 Message from the Director CPD's Faith Diplomacy Initiative got off to a great start with our conference, "Faith Diplomacy: Religion and Global Publics," which took place at USC on March 25. Our participants included Douglas Johnston, Victoria Alvarado, Reza Aslan, Janice Kaminer-Reznik, and other scholars, clerics, and public diplomacy practitioners who spoke to a full house about issues such as the role of religion in public diplomacy, the work of religious organizations as public diplomats, and outreach to the Muslim world. We have identified Faith Diplomacy as one of CPD's principal areas of concentration, and we will follow this conference with publications, research projects, and more events. One of these forthcoming events will take place April 11 at USC's Washington, DC office. Speakers from our LA conference and Washington-based Faith Diplomacy experts will discuss this topic with guests from Capitol Hill, the executive branch, NGOs, and elsewhere. We conducted a similar briefing on March 28 about Chinese public diplomacy. Professor Jay Wang, Associate Dean Carola Weil, and I discussed Professor Wang's new book, Soft Power in China, CPD's research project at the 2010 Shanghai Expo, our upcoming analysis of China's U.S. Confucius Institutes, and other CPD studies of the world's most active public diplomacy player. During USC's spring break, I attended the annual conference of the International Studies Association in Montreal, which attracted about 5,000 scholars. It was heartening to see how many panel sessions addressed public diplomacy issues. This field is clearly gaining traction with academics and practitioners, and our public diplomacy caucus grows larger each year. CPD remains in the forefront of the effort to cultivate interest and expertise in this crucial discipline. Warm regards, Philip SeibDirector, USC Center on Public Diplomacy |
Public Diplomacy hosted a conference on Faith Diplomacy to address key issues of faith and provide a better understanding of the role religion plays in foreign policy.
