The United States seeks to support the people of the Middle East and North Africa as they work to realize their aspirations for greater dignity, justice, and opportunity. So said Tara Sonenshine, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum.

A provision in the immigration bill now being considered by Congress could change things. Bill Gertz, CEO of the American Institute for Foreign Study, the organization that sponsored Davies, says the proposed legislation could kill these exchange programs.

That venture was part of the two-year Global Dialogue on the Future of Iran that Ottawa is sponsoring through the Munk School in order to increase digital communications with and among dissident Iranians.

Answering the question of whether China exerts soft power in the world depends heavily on the point of view of the critic, according to Trefor Moss in The Diplomat: “China has little attractive power – in the West. But then not everyone is watching China through Western eyes,” he writes.

Israel has threatened military action to ensure the Shiite Muslim-led state doesn’t obtain nuclear weapons should diplomacy fail, and the U.S. has also signaled it’s ready to use force. Rohani has criticized Jalili for his intransigence in negotiations over the nuclear work. Iran maintains the work is needed for civilian purposes, such as generating electricity and for medicine.

Hoffman contends that Israel’s foreign policy is in urgent need of a structural overhaul in order to deal with the challenges of public diplomacy. He is currently formulating an action plan that would redefine the authority granted by law to Israel’s foreign-affairs and public-diplomacy activities.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/06/israeli-foreign-minist...

Nearly 67 years ago, the American diplomat George F. Kennan laid out the strategic framework that would define the towering rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States. We came to know it as the Cold War — as real and in some ways as dangerous as a hot war, an overshadowing, winner-take-all ideological conflict juxtaposing communism and democratic capitalism, played out through diplomacy and small-scale conflicts in lieu of the unimaginable alternative: total nuclear conflagration.

Some of the latest innovations on display included paper USBs, translation tools and mobile crisis intervention projects. Focal topics included use of social media, mobile phones and innovative tools for exchanging content with audiences, and tools for getting information into press-restrictive societies such as Cuba, Syria and China.