Academic Study

The Academic Study Committe advances PDCA's mission to elevate public diplomacy's value in building peace, security, and mutual understanding among nations and peoples. We seek to broaden and deepen engagement between practitioners and scholars through partnership, the exchange of ideas, and practical collaboration.

Diverse communities of public diplomacy practitioners seek to strengthen transnational alliances and people-to-people relationships through effective programs and dialogues that build trust while conveying American values, culture, and experience. Public diplomacy practitioners have a voice in policy development, helping national leaders understand the range and roots of global opinion and advising government officials on public behaviors, attitudes, and opinions when choosing policy options. The mutual support of scholars and practitioners strengthens the power of public diplomacy to make positive change in the world. Read more.

Public diplomacy was recognized as an academic discipline in 1965, when Ambassador Edmund Gullion, then Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, established the Edward R. Murrow Center for Public Diplomacy, now called the Edward R. Murrow Center for Global Diplomacy. The center was created "as a memorial to the man whose distinguished reporting and analysis of world news and imaginative leadership of the USIA set a standard of excellence in the field."

Public diplomacy today is a multidisciplinary pursuit with strong links to international relations, security studies, history, political science, and the social, behavioral and economic sciences. Numerous academic institutions have established degree programs and course concentrations in public diplomacy and related fields. Peer-reviewed journals publish findings from researchers, practitioners, scholar-practitioners, and teams combining these perspectives, including an expansion of regional and comparative studies. Scholars are not only re-examining the foundation of public diplomacy in soft power, they are also undertaking the challenge to re-assess public diplomacy in terms of grand strategy and geopolitics conducted in a contested information environment, while instilling research with greater sensitivity to gender studies, identity, and social justice.

Many PDCA members teach courses, conduct research and produce publications. To promote academic excellence and honor achievement in our discipline, the PDCA:

• Provides resources for professors teaching courses in public diplomacy and related fields as well as students of public diplomacy
• Facilitates connections between rising professionals and public diplomacy scholars and practitioners; and
• Showcases the work of PDCA members by maintaining a bibliography of books, articles, reports, and other resources authored by PDCA members.