Let’s say you’re a public servant. You’ve taken an oath to uphold the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and also to obey the commander-in-chief. What if you can’t do both? And what if following the law...
“How can I help?” is the question for Sameer Hossain, who began his career at State in the Office of International Religious Freedom and has since moved to a similar domestic role at Homeland Security. Traveling to Rohingya refugee camps...
Most of us are not born with leadership skills, explains Marc Grossman, one of the highest-ranking career Foreign Service Officers ever. We learn to become leaders. We fail a lot, we pick ourselves up and knock on more doors, and we learn. (Laura...
Why is public diplomacy especially important in Mexico? Mi casa es su casa, or put another way, we have 35 million US citizens of Mexican heritage, a 2000 mile border, 1 million people going in both directions over the border every day, and...
Download file | Play in new window What’s so important about devoting your life to service? What are the rewards? How have the changing times impacted the work of diplomacy, and how have they not? One thing never changes: You have the...
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Is immunity the same as impunity? Sadly for some, there are always consequences for a bad act. David Stewart, former State Department attorney, explains the reality.
Brand new to the job, Lizzie Slater arrives at Embassy Dar es Salaam ready to begin work on embassy communications of every kind. Then the bomb falls. She is buried and seriously injured. But once pulled from the rubble, does she stop working? Many...
The Sequoia: A presidential yacht? A floating icon of American and diplomatic history? A loan gone south? Pete schools Laura on the proper pronoun for a thing of such great beauty (a “she”, not an “it”) and Mike Cantor does...
We're in LA right now promoting a TV script we've written, inspired by many of AmDip's greatest stories including this one from an interview with Kate Canavan on the many things that can go wrong in Tijuana. Two air traffic controllers, fired for...
AMLO, or Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President of Mexico, takes the long view, and so does the Mexican populace, in the face of insults and other perhaps spontaneous diplomatic communiques conveyed by tweet. As the 13th largest economy in the...