Professor Bernard Duhaime joins the USC Center on Public Diplomacy this Fall as the Canada-U.S. Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Public Diplomacy.

In terms of creating a cohesive policy around freedom of expression, communicating that policy and incorporating that policy into meaningful activities, the State Department has been coordinated and thorough in it’s design and development of a public diplomacy strategy.

Outspoken Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has made his first anti-government comments since his release from detention, using Twitter to hit out at the treatment of colleagues and fellow dissidents and risking a potential return to custody. Mr Ai became the most high profile casualty of China's increasingly authoritarian stance following the Middle East uprisings, after which several prominent Chinese dissidents were detained.

Hein Min Aung is a former Burmese child soldier, a young man brave enough to fly halfway around the world at the invitation of Human Rights Action Center to speak in Congress about his experience in the government army of the country of Burma. He hopes that his testimony will raise awareness about the plight of the nearly 70,000 other child soldiers still fighting in Burma today.

Shimkus, who also served as commanding officer of the U.S. medical ship Comfort, said the United States must not only focus on its military might, but also on its humanitarian power, by providing health care, infrastructure and other aid to people who need it.

At Deutsche Welle's fourth annual Global Media Forum, BBG Executive Director Jeffrey Trimble outlined how international media can support global development and human rights. The forum, held June 20-22 in Bonn, Germany, brought together participants in the fields of journalism, politics, culture, business, and development from around the world.

...carefully consider who was offering to pay for it. The money would come from the Hanban, an arm of the Chinese government...That’s the same government...that jailed Nobel-prize winner Liu Xiaobo for 11 years...and the same government that employs 50,000 citizens to scour the Internet in search of dissent.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, arguably the world’s best-known advocate of women’s and girls’ rights, is facing criticism for not jumping on the bandwagon of a women’s cause recently in the news: the right of Saudi women to drive. But this can be a tricky cause to take on – as one advocate of American ideals in the Bush administration, Karen Hughes, discovered during her time in office.