Cultural diplomacy can help challenge misconceptions and reconcile differences that underlie conflicts. Although its potential has thus far been ignored in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the time is ripe to experiment with additional diplomatic tools. Diplomacy comes in two tracks.

DanceMotion USA is a cultural diplomacy program that supports U.S. foreign policy goals by engaging international audiences through educational opportunities, performance and cultural exchange. The program is a people-to-people international exchange initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, produced by BAM.

The political crisis over Ukraine has prompted ministers in London and Edinburgh to boycott the remainder of the UK-Russia Year of Culture, a celebration of the arts, education, sport and science that involves more than 250 events in both countries.

What do the U.S., Argentina, Afghanistan, and Myanmar have in common? This summer, two opportunities enabled me to explore this question from my perspective as an American violinist who recently moved to Argentina from Afghanistan.

According to Quanjude, which boasts of having sold 196 million ducks around the world, the dish has played its part in Chinese international relations. Its chefs would accompany Chinese diplomatic missions and pictures in the museum show Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, who made a landmark visit to China in 1972, eating duck.

"The Newport Jazz Festival is the finest celebration of jazz that the music world has to offer," said John Hailer, president and chief executive officer, Natixis Global Asset Management - The Americas and Asia. "In celebration of this year's anniversary, we launched the 2014 Jazz Diplomacy Project to share the history of jazz and explore the lessons the world has learned through the genre. 

Shashi Tharoor is fond of narrating this apocryphal story to elaborate on how India is emerging as a “soft power”- as opposed to military might or “hard power”- through its many advances in science and technology and, more importantly, culture, of which the Indian film industry is a prominent component.