US Agency for Global Media 

AFSA Lawsuit Tracker: The Dismantling of USAGM. 

Minho Kim and Tim Balk, “Trump Administration Fires Hundreds of Voice of America Employees,” May 15, 2025, The New York Times. | Scott Nover, Sarah Ellison, and Herb Scribner, “Hundreds of VOA Employees Set to be Axed Amid Legal Fight with Trump,” May 15, 2025, The Washington Post.

“In Legal Win, RFE/RL Receives April Funding; Lawsuit Continues for Remainder of FY 2025 Funds,”  May 14, 2025, Editor&Publisher. 

David Folkenflik, “Kari Lake Says OAN’s Far-right Coverage Will Fuel Voice of America,”  May 7, 2025, NPR.

Kate Lamb, “‘Fight Back’: Journalist Taking Trump Administration to Court Calls for Media to Resist Attacks,” May 5, 2025, The Guardian. 

Scott Nover and Bart Schaneman, “Appeals Court Muddies Plan to Send Voice of America Staff Back to Work,”  May 3, 2025, The Washington Post.

Minho Kim, “Judge Blocks Trump Effort to Dismantle Voice of America,”  April 22, 2025, The New York Times.

Scott Nover and Spencer S. Hu, “U.S. Judge Hands Radio Free Europe Key Court Win, Defends Courts From Attack,”  April 29, 2025, The Washington Post.

Martha Bayles, “Piled High with Difficulty: Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Other U.S. International Broadcasting Services Still Provide Vital Information to People Throughout the World.”  April 4, 2025, Discourse.

“Tom Kent on the Dismantling of American Government Broadcasting,” Conversation with Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes, March 25, 2025, The Lawfare Podcast.

Paul M. Barrett, “Unpacking the Voice of America Litigation,”  April 10, 2025, Just Security.

Bill Wanlund, “The World Reacts to President Trump Shuttering of U.S. Global Media,”  March 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Steve Herman, “Requiem for the Voice That Carried a Nation’s Conscience,”  March 15, 2025, Substack.

Mark Pomar, “Trump Move to Eliminate VOA, RFE/RL Ignores Lessons of Global Power,”  March 20, 2025, Just Security.

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. 

Matt Armstrong, “Silencing America’s Voice Overseas Undermines National Security,”  March 20, 2025, The Hill.

National Endowment for Democracy (NED) 

“Fact Sheet: NED and the 2026 Discretionary Budget Request,”  May 2, 2025, National Endowment for Democracy.

“National Endowment for Democracy Files Lawsuit Seeking Access to Congressionally Appropriated Funds,” | “NED v. The United States of America, et al.,” March 5, 2025, NED.

Ishaan Tharoor, “Pro-democracy Work Faces a Tough Fight for Survival Under Trump,”  May 5, 2025, The Washington Post.

Peace Corps

“DOGE Update: A Statement from NPCA,”  May 2025, National Peace Corps Association. | David A. Farenthold, “Peace Corps, Under Review by DOGE, Is Said to Plan ‘Significant’ Staff Cuts,”  April 28, 2025, The New York Times.

US Agency for International Development

AFSA Lawsuit Tracker: The Dismantling of USAID.

Michael Schiffer, “Secretary of State Rubio’s Reorganization Plan Could Offer a Chance to Rescue U.S. Foreign Assistance — If He’s Smart About it,”  April 29, 2025, Just Security;

The Editors, “Lives Upended: The Impact of USAID’s Dismantling on Those Who Serve,”  The Foreign Service Journal, April-May, 2025.

American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) — Union Busting 

AFSA Lawsuit Tracker: Union-Busting

“Court Grants AFSA’s Motion to Halt Anti-Union Executive Order,”  May 14, 2025, American Foreign Service Association. | Ryan Knappenberger,  “Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s Gutting of Foreign Service Bargaining Rights,” May 14, 2025, Courthouse News Service. | AFSA vs. Donald J. Trump, et al., Preliminary Injunction.

“Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Exempts Agencies with National Security Missions from Collective Bargaining Requirements,” March 27, 2025, The White House.

“The American Foreign Service Association Files Lawsuit to Protect Collective Bargaining Rights,” | “AFSA v Donald J. Trump, et al.,” April 7, 2025, 

Erich Wagner, “Judge; Trump’s National Security Reasoning for Anti-Union EO Was ‘Pretext for Retaliation,” April 29, 2025, Just Security.

Joe Davidson, “Trump Seeks Court Approval For Most Aggressive Union-Busting Attempt Ever,”  April 4, 2025, The Washington Post.

“Press Release | Ending Collective Bargaining Rights for National Security Agencies Is a Profound Mistake,”  April 1, 2025, The American Academy of Diplomacy.

Ameila Arsenault, “The Measurement Dilemma in Public Diplomacy,” 348-359, in Sean Aday, ed., Handbook on Public Diplomacy, (Edward Elgar, 2025). Arsenault (US Department of State) brings the skills of a leading scholar and experienced practitioner to this examination of the endlessly challenging issues of performance “monitoring” and outcomes “evaluation” in diplomacy’s public dimension. After an opening discussion of how terms are defined and operationalized, she explores three broad themes. (1) The evolution of public diplomacy monitoring and evaluation. (2) Complex challenges in implementing a culture of measurement and evaluation: alignment on objectives; agreement on levels of analysis; understanding audiences; time, money, and staff problems; and whether and how monitoring and evaluation are operationalized in a particular organizational setting. (3) Ways to ameliorate challenges and incorporate monitoring, evaluation, and learning into public diplomacy theory and practice. Arsenault’s chapter is a US government focused case study, but it is broadly relevant to issues facing governments and foreign ministries worldwide. It is destined to be a landmark assessment of public diplomacy’s “measurement dilemma.”  

Muneera Bano, Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri, and Didar Zowghi, “Mapping the Scholarly Landscape on AI and Diplomacy,”  The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, (2025), 1-36, published online, March 14, 2025. Bano (CSIRO, Australia’s National Science Agency), Chaudhri (High Commission for Pakistan, Australia), and Zowghi (CSIRO) examine challenges and opportunities in the uses of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI) tools in diplomatic practice. Based on a literature review of 231 articles in Google Scholar and Scopus, they discuss how scholars have analyzed integration of digital technologies and AI in key thematic areas: bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, digital diplomacy, social media’s role in diplomacy, public diplomacy, health diplomacy, AI’s role in foreign policy and negotiation, cultural diplomacy, security diplomacy, economic diplomacy, and environmental diplomacy. Challenges include ethical concerns, uneven adoption of technologies across countries and regions, cybersecurity risks, and AI’s impact on geopolitical conflict. Opportunities include AI’s role in enhancing international cooperation, diplomatic training, and anticipation of political crises and humanitarian disasters. The authors identify a significant gap in articles specifically focused on “ChatGPT” and “GenAI” in diplomacy, which they attributed to their novelty. Overall, their article is a significant contribution to research in this trending domain in diplomacy studies.

Journal of Public Diplomacy, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring-Summer 2025. Co-edited by Kyung Sun Lee, Zayed University, United Arab Emirates, and Zhao Alexandre Huang, Université Gustave Eiffel, France, JPD was established by the Korean Association of Public Diplomacy in 2021. Its goals are to publish peer-reviewed open access articles on the theory and practice of public diplomacy and serve as venue for dialogue among scholars and practitioners. Articles in its current issue include:

Daniel Oloo Ong’ong’a (Mount Kenya University), “Uncovering Changes in the Diplomacy Strategies of the United States, the United Kingdom, and China in Kenya.”

Pablo Sebastian Morales (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Paulo Menechelli (University of Brasilia), “China’s Documentary Diplomacy in Latin America: A Win-Win Approach?”

Alfredo Zeli (independent researcher), “The Negative Framing of China’s Public Diplomacy: The Case of Foreign Policy in the Early Phase of COVID-19.”

Eugenia V. Zhuravleva (RUDN University, Russian Federation), “[Book Review] Zubair, B. (2023) Chinese Soft Power Diplomacy in the United States. First edition. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.” 

Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, “The Path to American Authoritarianism: What Comes After Democratic Breakdown,”  Foreign Affairs, March/April 2025, 36-51. Levitsky (Harvard University) and Way (University of Toronto) argue that in the second Trump administration the United States will likely no longer meet the standards of a liberal democracy: full adult suffrage, free and fair elections, and broad protection of civil liberties. This will not be a destruction of the Constitutional order. Rather it would be  a democratic decline they characterize as “competitive authoritarianism” — a transformation of political life marked by politicization and weaponization of government departments, targeted prosecutions, corrupt uses of economic policies and regulatory decisions, violations of basic civil liberties, and collective action problems of targeted institutions. The authors identify possible sources of resilience: federalism, an independent judiciary, bicameralism, mid-term elections, low approval ratings, and incompetence and overreach. Opposition forces can win, but only if they do not “retreat to the sidelines.”

Alister Miskimmon and Ben O’Loughlin, “Strategic Narrative and Public Diplomacy: What Artificial Intelligence Means for the Endless Problem of Plural Meanings of Plural Things,” 34-46, in Sean Aday, ed., Handbook on Public Diplomacy, (Edward Elgar, 2025). Communication scholarsMiskimmon (Queens University Belfast) and O’Loughlin (Royal Holloway, University of London) consider important issues relating to how generative AI might change public diplomacy and the uses of strategic narratives. (1) The meaning and relevance of “information disorder” and “international order.” (2) The dilemma of establishing and verifying truth claims in information disorder when identities of communicators are unknown. (3) Using analysis of actors’ strategic narratives to locate truth in historical claims drawing on public diplomacy following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as an example. (4) Ways in which actors are using generative AI tools to communicate in foreign affairs and control the development of AI capabilities. The authors of this deeply researched article conclude that despite the increasing complexity that generative AI will bring to communication, “the fundamentals of public diplomacy and strategic narrative are unchanged.” The political and ethical questions facing researchers, however, lie at the intersection of traditional issues in communication and the transformative impact of profoundly complex and opaque technological tools.

Clay Risen, Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America, (Simon & Schuster, 2025). New York Times reporter and historian Risen takes care to say today’s MAGA movement is not identical to McCarthyism. However, a throughline to the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s is essential to understanding the current moment. He leaves it to readers to find their own parallels. Risen’s deeply researched narrative, much based on new sources, is told through vivid stories of famous and little-known individuals – those who wielded conspiracy theories and hard right political agendas and the many affected by them in all walks of American life. 

Senator Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on the State Department, the purging of State’s “China Hands,” hearings on the Voice of America, Roy Cohn’s and David Schine’s whirlwind assault on US overseas libraries, House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) investigations, Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs, Whitaker Chambers’ largely validated claims, Hollywood blacklists, and other vignettes illuminate the “storm of investigations, loyalty programs, book bans, and ostracisms that destroyed thousands of careers and lives.” Risen documents the concerns of American diplomats on the impact on foreign public opinion. Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s opposition, Edward R. Murrow’s CBS exposé of McCarthy, the Army-McCarthy hearings, and Republican defeat in the 1954 midterm elections signified an end to the political hysteria for most. Among the many reasons Risen’s account is instructive: its portrayal of McCarthyism as symptomatic of an enduring thread in America’s cultural DNA, its framing of events in the contours of Cold War anxieties and domestic conflicts between conservatives and progressives, and its compelling insights into the profoundly difficult choices of individuals and institutions confronted by innuendo, secret lists, and violations of law and civil rights.

“RSF World Press Freedom Index 2025: Economic Fragility a Leading Threat to Press Freedom,” May 2025, Reporters Without Borders. RSF’s latest report documents continuing physical attacks on journalists and an unprecedented low level of global press freedom due to economic pressures on media organizations. The report finds press freedom in the United States has fallen to a record low — its first significant decline in modern history. Indicators include the (1) economic priorities of concentrated media ownership; (2) growing interest in partisan media; (3) efforts to politicize the Federal Communications Commission; and (4) President Trump’s attacks on journalists, threats to weaponize government against the media, and efforts to dismantle the Voice of America, other US international broadcasting services, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. | “Alarm Bells: Trump’s First 100 Days Ramp Up Fears for the Press, Democracy,”  May 2025, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPI). In this special report, CPI calls out changes in White House press access privileges, politicized activities of the FCC and other regulatory activities, Trump’s rhetoric and behavior, efforts to derive NPR and PBS of government funding, and investigations into reporting by CBS, ABC, and NBC.  

Recent Items of Interest

“Announcing the Dick Arndt Prize for an Outstanding Work on Cultural Diplomacy,”  March 28, 2025, The Lois Roth Foundation.

Rebecca Beitsch, “Trump Budget Would Eliminate Numerous Development Agencies,”  May 2, 2025, The Hill.

Beatrice Camp, “Speaking Out at Foreign Affairs Day,”  May 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

 “Diplomacy in Crisis: The Cost to America and the World,”  March 2025, Statement by the Board of American Diplomacy.

The Editors, “Notes to the New Administration,”  March 2025, The Foreign Service Journal. 

Marc Fisher, “It Has Come to This: the U.S. Will Broadcast One America News,”  May 8, 2025, The Washington Post. 

Thomas Kent, “Why is the US Letting Russia Control the Narrative in Africa?”  April 28, 2025, The Hill. 

Ilan Manor, “Leveraging AI in Public Diplomacy: ChatGPT as an Aggregator of Global Public Opinion,”  March 27, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Sherry Mueller, “Calculating the Impact of Professor Joseph Nye,”  May 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Thomas J. Nisley, “Peace Corps Isn’t Just About Helping Others — It’s a Key Part of US Public Diplomacy,”  May 6, 2025, The Conversation.

Naseem Qader, “Soft Power Fatigue: When Influence Stops Influencing,”  May 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

John Ringquist, “Bridging the Interagency Gap,”  March 2025, The Foreign Service Journal.

Adnan A. Siddiqi, “Listening As a Best Practice in Advancing Public Diplomacy and Soft Power,”  May 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Marianne Scott, “Reducing Inequity Globally Will Make America Safer, Stronger, and More Prosperous,”  May 2025, American Diplomacy.

Reducing Inequity Globally Will Make America Safer, Stronger, and More P…

Dan Spokojny, “Doctrine for Engineering Foreign Policy,”  April 9, 2025, fp21.

Karl Stoltz, “The Tools of Information Manipulation,”  May 2025, American Diplomacy; “How Our Enemies Are Attacking Us From Close Range,”  April 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Vivian Walker and Shawn Dorman, “A Time of Upheaval,”  March 2025, The Foreign Service Journal.

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

Yuanchun Yang, “City Branding Through Tourist Eyes: How YouTube Shapes Chongqing’s Global Image,”  May 8, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Tom Yazdgerdi, “The Future of U.S. Diplomacy,”  April 29, 2025, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. 

Lamia Zia and Andrew Rolander, “Why Diplomacy Demands More Than Intelligence,”  May 8, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Gem from the Past

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone, (Oxford University Press, 2002). Joseph Nye — one of the world’s most influential thinkers on the nature of power and international relations — died on May 6, 2025. His ideas about soft power, power diffusion, cyberpower, relational power, the paradox of plenty, wielding soft power through public diplomacy, and many other topics shaped the views of scholars, students, diplomats, leaders, and friends. Nye’s career combined a lifetime of teaching at Harvard, stints in government during the Carter and Clinton administrations, and a steady stream of books, articles and op-eds written for experts and general audiences. He reached out often to public diplomacy practitioners. Examples: a webinar with the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs in May 2025 (moderated by Pat Kabra), a webinar with the Public Diplomacy Council of America and USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy in January 2025 (moderated by Sherry Mueller), his Walter Roberts Endowment Lecture at George Washington University’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication in January 2020 (moderated by Tara Sonenshine), and his participation at a conference on The Elements of Smart Power: Reinventing Public Diplomacy at the White Oak Conference Center in Florida in January 2009 organized by Bob Coonrod (PDCA), Kenton Keith (Meridian International Center) and Doug Wilson (The Howard Gilman Center).

Nye’s Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (1990), Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics  (2004), and The Future of Power (2013) among many other works could be selected as a “gem from the past.” But the current moment points to his Paradox of American Power written in 2002 shortly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. He addressed problems that would ensue if America undertook “a foreign policy that combines unilateralism, arrogance, and parochialism.” If we squander our soft power and invest in military power alone, we will make a great mistake he argued. Nye insisted soft power is a descriptive, not a normative, concept. Like any form of power, it can be used for good or bad purposes. Hard power and soft power are related and can reinforce each other. Nye claimed persuasively that indifference to the opinions of others and reckless destruction of the values of democracy, governance norms and institutions, and societal sources of soft power are a roadmap to increased vulnerability. “I am afraid President Trump doesn’t understand soft power,” he said recently to CNN’s Jim Sciutto. “[W]hen you cancel something like USAID humanitarian assistance, or you silence the Voice of America, you deprive yourself of one of the major instruments of power.” Those who suggest Nye’s views portray a world gone by would do well to remember his frequent observation that throughout history soft power has been gained, lost, and regained. 

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.

November 14, 2024

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.

Greg Barnhisel, Code Name Puritan: Norman Holmes Pearson at the Nexus of Poetry, Espionage and American Power, (The University of Chicago Press, 2024). In this exceptionally well written and deeply researched biography, Greg Barnhisel (Duquesne University and author of Cold War Modernists: Art, Literature, and American Cultural Diplomacy) tells the story of Norman Holmes Pearson. American studies scholar. Yale professor. Editor of anthologies. Public intellectual. Friend of leading modernist writers. Office of Strategic Services counterintelligence operative in World War II. CIA talent spotter. Cultural diplomat. And broker of “the marriage pact between American universities and the growing national security state.” For literature scholars, the book is filled with Barnhisel’s informed assessments of the works of mid-twentieth century modernist writers and debates on literary criticism through the lens of Pearson’s role as scholar, editor, critic, and friend. For international relations and diplomacy enthusiasts his book contains valuable chapters on the interconnected worlds of higher education, American studies departments, philanthropic foundations, learned societies, and the educational and cultural programs of the State Department and US Information Agency (USIA) during the early decades of the Cold War. Here the optic is Pearson’s career as Yale professor, Fulbright scholar, frequent lecturer abroad for State and USIA, dean of the Kyoto Seminar in American Studies, and master networker of scholars, students, and diplomats. Code Name Puritan is an important contribution to the literature on twentieth-century American culture and cultural diplomacy.

G. R. Berridge, Outposts of Diplomacy: A History of the Embassy, (Reaktion Books, 2024). This detailed history of the origin and evolution of the embassy by renowned diplomacy scholar G.R. Berridge (University of Leicester) covers a variety of topics relating to the structures and functions of resident diplomatic missions. Chapters, filled with stories of diplomats and events, examine terms for ambassadors and embassies, the role of special envoys, debates over rank and rules of precedence, duties of locally engaged staff, limited diplomatic opportunities for women and exploitation of wives as unpaid staff, embassies as locales for espionage, debates on diplomatic cover and norms of “honorable behavior,” pre-telegraphic communication, strengths and limitations of diplomatic telecommunication, diplomacy’s development as a profession, military attaches, commercial attaches, agricultural attaches, labor attaches, cultural attaches, press attaches, the “heroic age of American diplomacy” during the War for Independence and US practice of filling the best diplomatic posts through a “spoils system,” threats to resident missions from conference diplomacy, fortress embassies and walled compounds, twenty-first century advances in telecommunications, and representative offices for cities and provinces. Berridge’s treatment of these and other issues is invaluable.

The book reasonably does not focus on the history of consulates, a large, important and separate topic. Berridge’s examples are drawn primarily from England (later Britain), Venice, France, and the United States, a problematic choice he defends by saying the diplomatic practices of “leading states” are “always likely to be a window onto the practice of all.” Unconvincingly his book devotes scant attention to public diplomacy, which he treats dismissively as a “misnomer of heroic proportions since it had nothing to do with diplomacy; it was simply a more or less gentle form of propaganda” (p. 253) — a view the author has long held in the face of massive empirical evidence to the contrary.

Deborah Cohn, “Breaking Down the ‘Language Curtain’: Language Study in the United States During the Cold War,”   ALD Bulletin, Vol. 48, No. 1, 2024, 12-34. In this article, published by the Association of Language Departments, a subsidiary of the Modern Language Association (MLA), Cohn (Indiana University) explores multiple issues relating to language study in the US during the Cold War. First, how did educational reforms undermine language study in the first half of the twentieth century? Second, why was language study included with math and the sciences as vital to national security in the National Defense Education Act of 1958? Third, what was the “outsized” role of the MLA in mobilizing federal and civil society support for language study? Cohn examines the role of leadership in the MLA, the influence of US Army training programs, the importance of language study to UNESCO and its supporters in the US, and the influence of the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Studies Association, and other civil society organizations. She concludes with observations on waning support for language study in the United States in decades since the Cold War — a trajectory that undermines national security, responses to crises, and the broader indispensability of languages in an interconnected world. 

Evan Cooper, Dan Spokojny, Vivian Walker, Benjamin Poole, and Dani Nedal, “Can We Fix American Diplomacy,” October 16, 2024, InkStick. Experts associated with Inkstick’s “Adults in a Room” series and The Stimson Center’s “Reimagining US Grand Strategy” project assess pluses and minuses in the State Department’s modernization agenda and discuss what needs to be done. Evan Cooper (Stimson Center) argues Congressional parsimony and an American culture “hostile to the core tenets of diplomacy” are beyond State’s control. Real change will depend on “a bold political agenda that sells diplomacy to the American people.” Dan Spokojny (CEO, fp21) contends State’s decision-making process, “largely unchanged since World War II urgently requires attention, investment, and upgrade.” Reform requires a “culture of diplomacy” centered not just on the “art of diplomacy” but also on expertise, new analytical tools, modern knowledge management structures, investment in monitoring and evaluation, and a doctrine for diplomacy. Vivian Walker (Georgetown University) advocates overcoming obstacles to effective monitoring and evaluation of public diplomacy practices: (1) consolidation of four siloed monitoring and evaluation units whose data and analytics are not readily available across the Department and to interagency, Congressional, foreign policy, and academic stakeholders, and (2) faster data sharing to overcome the time disconnect between data collection and demands of fast-paced operations. Benjamin Poole (Air Force Fellow, Stimson Center) calls for State to redress a significant imbalance between its dominant focus on operations and insufficient attention to evaluation and lessons learned. Dani Nedal (Unversity of Toronto) argues State’s problems derive from decades of neglect by politicians and the militarization of foreign policy. State needs to “pick its battles,” value flexibility and creativity, and take risks. 

Larry Diamond, “How to End the Democratic Recession: The Fight Against Autocracy Needs a New Playbook,”  Foreign Affairs, November/December 2024, 126-140. Veteran democracy activist and theorist Larry Diamond (Hoover Institution, Stanford University) finds a “glimpse of sun behind the clouds” in an era of political extremism and polarization. His examples of autocracies under assault include Bangladesh, Thailand, Turkey, Guatemala, Poland, and Malaysia. Nevertheless, democracy’s 18-year global decline — as measured by Freedom House, Sweden’s V-Dem project, and the Economist Intelligence Unit — continues for reasons he attributes to technological and geopolitical trends and actions by both democracies and illiberal actors. Diamond argues most autocrats gain and maintain power while maintaining a façade of competitive elections. This makes them vulnerable. Democracy advocates must thoroughly understand how authoritarian populism works, expose its duplicity and venality, marshal the full range of countervailing institutions in governments and civil societies, mobilize early and before institutional constraints are destroyed, and “get back in the game.” Elections in autocracies, “even when they are not free and fair, are mobilizing events charged with opportunity for change.

Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, Lori Melton McKinnon, and Jami A. Fullerton, “Ethics in Public Diplomacy: Insights from Practitioners,”  Journal of Public Diplomacy, Vol. 4, No. 1, Summer 2024, 1-17. In this article, valuable for its inquiry into views of serving diplomacy practitioners, Fitzpatrick (University of South Florida), McKinnon, and Fullerton (Oklahoma State University) examine the “neglected” topic of ethics in public diplomacy’s study and practice. Their findings are grounded in Fitzpatrick’s 2007 survey of US Information Agency alumni (The Future of U.S. Public Diplomacy: An Uncertain Fate, Brill, 2010) and interviews with US public diplomacy practitioners in one large US embassy in Europe in 2022. The authors discuss practitioners’ views in the context of four categories. (1) Overall, the practitioners interviewed perceive ethical best practices to be morally and pragmatically beneficial. Implied in their responses was a belief “their work is inherently ethical,” because they represent US interests and defend democratic values. (2) The “practitioners struggled to identify specific sources” of ethical guidelines. (3) Ethical principles cited as most important included “honesty, integrity, respect, dialogue, and transparency.” (4) Asked to describe challenges to ethical practices, practitioners cited disinformation, building relationships based on truth, boomerang effects of digital tools, State Department clearance processes, and loss of message control when relying on local partners with different goals. The authors recognize their findings cannot be generalized given the small number of interviews and other limitations in the study. But the issues raised can inform needed further research. The authors conclude a formal code of ethics would clarify what is implicit in diplomatic practice and advance the professional standing of practitioners.  

Journal of Public Diplomacy, Vol. 4, No. 1, Summer 2024. In addition to its lead article, “Ethics in Public Diplomacy: Insights from Practitioners” (reviewed above), open access articles in this special issue, edited by JPD’s inaugural and guest editor Kadir Jun Ayhan (CEO, Diplomacy Analytics), provide a much-needed exploration of the literature on public diplomacy in non-English languages by a broad range of scholars.

Kadir Jun Ayhan, “Public Diplomacy in Other Words: Unpacking the Literature in Non-English Languages.”

Angel M. Villegas Cruz (Pennsylvania State University), Maria Montemayor de Teresa (Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education), Antonio Alejo (University of Granada), and Astrid de la Torre Luderitz, “Diplomacy en Espanol: An Analysis of Spanish Language Public Diplomacy Scholarship.”

Rui Wang (Communication University of China), Zhao Alexandre Huang (University Gustav Eiffel, France), Jing Bi, and Siling Dong (Communication University of China), “From a Global Perspective to a Chinese Perspective: A Comprehensive Analysis of Chinese Research Articles on Public Diplomacy.”

Kyungsun Karen Lee (Zayed University, UAE), Felicia Istad (Korea University), and Seowon Kim (Seoul National University), “Public Diplomacy in Other Words: Mapping Korean-language Research.”

Banu Akdenizli (Northwestern University, Qatar), Senem Cevik (Woodbury University), Gozde Kurt (Beykent University), and Efe Sevin (Towson University), “Public Diplomacy in Other Words: A Meta-Review and Analysis of Turkish Language Literature.”

Zhao Alexandre Huang (University Gustave Eiffel, France) and Rui Wang (Communication University of China), “Public Diplomacy in French Scholarship: Analysis of an Emerging Field.”

Eriks Varpahovskis (Higher School of Economics), “Public Diplomacy in Other Words. . . Russian Words: Systematic Literature Review on Public Diplomacy in the Russian Language.”

Junko Nishikawa (J.F. Oberin University) and Tadashi Ogawa (Atomi University), “Public Diplomacy Research in Japanese Language: A Systematic Review of Patterns and Trends in Academic Literature from 2001-2022.”

Ratih Indraswari (Parahyangan Catholic University), Firstyarinda Indraswari (Brawijaya University), and Ardila Putri (Pertamina University), “Public Diplomacy in Different Languages: Mapping Analysis on Bahasa Indonesia.”

Also, in JPD’s special issue:

Katherine A. Brown (President and CEO, Global Ties U.S.), “A Review of American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Practitioners as Change Agents in Foreign Relations by Bruce Gregory, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024, 481 pp., $39.99 (Softcover).”

Gary D. Rawnsley (University of Lincoln, UK), “[A Review of] Taiwan Cinema as Soft Power: Authorship, Transnationality, Historiography, by Song Hwee Lim, Oxford University Press, 2022, 225 pp., $135.00.”

Robert LaGamma, Episodes from a Foreign Service Career: Africa, Democracy, and Public Diplomacy,(Palmetto Publishing, 2024). In this memoir, retired Foreign Service officer Bob LaGamma provides stories, insights, and lessons learned during public diplomacy postings in eight African countries and Italy. Following his government career his international activities included missions for the Carter Center and National Democratic Institute and leadership in the Council for a Community of Democracy. LaGamma’s welcome narrative illuminates issues in Africa during the Nelson Mandela era in South Africa and challenges in public diplomacy’s Foreign Service and democratization practitioner communities.

Mandate for Leadership: Project 2025, Paul Dans and Steven Groves eds, The Heritage Foundation, 2023. The Heritage Foundation’s 920-page presidential transition report is worth a fresh look heading into a second Trump presidency. Key public diplomacy findings and recommendations at page numbers in the easily searched document are listed below. The report does not discuss State’s Global Engagement Center or Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for Democracy, or military information and public affairs activities.

Chapter 1, White House Office

The Office of Communications should include a director, deputy director, deputy director for strategic communications, and a press secretary. pp. 29-30

Chapter 3, Federal Personnel Agencies

Create exemptions to competitive hiring rules and examinations under a new Schedule F. pp. 80-81

Chapter 6, Department of State

“Large swaths” of State’s workforce “are left-wing and predisposed to disagree with a conservative President’s policy agenda and vision.” p. 171

State’s “failures are not due to a lack of resources.” Its ineffectiveness is due to the “institutional belief” that it “knows what is best for the United States, sets its own foreign policy, and does not need direction from an elected President.” p. 172

Evaluate “the Diversity Visa program, the F (student) visa program, and J (exchange visitor) visa program” to ensure they are “consistent with White House immigration policy . . . national security obligations and resource limitations.” p. 178

Put political appointees “in positions that do not require Senate confirmation, including senor advisors, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretaries, and Deputy Assistant Secretaries.” p. 173

“Make public diplomacy and international broadcasting serve American interests.” p. 194

“Public diplomacy has historically been, and remains, vital to American foreign policy success. Unfortunately, U.S. public diplomacy, which largely relies on taxpayer-funded international broadcasting outlets, has been deeply ineffective in recent years.” p. 194

Chapter 8, US Agency for Global Media

Overview of USAGM’s history, firewall issues, allegations of airing foreign adversaries’ propaganda and partisan messaging in the US, reform efforts of Trump-appointed USAGM CEO Michael Pack, and “operational failures, security failures, and credibility failures of Biden-appointed USAGM CEO Amanda Bennett. pp. 235-240

“Although a firewall should ensure journalistic independence, it has been used without formal regulation for decades in order to shirk legitimate oversight of everything from promoting adversaries’ propaganda to ignoring journalist safety . . . or promoting politically biased viewpoints in opposition to the VOA charter.” p. 239

“[T]he USAGM, by and large, is not fulfilling its mission, which remains . . . ill-defined and ambiguous.” p. 240

“[T]he agency is mismanaged, disorganized, ineffective, and rife with waste and redundancy.” USAGM should consolidate numerous redundant language services in VOA and its grantees. pp. 240 and 242

“Proven and durable” shortwave radio technology has been “grossly deemphasized” in favor of vulnerable web-based technologies. p. 242

Transfer USAGM’s “personnel security programs and suitability determinations” to the Department of Defense and Office of Personnel Management. p. 241

“If VOA is not put in the direct chain of command under the NSC, serious consideration should be given to putting VOA under the direct supervision of the Office of Global Public Affairs at the Department of State.” p. 244

“Reform USAGM “top to bottom” and consolidate its “subparts” to make it an effective tool to “tell America’s story” and “promote freedom and democracy.” p. 245 

Jan Melissen, “Strategic Functions of Future Diplomacy,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Online publication, November 6, 2024. HJD’s Editor-in-Chief Jan Melissen introduces this practitioners’ Forum on diplomacy’s strategic functions with reflections on the conceptual and theoretical value of public commentaries by forward-looking diplomacy insiders. His overview examines challenges diplomats face when planning in the context of rapid change; knowledge deficits in ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs); and the impact of domestic politics, multiple bureaucracies, and emotions in polarized publics on whole of government external relations. HJD will continue to publish original academic research, he promises, but practitioners’ Forums can contribute to setting agendas in diplomacy studies and provide research opportunities for scholars. Forum articles by Manuel Lafont Rapnouil and Arjan Uilenreef, policy planning directors in the French and Dutch MFAs, are discussed below. 

Manuel Lafont Rapnouil, “The Brutalization of Diplomacy?” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Online publication, October 30, 2024. Rapnouil (Director, Center for Analysis Planning and Strategy, French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs) argues diplomats are not just acting in a “more competitive, transactional, distrustful, fragmented and contested space,” diplomacy itself may be “under deliberate attack.” Diplomacy as “the management of separateness” — Paul Sharp’s consequential idea in Diplomatic Theory of International Relations (2009) — Rapnouil writes, may be under assault from actors seeking radical separation. Diplomacy is becoming a “combat activity.” Diplomatic communication takes place in “a much more competitive terrain.” Foreign policies are becoming more militarized. Distinctions between issues of competition and cooperation are more difficult to maintain. In this context of “brutalization,” he contends, future diplomacy will require “more effective and diverse communication and public diplomacy,” better security for a diplomatic presence in adversarial environments, investment in artificial intelligence tools and open-source intelligence, and attention to frustrations of domestic publics more inclined to support coercive capabilities and less supportive of cooperative tools and methods. Rapnouil’s claims are framed in if/then sentences, and the language of possibility and certainty. If diplomacy is being “brutalized,” then it will need “hardened capabilities.”

Arjan Uilenreef, “Catching Up With the Future: Diplomacy for New Global Landscape,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Online publication, October 30, 2024. Uilenreef (Strategy Director, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs) examines three structural trends that will affect skills, tools, and methods in diplomatic practice. First, is the return of realpolitik in which, he argues, hard power and the ethics of responsibility (compared with the ethics of conviction) is eroding the multilateral system and liberal win-win goals. This heightens demand for diplomatic professionalism, cross-generational learning, and institutional memory. It also requires enhanced strategic capacity, breaking organizational silos, and a whole of government approach in ministries of foreign affairs. Western diplomats will need to change their attitude and tone in relations with rising middle powers. Second, is the existential risk posed by global warming and its exacerbation of other security risks. Third, are transformational challenges presented by artificial intelligence to international governance, security (disinformation proliferation, risk of autonomous weapons systems), sustainable development, and incorporation of AI technology in diplomatic practice. Diplomacy practitioners confronting these frontiers will require new skills, deeper knowledge, and new policies and methods. 

Thomas Scherer and Dan Spokojny, “The Marginalization of Career Diplomats,” Foreign Service Journal, November 2024, 56-58. Think tank fp21’s Research Director and founding CEO argue the decades-long practice of filling approximately 30 percent of US chief-of-mission positions with political appointees “obscures a worrying decline” in the influence of career diplomats. A different measure – the total gross domestic product (GDP) of countries with Foreign Service ambassadors – shows that career diplomats are assigned to countries with less than 20 percent of global GDP. Political ambassadors lead embassies in countries with more than 80 percent of global GDP. Host country GDP is an imperfect measure for many reasons, they point out, but nonetheless it is instructive as appointments of political ambassadors are on the rise and as the US transitions to a new administration. Political appointees exceeded 30 percent in the Biden administration. The first Trump administration’s political appointees exceeded 40 percent. Scherer and Spokojny make a strong case for career diplomats. But they also assert career diplomats have been ineffective at proving to presidents their skills are superior and differentiated from political appointees. The US Foreign Service has done little to advance meaningful professional standards and doctrine. Its “muted response to the State Department’s new Core Curriculum for diplomacy is a case in point.”

Vivian S. Walker, “Reimagining Public Diplomacy for the Digital Age,”  Foreign Service Journal,October 2024, 38-41. In this FSJ feature article, retired Foreign Service Officer Vivian Walker (Georgetown University) reviews three new books with “practitioner, policy, and academic perspectives” on public diplomacy. My American Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Change Agents in Foreign Relations (Palgrave Macmillan 2024) examines American public diplomacy’s origins, evolution, and how innovative and rival practitioner communities transformed US diplomacy and foreign relations. In Reputational Security: Refocusing Public Diplomacy for a Dangerous World (Polity, 2024), Nicholas Cull (University of Southern California) reformulates the concept of soft power for a world dominated by geopolitical conflicts and disruptive information technologies. Chapters in A Research Agenda for Public Diplomacy, a compendium edited by Eytan Gilboa (Bar-Ilan University), examine trends and critical questions in public diplomacy scholarship, teaching, and practice. Walker’s informed and generous reviews summarize each book’s central themes. Separately and collectively, she argues, they “make a powerful case for the emergence of a multidisciplinary, innovative, and expansive practice equal to the challenges of a digital age.” Missing in all three, however, are solutions to persistent leadership and resource deficits and advice on how public diplomacy, which she describes as “the most undervalued element of foreign policy,” can be operationalized in bureaucracies.

Recent Items of Interest

Elliott Abrams, “Empty Embassies,”  October 11, 2024, Council on Foreign Relations.

Matt Armstrong, “Don’t Use East-West to Describe the Soviet Union and Russia vis-à-vis Others,”  October 22, 2024; “The Strategic Plan That Never Was,”  October 8, 2024; “Losing Sight of the Forest Because of a Few Trees,”  September 30, 2024; “Clarifications are Needed,”  September 26, 2024, Arming For the War We’re in.

Anthony J. Blinken, “American Diplomacy for a New Era,” Speech at Foreign Service Institute, October 30, 2024, US Department of State.

Ariel Cohen, “Russia’s War on Ukraine: Moscow’s Pressure Points, and US Strategic Opportunities,” October 1, 2024, Atlantic Council.

Joseph Gedeon, “State Department’s Little-Known Weapon for Countering Foreign Disinformation [Global Engagement Center] Faces Uncertain Future,”  October 28, 2025, Politico.

Michael R. Gordon and Dustin Volz, “State Department Division That Battles Foreign Disinformation Faces Closure,”  November 10, 2024, The Wall Street Journal.

Jory Heckman, “State Department Modernization Panel Comes Into Focus With White House Appointees,”  October 15, 2024, Federal News Network.

“In Their Own Write,”  The Foreign Service Journal, November 2024, 26-50, [Reviews of memoirs, history & biography, policy & issues, fiction, books of related interest, books for children & young adults, poetry, guidebooks/self-help, and other books by Foreign Service personnel and family members].

Joe Johnson, “What’s Truth Got To Do With It?”  October 23, 2024, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Jovan Kurbalija, “240 Shades of Diplomacy: Inflated Terminology and Deflated Respect for Diplomacy,”  October 21, 2024, Diplo.

Anatol Lieven, “A Return to the Classics: Harold Nicolson and a Pattern for Diplomatists,”  October 28, 2024, Quincy Institute.

Paul McLane, “Voice of America Will Get a New Headquarters,”  September 30, 2024, Radio World.

“Memorandum on Advancing United States’ Leadership in Artificial Intelligence; Harnessing Artificial Intelligence to Fulfill National Security Directives; and Fostering the Safety, Security, and Trustworthiness of Artificial Intelligence,”  The White House, October 24, 2024; “Remarks by APNSA Jake Sullivan on AI and National Security,”  October 24, 2024; David Sanger, “Biden Administration Outlines Government ‘Guardrails’ for A.I. Tools,”  The New York Times, October 24, 2024. 

Jason Miller, “State Department Making Sure Change is More Than Just a Name,”  October 21, 2024, Federal News Network.

Amanda Morris, “Future-proofing U.S. Embassies and Consulates,”  October 10, 2024, Northwestern Now.

David Priess, Mark Pomar, “Chatter: Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Voice of America, and the Cold War, with Mark Pomar,”  October 29, 2024, Lawfare Podcast on Pomar’s book Cold War Radio (1 hr. 11 min.)

Naseem Qader, “How Indigenous Names and Languages Are Reshaping Global Diplomacy,”  October 28, 2024, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Mark Scott, “The Real Way to Fight Russian Disinformation: Here’s Why the U.S. Is Outpacing European Efforts,”  September 25, 2024, Politico.

Dan Spokojny, “The State Department Reform Commission: A Once in a Generation Opportunity to Reform American Diplomacy,”  September 30, 2024, Just Security. 

Maria J. Stephan, “Lessons From Around the World: Engaging ‘Pillars of Support’ to Uphold and Expand Democracy,”  October 9, 2024, Just Security.

Jon Temin and Max Bouchet, “The United States Needs Subnational Diplomacy More Than Ever,”  October 25, 2024, Foreign Policy.

Pauline Yang, American Arts Envoy, video clips. ”US Mission to NATO,”  2023; “American Pianist, Pauline Yang Thrills Fans in Lagos,”  2022;  “Pauline Yang’s Diplomacy on the Keyboard [Taiwan],”  2022; “Terras sem Sombra em Ferreira do Alentego,”  2018’ Facebook and YouTube.

Gem from the Past

Paul Sharp, Diplomacy in the 21st Century: A Brief Introduction, (Routledge, 2019). Five years ago, pioneering diplomacy scholar Paul Sharp (University of Minnesota, Duluth) wrote this slim, clearly argued introduction to “the diplomacy of states and others,” and why it matters in an age of increasing international uncertainty. Filled with exercises, learning examples, and summary points, his book is an excellent text for students. But Sharp’s book is much more than a text. It frames ideas and problematic practices relevant to today’s political, moral, and technological challenges — and the agendas of scholars and practitioners. Much of the book is devoted to analysis of diplomacy and “bad leaders,” “bad media,” “bad followers,” and “bad diplomats.” Sharp uses the ordinary terms good and bad to address issues of moral content, professional competence, the political consequences of actions for others. Highlights include his assessment of diplomacy and populism, hyphenated diplomacies, differentiated publics, diplomacy and domestic publics, the erosion of boundaries between public diplomacy and ordinary diplomacy, and the erosion of boundaries “between the two of them and everything else.”

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.