Announcing Panelists for LGBT in Public Diplomacy

With our closing event for the Fall semester, “Out Abroad: LGBT, Public Diplomacy and the Global Discourse of Rights” now set for November 20, CPD is pleased to announce Patrick J. Linehan, Douglas Janoff, and Monica Trasandes as panelists with Reverend Kelby Harrison serving as moderator.

CPD’s current U.S. Public Diplomat in Residence, Linehan is a veteran diplomat and public diplomacy practitioner, having worked for the U.S. Foreign Service for 30 years. Linehan is coming off a three-year assignment at the U.S. Consulate General in Osaka-Kobe, Japan, where he served as the Consul General, and has held posts abroad in Finland, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, and Canada. He co-authored the book 夫夫円満 with his husband on life as a gay diplomatic couple, which was released in July 2014 in Japan.

Douglas Janoff is the author of Pink Blood: Homophobic Violence in Canada, and senior policy advisor for the Government of Canada in Ottawa. Currently conducting doctoral research on “Multilateral Diplomacy and the LGBT Human Rights Movement” at Carleton University, Janoff is also the Diplomat in Residence at the Patterson School of International Affairs at the University of Kentucky, and remains dedicated to deepening engagement in the field of human rights and democratic governance.

The Director of Spanish-Language and Latino Media at GLAAD, Monica Trasandes has trained over 100 community members and leaders, while conducting interviews on CNN en Español, Telemundo, and Univision, as well as a number of radio and print outlets. In 2010, Trasandes was part of a study that found growing support among Latinos for LGBT issues and people, and in 2012, her novel Broken Like This about triangulated love, was published.

Moderating the forum will be Reverend Kelby Harrison, Director of the USC LGBT Resource Center and Director of Spirituality and Sexuality at the USC Office of Religious Life. Committed to the spiritual health and expression, and full inclusion of LGBT people in all faith traditions, she was previously a post-doctoral teaching fellow at Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York where she taught Christian ethics, philosophy of religion, LGBT social ethics, and sexual ethics. Dr. Harrison received her Ph.D. in ethics, gender, and sexuality from Northwestern University in 2010, and is the author of the book Sexual Deceit: The Ethics of Passing.

For more on the event “Out Abroad: LGBT, Public Diplomacy and the Global Discourse of Rights,” including registration and RSVP information, click here.