Issue #132

November 17, 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: Views from the Field,”  November/December 2025, Foreign Service Journal.

“AFSA Responds to State Department’s Misleading Foreign Service Application Figures,”  October 24, 2025, American Foreign Service Association.

“AFSA Statement on Impacts of Shutdown on Work of American Diplomacy,”  October 17, 2025. | Sharon L. Papp, “Urgent Message from AFSA’s General Counsel” Your Rights Are at Risk,” October 2025, American Foreign Service Association.

Nahal Toosi, “Trump is Breaking US Diplomacy, State Department Staffers Say,”  September 21, 2025, Politico

International Exchanges

Michael McCarry, “Ben Franklin Fellowship Critique of BridgeUSA,”  October 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Bethany Allen and Jenny Wong Leung, “Trump’s Crackdown on Chinese Students Ignores a Startling New Reality,”  October 19, 2025, The New York Times.

Aatish Bhatia and Amy Fan, “Nearly 20 Percent Fewer International Students Traveled to the U.S. in August,”  October 6, 2025, The New York Times.

US Agency for Global Media

Ryan Knappenberger, “Trump Blocked From Gutting Voice of America Collective Bargaining Rights,” November 14, 2025, Courthouse News Service. |“AFSCME and AFGE Win Major Victory Against Trump Administration’s Efforts to Silence Voice of America Workers,”  November 14, 2025, AFSCME.

[Liquidation of international production, broadcast, and headquarters equipment],  November 2025, Rasmus Auctions.

Ja’han Jones, “Kari Lake Gives Viktor Orban a Major Gift Ahead of Trump Meeting,”  November 6, 2025, MSNBC.

Minho Kim, “Radio Free Asia Will Halt News Operations Amid Shutdown,”  October 29, 2925, The New York Times. | Scott Nover, “Radio Free Asia Will Stop Publishing Amid Funding Crisis Spurred by Trump,” October 29, 2025, The Washington Post.

Minho Kim, “Under Trump, Voice of America is Down, Not Out,” October 26, 2025, The New York Times.

Timothy Noah, “The New Deal Masterpieces Threatened By Trump’s D.C. Downsizing [Part 1],”  September 30, 2025. | “There Was a Plan to Save These New Deal Masterpieces. Then Trump Won,”  October 3, 2025, The New Republic.

Minho Kim, “Voice of America Stops All Broadcasting After Government Shuts Down,”  October 1, 2025, The New York Times.

“Memorandum Order,” Widkuswara v. Lake; Abramowitz v. Lake, September 29, 2025, US District Court for the District of Columbia.

US Foreign Assistance

Zach Montague, “The Monthslong Legal Battle to Save Foreign Aid,”  November 3, 2025, The New York Times.

Corneliu Bjola and Alicia Fjällhed, “Public Diplomacy in the Crossfire: Decoding Ukraine’s ‘Strategic Self’ During Wartime,”  International Affairs, published online October 20, 2025. Bjola (Oxford University) and Fjällhed (Lund University) explore the meaning of public diplomacy (PD) in wartime using Ukraine’s response to Russia’s invasion as a case study. They make two claims. First, in hostile geopolitical contexts PD actors construct both a “Strategic Self” — understood as a “Projecting Self” that emphasizes values and resilience — and a “Distancing Self” that frames an adversary’s aggression and destabilizing actions. Balancing their interplay in strategic narratives is essential to credible and effective public diplomacy at home and abroad. Second, the authors argue that in wartime PD actors adopt forms of “othering,” meaning initiatives that widen rather than narrow political and cultural space between countries. Othering can have positive and negative characteristics. They support their conceptual arguments with a qualitative content analysis of the Twitter/X activities of ten Ukrainian governmental and non-governmental during three phases of the war. The article includes a literature review of PD during wartime, examination of the concepts of “othering” and identity, and discussion of the “Strategic Self” concept in public diplomacy. Well-constructed graphics help explain their research design and methodology. 

Bjola and Fjällhed frame three findings in their conclusion. (1) “Othering” in wartime is both relational and adversarial. (2) PD in wartime need not lose credibility and become propaganda. (3) Balance and adaptability in PD are critically important in rapidly changing conflict dynamics. Scholars will find numerous ideas for further research in this thoughtful study. Testing its assumptions in the context of different digital platforms and other wars — and in gray zone conflicts and situations of non-hostile competition between war and peace. Development of the “Strategic Self” concept in the context of contemporary discourse on soft power and reputational security. And the concept’s relevance to the PD activities of government and non-government military and intelligence organizations.

Alice Ciulla, “Spreading Anti-Communism Among Elites? Public Diplomacy, Transnational Intellectual Exchange, and the Journal Problems of Communism,” European Journal of American Studies, 20(2), Summer 2025. Ciulla (Roma Tre University, Italy) examines the rise and historic significance of Problems of Communism, a journal of analysis and ideas published by the US Information Agency (USIA) throughout the Cold War and subsequently by the publisher Taylor & Francis as Problems of Post-Communism. Her deeply researched study places Problems of Communism in the context of US public diplomacy and Cold War ideological conflicts. It discusses the influence of the journal’s founding and longest serving editor, Abraham Brumberg, and its content, editorial trajectory, and contributors, many of whom were world-renowned scholars, emigres, and journalists. Ciulla compares the journal with other USIA publications and analyzes its impact on détente and adaptation in the post-Cold War context. Problems of Communism was “intellectually credible, ideologically engaged, yet editorially autonomous,” she argues, an effective hybrid form of public diplomacy. Founded at the height of McCarthyism, it stood apart as an informed critical analysis of communism by intellectuals in the liberal tradition. 

Henry E. Hale and Ridvan Peshkopia, “Public Diplomacy—Dissonant Events and Country Favorability: Effects of Trump’s Election in the Balkans,”  Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol. 21, Issue 4, October 2025.Hale (George Washington University) and Peshkopia (University for Business and Technology, Kosovë) develop a theoretical claim that events dissonant with a country’s longstanding public diplomacy can weaken its reputation in countries where its public diplomacy resonates strongly — and can strengthen its reputation where this resonance is weak or negative. Their article discusses the impact of Donald Trump’s election in 2016 on US favorability in three case studies. In pro-American Albania and among Albanians in Kosovo, Trump’s election had a substantial negative impact on American favorability. Among Russia-oriented Serbs in Serbia and Kosovo, Trump’s election enhanced America’s reputation. The authors argue their article casts new light on sources of country reputation and soft power, and the challenges democratic countries face when dissonant events in their democratic politics undercut traditional efforts to strengthen soft power through democratic reputation. The authors discuss their research methodology, its limitations, and special circumstances in the three case studies.

Robert Kelley, “Outsiders Running Amok: Disruption, Dissent, and Diplomatic Representation” in Anna Popkova, (ed), Disruption and Dissent in Public Diplomacy, pp. 39-55, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), [see below]. Eleven years ago, Kelley (American University) wrote convincingly about new ways to understand diplomacy’s actors, actions, and institutions in Agency Change: Diplomatic Action Beyond the State. This chapter builds on some of his earlier ideas. He opens with a discussion of conceptual and territorial boundaries — writing as a boundary skeptic who nevertheless understands the problems of boundary obliteration. He then offers thoughts on the meanings of “sustaining” and “disruptive” innovation in communication technologies and diplomatic space, rebels and dissenters as diplomatic actors, what he calls “the slippery concept of representation,” and reflections on the work of diplomacy scholar Paul Sharp, his views on representation, and his revised thinking a quarter century ago about citizens as diplomatic actors (“Making Sense of Citizen Diplomats: The People of Duluth, Minnesota, as International Actors.” [See Gem from the Past below.] Kelley’s chapter contains much to ponder, debate, and learn from.

Michael McFaul, Autocrats vs Democrats: China, Russia, America and the New Global Disorder, (Mariner Books, 2025). McFaul (Stanford University, media commentator, democratizer, former US ambassador to Russia) has written a deeply researched account of contemporary geopolitics through the optics of Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, and Trump’s United States. Three questions frame his narrative. How did we transition from post-Cold War enthusiasm for democracy and globalization to an era of trending illiberalism internationally and autocracy at home? How should we understand today’s great power competition? And what new policies should be adopted? McFaul’s clear prose and measured assertions are grounded in an overview of several centuries of US-Russia and US-China relations. Chapters provide data-based assessments of great power competition (current as of April 2025) using categories of military, political, and economic power; ideology and soft power; and competing visions of global order. McFaul provides plenty of content on US public diplomacy’s tools, methods, and institutions: the rise and demise of democratization since the 1980s; Fulbright scholarships and other exchanges; and Trump’s destruction of US government media services and State Department programs. He also discusses the tools and methods of “global Putinism” and “Chinese instruments of ideological export.” McFaul concludes with a detailed policy agenda, reform proposals for institutions and future American leaders, and reflections on recovering from polarization and autocracy at home. His informed and provocative recommendations for US government media services and advancing democracy abroad will animate seminars, think tank forums, and the planning of reform minded practitioners.

Jan Melissen, HwaJung Kim, and Githma Chandrasekara, eds., Home Engagement in Diplomacy: Global Affairs and Domestic Publics, (Brill | Nijhoff, 2025). The innovative and wide-ranging chapters in this volume, edited by Melissen (Leiden University), Kim (Ewha Womans University), and Chandrasekara (independent researcher, Sri Lanka), are a significant contribution to the literature on diplomacy’s domestic dimension. A term understood by the editors to include mutual engagement between diplomats and domestic publics, the agency of citizens as stakeholders in foreign policy, diplomacy as a process co-constituted by societal actors, and the centrality of state-society interactions in addressing global problems. Their lead chapter examines “theories, concepts, and blind spots” in IR, foreign policy analysis, and diplomacy studies. It explores diplomacy’s growing societization and domestic engagement. Other conceptual frames include domestic publics in diplomacy, evolving relations between diplomacy and democracy, participatory governance in diplomacy, and people’s agency and identity in the digital age. Home Engagement in Diplomacy makes a persuasive case for a trending diplomacy research agenda focused on state-society interactions, diplomacy’s engagement with domestic publics, and disciplines in the social sciences beyond traditional IR and communications disciplines. 

Jan Melissen, HwaJung Kim, and Githma Chandrasekara, “Introduction.” 

Jan Melissen and Githma Chandrasekara, “Theorizing and Debating the Domestic Deficit in IR and Diplomatic Studies.”

César Jiménez-Martínez (London School of Economics and Political Science), “Citizens as Problems or Resources: Power, Diplomacy, and the Contested Voices of the Nation.”

Christian Opitz (Helmut Schmidt University), Hanna Pfeifer (University of Hamburg), and Anna Geis (Helmut Schmidt University), “The Evolution of Domestic Public Diplomacy in Germany: Engaging the ‘Public’ at Home on Foreign and Security Policy Since 1990.”

Christian Lequesne (Sciences Po), “Home Diplomacy Across Borders: Consular and Diaspora Diplomacy in France.” 

Toshiya Takahashi (Shoin University, Japan), “Social Legitimacy, State-Society Relations and Non-State Actor Diplomacy in Japan.”

Yun Zhang, (Nanjing University), “Internal Societization of Diplomacy: The Disintegration of State-Society Relations and Its Moderating Effects on Japanese Diplomacy Toward China.”

HwaJung Kim, “Diplomacy and People: Contrasting Cases of the Two Koreas’ People-Empowerment Approaches to Diplomacy.” 

Geoffrey Wiseman and Allison Scott (Depaul University), “Engaging Citizens in a Polarized Society: The Choices for US Diplomacy.”

Anna Popkova (Western Michigan University), “United States Citizen Diplomacy and the Domestic Publics Navigating the Contested Terrain of Diversity, Inclusion, and Representation in State-Supported Programs.” 

Scott Michael Harrison (Simon Fraser University) and Quinton Huang (University of British Columbia), “Democratic Middle Grounds: Theorizing and Expanding the Role of Domestic Societies in Paradiplomatic Relations.”

Štěpánka Zemanová (Prague University of Economics and Business), “The Benefits and Pitfalls of Engaging Youth in Diplomatic Affairs: A Case Study of the Junior Diplomatic Initiative.”

Andrew F. Cooper (University of Waterloo), “Concluding Reflections.” 

Anna Popkova, ed., Disruption and Dissent in Public Diplomacy, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). In this timely and original book, Popkova (Western Michigan University) invited accomplished scholars to examine the public diplomacy of an under-studied category of non-state diplomatic actors — diaspora groups, governments in exile, and others engaged in dissent and disruption. The book is grounded in three assumptions. First, although states possess significant power and authority, their claims of political legitimacy and representation are frequently challenged by non-state actors. These actors engage directly with publics and exercise public diplomacy capabilities that can matter as much or more than status. Second, disruption and dissent occur when groups believe the state does not represent, or misrepresents, their interests. In using diplomatic capabilities, and sometimes claiming representation, these nonstate actors can achieve political goals. Third, disruption and dissent — often perceived by states as negative when they occur within the state — can be a creative means to achieve advocacy and dialogue. Popkova does not treat disruption and dissent as inherently positive. But “they can be sources of diplomacy not “anti-diplomacy” by challenging the state abroad and engaging in construction of narratives at home. Disruption that interrupts a monologue, she argues, often helps to create a dialogue and mediate estranged relations. Her book is the latest in the Palgrave Macmillan Global Public Diplomacy Series, edited by founding co-editor Kathy R. Fitzpatrick (University of South Florida) and Series co-editor Vivian S. Walker (Georgetown University). Chapters include:

Anna Popkova, “Introduction.”

Ilan Manor (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), “Disruption in Public Diplomacy: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Term.”

Robert Kelley (American University), “Outsiders Running Amok: Disruption, Dissent, and Diplomatic Representation.”

Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California), “Reputational Insecurity and Breaking Apartheid: Non-governmental Networks of Disruption and Dissent and the Case of South Africa.” 

Colin R. Alexander (Nottingham Trent University, UK), “Ethical Public Diplomacy? Dissent as Collective Momentum or Collective Consciousness.”

Anna Popkova, “Dissent Beyond Borders: The Russian Opposition, Boris Nemtsov Plaza, and the Public Diplomacy of Transnational Advocacy.” 

Aliaksei Kazharski (Charles University, Prague), Katsiaryna Lozka (Egmont Institute, Brussels), and Alesia Rudnik (Center for New Ideas, Warsaw). “Belarus’ Pro-Democracy Movement as a Public Diplomacy Actor: Identities and International Engagement.”

Nur Uysal (Depaul University), “Diaspora Publics as Disruptive Non-State Actors: The Case of the Kurdish Diaspora.”

Sara Shaban (University of Washington) and Anna Popkova, “Diaspora Positionality and Contested Diplomatic Representation: Iran’s Opposition Coalition and Woman, Life, Freedom Movement.”

Vanessa Bravo (Elon University), “When Migrants Oppose Other Migrant-Sending Countries’ Policies: Fighting Countries Who Are Supposed to Be Your Friends”

Tania Gómez -Zapata (Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Mexico), “Disapora Protests Abroad and Their Effect on Diplomatic Endeavors: The Ayotzinapa Case and ‘The Year of Mexico in the United Kingdom.’”

Anna Popkova, “Conclusions.”

Neal Rosendorf, “Only American Voters Can Reinvigorate U.S. Soft Power: A Rumination After Joe Nye’s Memorial Service,”  October 10, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Rosendorf, a former IR professor at New Mexico State University and a research assistant to the late Harvard University professor Joseph Nye, reflects on his human qualities, his monumentally influential scholarship on the nature of power, and his insights into the consequences of Donald Trump’s dismantling of American soft power. Rosendorf summarizes Nye’s public comments on the damage done by Trump’s policies and actions, which he made until just days before his death in May 2025. His blog points to the relative ease and speed with which soft power can be lost — and the difficulties that must be overcome for soft power to be regained. Nye understood the stakes, for the interests of the United States and others, in rebuilding soft power. Rosendorf argues “America’s reputation has indeed been ruined,” and that American voters hold the key to reestablishing American soft power. In Nye’s absence, he urges, it is time for “academics, influencers, policy makers, and politicians . . . to get to work.”

“Michael Schneider Oral History,” 2025, Interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy, 2015, Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Arlington VA, ADST.org. In a lifetime devoted to public service and education, Mike Schneider’s career has spanned Foreign Service and Senior Executive Service assignments, senior leadership positions in the US Information Agency and State Department, many years teaching and advising students as head of Syracuse University’s Washington Program, and leadership in the Public Diplomacy Council of America and its predecessor organizations. His recently released 121-page oral history is filled with insights and first-hand information on US public diplomacy from the 1960s to the present. For scholars it is a rich addition to the literature on American diplomacy’s public dimension. For practitioners and others, it is a map of the past that contextualizes pathways forward in diplomacy and foreign relations.

Stephanie Christine Winkler, “‘Conceptual Entrapment,’: Understanding the Researcher-concept Relationship in Critical International Relations and Beyond.”  European Journal of International Relations, Published online August 11, 2025. In this original and analytically penetrating article, Winkler (University of Stockholm and Goethe University Frankfurt) achieves several goals. First, she develops the idea of “conceptual entrapment” — “the complex and often constraining relationship between researchers and the concepts they engage” — as an under-studied element in Critical IR and the emerging field of Critical Concept Studies. She finds positive and negative elements in what on first impression sems an invidious term. Second, she introduces “autoethnography” as a method to illuminate complex and reflexive dynamics in researcher-concept relationships. Researchers, she argues, are not just external concept observers, but often they become “entangled” with concepts as theorists, critics, practitioners, and at times “concept entrepreneurs.” Meaning they “become enmeshed in the conceptual politics they seek to critique.” Third, she provides a compelling example of her arguments through an autoethnographic narrative of her research on soft power. A project that took her to fascination, skepticism, ambivalence, struggles with maintaining critical distance, experiences with soft power entrepreneurs, and a surprise email from Joseph Nye. He sent a positive review of her work that led her to reassess whether she had been sufficiently critical or become “too close to the soft power establishment I intended to critique.”

Winkler’s article, directly and by implication, raises interesting issues in the ethics and methods of critical scholarship. Does autoethnography produce criteria sufficient to achieve a higher standard of critical distance, more questions with elusive answers, or both, as she seems to suggest in her reflections on Nye’s email? Is critical distance more a journey than a destination? Is critical distance an unalloyed good, or are there research problems that benefit from critical proximity (e.g. democracy studies, diplomacy studies)? How does the reflexive researcher / concept connection alter the subject and object. That is, do the processes of observing and selecting lead to distortions in concepts and what is observed? Can researchers ever escape subjective influences or assumptions about human nature, norms, and the meaning of politics and society? Diplomacy scholars, practitioners, and those who travel between these domains will find Winkler’s article a significant contribution to the literature. (Article suggested by Geoffrey Wiseman)

Geoffrey Wiseman and Allison Scott, “Engaging Citizens in a Polarized Society: The Choices for US Diplomacy,” in Jan Melissen, HwaJung Kim, and Githma Chandrasekara, eds., pp. 211-249, Home Engagement in Diplomacy: Global Affairs and Domestic Publics, (Brill | Nijhoff, 2025), [see above]. Media voices and practitioners dominate the literature on US diplomatic practice in the era of Donald Trump. This makes the insights of diplomacy scholars Wiseman and Scott (DePaul University) especially welcome. Their chapter is a conceptually grounded comparison of US diplomacy during the first “populist” Trump administration (2017-2021) and the “conventional” Joseph Biden administration (2021-2025) — with a focus on diplomacy’s domestic dimension and whether American diplomats ameliorate or contribute to domestic political alienation and social polarization. It opens with a clear literature-based statement of their theoretical assumptions and definitions of politicization, populism, and polarization. Their empirical research includes reviews of the American Foreign Service Association’s website, issues of the Foreign Service Journal, writings of former diplomats, and academic and policy-related publications. The chapter explores “illiberal populist capture,” Trump’s politicization and sidelining of the State Department, and strategies of serving and retired US diplomats to resist political capture. It then examines Biden’s and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s efforts to reclaim State’s professional role, focus more on diplomacy at home, adoption of diversity and inclusion principles, and restore “liberal internationalist engagement.”

Among their conclusions: (1) Trump’s politicization created a sense of urgency among US diplomats to strengthen home engagement competencies; (2) commitment to DEI principles is a test of any US administration’s domestic engagement as “whole of society” or “select-sectors-of-society;” (3) Biden and Blinken’s laudable objectives were perhaps weighted toward already well-disposed sectors of society and could not bridge the gap with rural America, and (4) US diplomats need to find more effective ways to manage populist capture and engage with American society. This timely chapter foregrounds issues in the second Trump administration and opportunities for further research.

Recent Items of Interest

S. Altay, S. Valenzuela, and P. N. Howard (eds.), “Trends in the Information Environment: 2025 Expert Survey Results,”  October 2025, International Panel on the Information Environment.

Anne Applebaum, “The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark,”  October 14, 2025, The Atlantic.

Matt Armstrong, “Forgotten History of the Wilbur J. Cohen [Voice of America] Building,” October 16, 2025, Substack. 

Joseph Copeland and Jocelyn Kiley, “Americans Say Politically Motivated Violence is Increasing, and They See Many Reasons Why,”  October 23, 2025, Pew Research Center.

Shawn Dorman, ed., “In Their Own Write,”  November/December 2025, Foreign Service Journal.

Bruce Gregory, “Reflections on IPDGC’s Origins, Vision, and Future,”  November, 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Peter High, “The State Department’s CIO on Aiding Diplomacy By Modernizing Using AI,” October 14, 2025. Forbes.

Katherine Knott, “U.S. Continues to Drop in The World University Rankings,”  October 9, 2025, Inside Higher Ed.

Julie Moyes, “The Soft Power of Historical Connections,”  November 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Suzanne Nossel, “We’ve Forgotten What Soft Power Is,”  October 28, 2025, Foreign Policy.

Rick Ruth, “The High Ground of Soft Power,”  November, 2025. Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Amro Shubair, “Where Did Diplomacy Go?”  October 15, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Karl Stoltz, “Democracy Dies in Discordance,”  September 25, 2025, deft9 Solutions.

Mark Taplin, “25 Year Anniversary Special Blog Series: A Flagrant Act of Cultural Diplomacy,”  November 2025, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication.

Karen Walker, “Life After State: Employment Opportunities in Academe,”  November 2025, Public Diplomacy Council of America.

Lamia Zia, “YouTube As A Tool of Soft Power in the Digital Age,”  November 13, 2025, CPD Blog, USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Gem from the Past 

Paul Sharp, “Making Sense of Citizen Diplomats: The People of Duluth, Minnesota, as International Actors,”  International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 2, No. 2, May 2001, pp 131-150. Robert Kelley’s chapter in Anna Popkova’s edited collection [see above] prompts this note on Paul Sharp’s (University of Minnesota, Duluth) prescient article a quarter century ago. His considered analysis of citizen diplomacy, a term long used by practitioners in people-to-people exchanges, prompts reflections on its value in today’s diplomacy landscape. In part one Sharp explained why he changed his views from thinking citizen diplomacy unimportant to an evidence-based assessment of its meaning and value. In part two he offered a typology of citizen diplomats and assessments of what professional practitioners might say to them. The full scope of his reasoning cannot be summarized here. Almost every paragraph prompts reflection on his arguments in the context of current issues in academic research and diplomatic practice. His article is well worth reading today as the scholarly literature focuses increasingly on diplomacy’s “societization” and “home engagement,” “boundary spanners of humanity,” and diplomacy’s “public dimension.” 

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.

Issue #131

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 21st 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.

Issue #130

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.

Issue #129

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.

Issue #128

March 14, 2025

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

Bruce Gregory

Affiliate Scholar

Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication

George Washington University

BGregory@gwu.edu  | BGregory1@aol.com

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

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

eBook text and paperback here.

Kindle and paperback here.

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

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

PART I OVERVIEW

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

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

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

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

PART II TRADITIONAL MAJOR POWERS 

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

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

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

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

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

PART III GLOBAL SOUTH AND ASIA 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PART IV TOPICS/ISSUES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PART V SPECIAL FOCUS: EMPIRICS AND MEASUREMENT 

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

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

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

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

PART VI SPECIAL FOCUS: DIGITAL DIPLOMACY AND DISINFORMATION 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PART VIII DIPLOMATS’ PERSPECTIVES: BRIDGING THEORY AND PRACTICE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recent Items of Interest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gem from the Past

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

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

Issue #127

January 7, 2025

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

Bruce Gregory

Affiliate Scholar

Institute for Public Diplomacy 

   and Global Communication

George Washington University

BGregory@gwu.edu  | BGregory1@aol.com

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

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

eBook text and paperback here.                              Kindle and paperback here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recent Items of Interest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gem from the Past

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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