Evidence from the Middle East suggests a mixed record of benefits and challenges to American higher education arising out of the recent trend in creating branch and satellite campuses. (...) This projection of "soft power" as a tool of public diplomacy is particularly resonant in a region of the world where the impact of United States policy has, on occasion, been perceived as far from benign.

Russia appears striving to boost the demand for its language in North Korea, amid signs that the Cold War allies try to build up strong bilateral relations. Russia's Maritime Province of Siberia donated as many as 1,400 Russian books to North Korea, the Russian news agency Interfax said Wednesday. 

This U.S. leadership in cultural diplomacy is now decaying, in part because international partnership programs are on the fiscal chopping block. For example, the Fulbright scholarship, the United States’ flagship international exchange program, is facing more than $30 million in congressional budget cuts.

It has been 6 years since my Washington Ireland Program (WIP) journey began. I was standing on a hockey pitch in freezing Scotland, clambering into my not-so-flattering goalkeeper gear, when Kate Hardie-Buckley (WIP '07) came running up to me and declared that I had 'W.I.P.' written across my forehead.

In a Senate confirmation hearing this afternoon (July 30), Evan Ryan, President Obama’s nominee for Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), said that exchanges “capitalize on American strengths and appeals,” and that ECA is “the lifeblood of public diplomacy." Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ryan underlined the powerful role people-to-people exchanges play in advancing U.S. public diplomacy and foreign policy goals.

Union Human Resources and Development Minister M M Pallam Raju's visit has laid the groundwork for refining and enhancing educational partnership between the United States and India, a US official has said.

"His visit laid the groundwork for refining and enhancing our educational partnership and conversations begun during the Minister's trip will feed directly into June's Dialogue," said Tara D Sonenshine, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

As Chinese swell the ranks at western universities, the numbers of foreign students studying in China are also burgeoning -- increasing by 10% in a year to more than 290,000 in 2011, according to the Chinese Ministry of Education (MOE).

Since both Washington and Tokyo agree that increasing the number of exchange students in both countries is important to bolstering bilateral ties, Roos emphasized that providing incentives will be key to encouraging them to study abroad.