In recent years, many students have altered or sometimes canceled their study abroad plans to reflect current international affairs. 

Recent developments at home and abroad suggest that Japan’s foreign policy is at a major turning point. Concrete steps are being taken to deepen the bilateral security alliance with the United States, and yet there is no national consensus on what should be done about the overconcentration of US bases in Okinawa. [...] The thrust of public diplomacy in the postwar years was to project an image of Japan that was not militarist. 

Selma director Ava DuVernay is brining new cinema to our shores. This month, her distribution company, ARRAY, is releasing the South African coming-of-age drama Ayanda in theaters in Los Angeles and New York. Ayanda—starring Terry Pheto, star of the Oscar-winning South African indie Tsotsi—tells the story of a young woman who is willing to do anything to keep her father's legacy alive.

[According to Columbia Professor Hisham Aidi,] there is little evidence that U.S. or Indian efforts to use Bollywood actually turn youth away from extremism.

Last week it came to light that Beijing’s state-run China Radio International secretly owns 60% of a U.S. company, G&E Studio, which leases stations and airtime in Washington, Philadelphia, Boston and San Francisco, among other cities. Beijing uses similar subterfuges in Europe and Australia. 

In the mid-2000s, when the latter perspective was ascendant, the US and UK launched a "Cultural War on Terror", mobilising art, music and film - what the state department called Public Diplomacy 2.0 - aimed at disrupting the "jihadist narrative" and spreading liberal interpretations of Islam

J. Calvin Jarrell knows Cubans have suffered because of their country’s social, political and economic isolation, but he can’t help but worry how changing tides will affect it. The retired dance professor emeritus at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville has traveled to Cuba 24 times in nine years.

The collection, "Islamic Art Now," has built on from then, and will occupy most of the fourth floor of LACMA until January 2016 (a second Islamic Art exhibit will be put in place after its removal). With 200 pieces, it is the largest collection of modern Islamic art in the world.