Funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the YES Program provides opportunities for high school students from countries with significant Muslim populations to live and study in the United States.

President Barack Obama recently named Los Angeles businessman Sim Farar as a member of the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, reports Bizjournal. The commission is charged with appraising US government activities intended to understand, inform and influence foreign public...

In his opening remarks, Ambassador of Romania to Azerbaijan Nicolae Ureche said the round table had significant importance for public diplomacy. He said the public community should be informed about the missions and commitments of the North Atlantic alliance in details.

In March 2011 I wrote a piece for the CPD Blog entitled "Israeli Public Diplomacy’s Longstanding Blind Spot: Arab Publics,” in which I posited that historical attitudes reaching back to the dawn of the Zionist movement provide a context, if not a continuous mode of thought, lying behind Israel’s inability and unwillingness to construct a public diplomacy program that directly en

The rise of China in the last two decades has been phenomenal in the fields of economics, military power and inclusive growth. To address negative concerns about this rise in the West, China has been pursuing its soft power options through the medium of culture, especially movies, sports, arts and music.It has very effectively used its soft power in the same way the US did during the Cold War era. The promotion of soft power helps in two ways; one is in maintaining China’s peaceful rise and the other in helping it gain international appeal.

Three current and former basketball players will be in Venezuela this week, part of a State Department “sports diplomacy” effort at a time of icy relations between the two countries. The State Department will announce that Memphis Grizzlies guard Greivis Vasquez and others are participating in the people-to-people exchange starting this Thursday

US President Barack Obama has made a rare visit to Puerto Rico, marking the first official trip to the island by a sitting US president since 1961. The visit is being seen by some as an indirect bid for Puerto Rican votes in the swing state of Florida in 2012.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she is concerned by Chinese aid and investment policies in Africa. "We are...concerned that China's foreign assistance and investment practices in Africa have not always been consistent with generally accepted international norms of transparency and good governance...,” she said.