Restoring America’s Reputation and the Tragic Children of Fallujah

Last Thursday (March 4, 2010), some of the top thinkers currently engaging the issue of America’s image in the world testified on Capitol Hill in hearings before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs under the title ‘Restoring America’s Reputation in the World: Why it Matters.’ Joseph Nye of Harvard stressed the value of smart power. Andrew Kohut of Pew pointed to the fragility of the recent promising trends in world opinion and J. Read More

“Fly Me to the Moon… No?” The Effect of NASA’s Budget Cut on U.S. Soft Power

APDS Blogger: Justin Rashid Read More

Academic Conferences as Cultural Diplomacy: My Visit to the University of Leeds

APDS Blogger: Erin Kamler Read More

Rock and Roll Jihad for Peace

Salman Ahmad, founder of South Asia’s most successful rock band Junoon, has been on a rock and roll jihad (struggle) ever since his first concert at 18 – a medical school talent show in Lahore, Pakistan. Eyes closed, emotions pumped, he was ripping through Van Halen’s ‘Eruption’ on his guitar, mesmerized by the crowd’s screams, only to discover that the yelling was coming from a group of bearded students from a religious group outraged by music they considered un-Islamic. Read More

PD Lessons from a Chinese New Year Gala

APDS Blogger: Di Wu Read More

Striped Pants Backpacker

Veteran Canadian diplomat Daryl Copeland has been on the ramparts of diplomatic studies for several years now, advocating a kind of diplomacy he calls Guerrilla Diplomacy. Last week, at the International Studies Association convention in New Orleans, a panel of expert academics reviewed Copeland’s thesis and generally applauded his ideas. Read More

New Media, Old Truths

Many journalists and commentators have examined and illuminated the role of new media and technology in the on-going protests in Iran. Exposing the electoral fraud perpetrated by Ahmedinejad last year and the violent repression of resultant protests certainly called for the skill of traditional journalists and the new media capabilities of Iranian citizen witnesses and participants. Read More

Reframing the Dinner Conversation between the West and Pakistan

If Pakistan were a person, who would it be? Would it be Odysseus, undergoing a series of grueling tests in order to claim its true heroic identity? Would it be a hapless Sancho Panza, looking on with alarm as it’s dragged into ruin by the misadventures of those around it? Read More

Responding to Natural Disasters with Humanitarian Aid: Implications for Public Diplomacy

In 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami hit a number of countries, the coastal regions of Indonesia and Sri Lanka were devastated. Before the tsunami, the public opinion of the United States in these and surrounding Muslim countries was predictably low; however the huge efforts of US humanitarian aid immediately following as well as long after the crisis swayed public opinions that remained high even a year later in a follow-up poll. Read More

Japan and the Art of Apology

A discussion of Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada's apology for Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea during World War II. Read More

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