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YPRO SPEECH: ADVANCING PUBLIC DIPLOMACY: ONE ADVOCATE AT A TIME
JUL 29, 2005 - 11:06AM PDT
Posted by Joshua S Fouts
Via Len Baldyga's email stream.

Special thanks to Gene Bigler for permission to reprint his remarks from the recent YPro event in their entirety. Advancing Public Diplomacy: One Advocate At A Time .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) YPro Public Diplomacy Roundtable July 28, 2005 Consensus rarely visits the foreign affairs arena, so the widespread agreement of both critics and supporters of the Bush Administration about the failure of public diplomacy in the war on terrorism is especially noteworthy, as William Kiehl of the Public Diplomacy Council first pointed out about two years ago. Yet recognition of the inadequacy of public diplomacy efforts dates back well before the September 11 attacks and was already part of the rationale for the merger of the United States Information Agency into the Department of State in 1999. Over 30 major studies and reports from a variety of angles and a wide array of organizations have been conducted in the last few years to address the ills of public diplomacy. The Bush Administration has made a series of high profile appointments in the Department of State to improve the record and has now turned to the President’s most important media advisor, Karen Hughes, and an influential Middle East specialist, Dina Habib Powell, to provide new leadership. Given the scale and the prominence of those who have been confronting the challenge of advancing the public diplomacy effort, I was humbled when the University of the Pacific asked me a few months ago to build training in public diplomacy into the University’s international programs as part of the appointment that I will begin there this Fall after my retirement from the Foreign Service. The national concern about public diplomacy has contributed to the University’s concern that its graduates in a variety of fields should be better prepared to deal with the challenge of working successfully with foreign publics in their professional lives. In response to this charge, I have begun reviewing the many recent studies on public diplomacy problems and reform proposals, as well as a small body of growing material about how public diplomacy is being taught both in the Department and in some of the pioneering academic programs in a few other colleges and universities around the country. By juxtaposing observations from the many studies I have reviewed with my own 21 years of experience in USIA and the Department of State, I have begun to develop some tentative conclusions about success in public diplomacy work and about how I may be able to contribute to both teaching about it and to developing a broader understanding of the process. This paper is a review of my formative thinking as well as an invitation to others to respond and join the process. Clearly, the pioneering organizations in the field, including the new academic programs, the USIA Alumni Association, the Council on Public Diplomacy and a variety of other NGOs, as well as government agencies and the media, have already created some fertile ground. This forum may also offer a modest opportunity to…... FULL TEXT
 
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