Dear friends of ISD, The academic year is about to close. Graduation is this coming weekend. The non-graduates have decamped, and the family and friends of SFS’s graduating classes of 2019 have started to arrive. This is a good time for ISD to reflect on these past two semesters,…
Dear Friends of ISD, A quiet campus during Georgetown’s spring break gives us a chance to catch everyone up on our busy and productive semester. The White House has just released its budget proposal for FY2020 and, once again, the administration calls for deep slashes in State and USAID funding,…
“Our wisest leaders have always understood that American foreign policy must be shaped not solely on the basis of what we are against, but also what we are for. And our interests still dictate that we should be for a world in which democracy is defended and universal values are…
ISD’s report on “Religious Intolerance and America’s Image and Policies Abroad,” which draws from a working group and public forum held earlier this year, is now available. The full report includes a set of guiding principles for policymakers, non-governmental organizations, academic institutions, religious organizations, and other interested parties. These are…
Dear Friends of ISD, ISD is pleased to welcome our 2018-2019 Associates and Fellows. These talented men and women from the senior and mid-career ranks of the State Department, US Army, and US Air Force have worked on pressing issues in every corner of the globe, from Armenia…
Dear Friends of ISD, While the very notion of diplomacy as a tool of national policy is under assault, with an ill-conceived “redesign” of our State Department underway that threatens to weaken the country’s diplomatic capacity for decades to come, we have been encouraged by the growing ranks of…
Dear Friends of ISD, Our 2017-2018 Student Fellows, selected last spring for these highly competitive awards, are hard at work on their research topics for this year. ISD’s six graduate fellows and two undergraduate fellows will take on fascinating diplomatic challenges, and produce a research paper with their findings.
Dear Friends of ISD, As another academic year gets underway at Georgetown, I’m pleased to welcome an exceptionally talented group of ISD Fellows, who have come to ISD to teach, research, and write on critical issues of diplomacy. Since the ISD’s early years, career diplomats, military strategists, other practitioners,…
Dear Friends of ISD, This recent column by Roger Cohen on the “slow unraveling” of the State Department reminds us of the enormous contributions of so many US Foreign Service officers “driven by the determination to make a difference and extend the reach of human decency.” At the moment,…
Dear Friends of ISD, The need for thoughtful, informed diplomacy and educated and skilled practitioners has never been so clear. The world is in the process of restructuring itself – redefining identity, good governance, economic relations, security, rights and obligations, and even the meaning of citizen and nation-state. Driven by…