American linguistics professors and students assisting an effort by members of a tribe in Kenya in creating teaching materials for their language. We at The World in Words podcast wanted to find out more about this. Is it worth the effort? The Americans are from universities that receive federal and state support. They have sent their people to rural Kenya to assist language activist Kennedy Bosire and others. 

This is what is known as Syria Supper Club, in which Muslim refugees from Syria and Iraq join groups of mostly Jewish New Jerseyans for dinners that are part fundraiser, part cultural exchange. Women from the refugee families cook the elaborate feasts; the Americans host the meals. In January alone, 14 meals have been scheduled, all with different cooks.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is meeting with his cabinet in Calgary this week to assess options, and has tried to act pre-emptively by shuffling his cabinet. [...] In this volatile, unpredictable and complex operating environment, the Freeland appointment may have been a necessary response to the incoming Trump administration, but it will not be sufficient. In terms of action, how might Canada’s new foreign minister best minimize risk, manage vulnerabilities and maximize opportunity? 

Is public diplomacy still relevant? This is a question often asked nowadays. [...] In international relations, public diplomacy or people's diplomacy is considered to be a form of communication with foreign public that establishes a dialog designed to inform and influence. "Today's myriad of international journalism outlets makes it increasingly challenging for U.S. government public diplomacy programs to capture global attention,"

A growing number of Israeli politicians are expected to descend on Washington DC in the coming months as part of an effort by the government to forge ties with the Trump administration.
The first to meet with the new administration will be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom President Donald Trump invited to visit the White House during their phone call on Sunday.

President Donald Trump on Monday dispatched two aides to scope out the studios of Voice of America, heightening concerns among some longtime staffers that Trump may quickly put his stamp on the broadcasting arm that has long pushed U.S. democratic ideals across the world. The arrival of the two aides [...] comes after Voice of America received blowback over the weekend for sending out a series of tweets about White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s claims about inauguration crowd size that looked to some like an endorsement of his false statements.

Over 200 years ago, President George Washington warned Americans about foreign powers undermining American democracy by tampering “with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils.” In the present, we are finding that old threats are new again as the United States is challenged by Russia’s strategic communication efforts targeting both our domestic politics and international interests.

Several times, the concepts analyzed in theory and the ‘how should it be’ don’t really happen in reality, for social scientists like me it’s a constant struggle to analyze reality and society and try to come up with proposals to improve the situation and the life quality of people, and sometimes they don’t happen to be quite as real as we would want.