But What Do you Do?

John Brown's Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review: Public Diplomacy at the University of Toronto

PUBLICDIPLOMACYPRESSANDBLOGREVIEW.BLOGSPOT.COM|BY JOHN BROWN

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John Brown Yet another example of academic "experts" (and now, it seems, PD diplomats as well) defining/assessing/preaching about public diplomacy rather than actually carrying it out? Well, one doesn't necessarily cancel out the other. But we do have a limited amount of time on our small planet ... smile emoticon

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John Brown see also: http://www.unc.edu/.../2002_07-09/brown_cao/brown_cao.html

Brown | But What Do You Do?

Elsewhere in you will find a piece by John Brown, a serving Foreign Service officer, on the role of public diplomacy …

UNC.EDU

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Excerpt from the above-cited article (penned my pater familias some 50 years ago):

I am always embarrassed when people ask me what I do. And people, for the lack of anything better to say, seem to be asking it all the time.

I reply, sotto voce, that I am the Cultural Attaché, hoping that they won't hear and that we can go on to something else. "But what does a Cultural Attaché DO?" they come back brightly, sensing they've got me on the defensive. I try to pass it off with a melancholy quip like "as little mischief as possible," hoping that my unwillingness to supply information will discourage them. Such a happy solution is rare. They persist (more inquisitorial now): "But I mean, what DO you DO?"

I'd really like to explain that my purpose in life, if you want to get down to that, is being, not doing, but even I have come to realize that there's no point trying to go into all that at a cocktail party. ...

More on John L. Brown:

http://angles.edel.univ-poitiers.fr/index.php?id=283