Munira Akhunzada and Shasmi Maqsoudi came to Southern California to study American law, as part of a U.S. State Department sponsored program with Afghanistan to send Afghan attorneys to American for more legal education and training.

American movies have always been a bright and flickering window into our nation’s history -- a great narrative tool to tell the American story to foreign audiences. What better way could there be to support our public diplomacy than by screening documentaries about our culture and history at more than 500 American Spaces around the world?

Public diplomacy analysts say a difference in perceptions dating back to the Cold War era could hamper U.S. and Russian efforts to deal with the ongoing civil war in Syria.

The recent nose-thumbing at Russia and China by Professor Joseph Nye in Foreign Policy magazine over the inability of those countries to marshal soft power is flawed in a number of ways that go beyond the methodological weaknesses of his scholarly writings that I have described at length elsewhere.

Learning from the American experience, governments around the world have developed national innovation policies and programs to accelerate their economic prosperity and to help their citizens and companies compete globally.

The agreement is aimed at preventing exploitation of Filipina maids such as confiscation of their passports to control them, overworking them with no rest days and preventing them from returning home.

US President Barack Obama will visit Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania in June, the White House has said. Mr Obama is expected to meet lawmakers as well as business and civil society leaders and youth on his trip.

The ability to talk is not the same as the ability to communicate. That was the advice from USC’s Nicholas Cull at a public diplomacy conference here. Asked what advice he would give to the new Secretary of State, Cull said he would first ask a question: “What’s possible? Am I going to waste my time talking about projects that can never see the light of day?”