Salman Ahmad, Pakistani rock musician and founder of the popular band Junoon (as well as doctor, author, and film maker) explained last Saturday night to the standing room only crowd in the General Assembly of the United Nations that it was the video which pushed him into action. The video, of two men holding down a teenage girl while another beat her, sent by a friend from Pakistan, prompted Ahmad to fly to Pakistan from New York, his adopted home, to find the answer to the question that was tormenting him: "Which was the real Pakistan?"

In recent years Australia has made great strides in its public diplomacy and has demonstrated a remarkable ability to ‘punch above its weight,’ especially in the realm of international education. As the US international student recruitment became bogged down in visa bureaucracy and post-9/11 paranoia, Australia surged ahead to take up the slack and recruited large numbers of students from Asia especially.

Lately I have been thinking and writing about the relationship between science, technology, diplomacy and international policy.

GRAHAMSTOWN, South Africa – Public diplomacy is usually identified with and examined as the use of “soft power” by one nation or another. But the public diplomacy of non-state actors has had an impact sometimes even more profound than the efforts of the most powerful governments.

Any number of NGOs can claim a major impact on policies of governments and even world organizations through efforts in what could be characterized as public diplomacy, efforts that defeated far better organized and resourced forces arrayed against them.

This summer much global attention has focused on South Korea's biggest problem: its northern neighbor with his nuclear missiles and penchant for detaining American journalists. But South Korea has another problem: its international reputation. South Korea now has an economy approaching one of the ten largest in the world but falls short of the top thirty on the indices of brand reputation. Korea's image has lagged behind the reality of its economic and political transformation over the last twenty years.

Fellow-blogger Ted Lipien makes some valid points about seemingly basic mistakes that the State Department has made in public diplomacy in the new Administration. In particular, he notes, a chance was missed earlier this month to express solidarity with the victims of terrorist attacks in Ingushetia.

How do you perform public diplomacy effectively in the Age of Drama Queens?

It’s a special challenge if you’re Judith McHale, the State Department’s new Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy, with a special charge to rebuild America’s image in the Muslim world, especially in places such as Pakistan.

TOKYO – For the first time in five years, the number of international graduate students admitted to U.S. universities has declined, according to a study by the Council of Graduate Schools.