Sunday, August 16, 2015

An edited version of a facebook entry on "An Attempt to Unify the Public Diplomacy and Nation Branding Camps"


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  • John Brown An example of the "over-intellectualization" of what is essentially person-to-person contact that's not based on abstraction, but the real world (I'm speaking about "public diplomacy").
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    • John Brown  ... And the abovementioned call themselves "scholars": Well, so be it. I'd rather read Aquinas than their "research" -- he's more comprehensible, even in Latin. All I can say is that I'm glad I had a good time "practicing" public diplomacy for some 20 years without having an "M.A" degree it in as an academic "discipline" -- but rather "prepared" myself for the Foreign Service by studying languages, history, and literature (I made sure to avoid "poli-sci" and "sosh" courses because of their abuse of the English language.) I also traveled to places where I hoped, if ever, to serve, or traveled -- more simply (or importantly) -- to places that gave me pleasure and opened my eyes to the outside world (including a "magical mystery tour" bus ride from Tehran to Istanbul after one year of archival research in Leningrad [73-74]). Need I also mention, to those who despise irony, that I wanted to serve -- humbly --  my country overseas, by being as prepared to do so as much as possible?




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