The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2015

8 JANUARY FEBRUARY 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Crossing the Divide of Mutual Misunderstanding BY SHAWN DORMAN D Shawn Dorman is the editor of e Foreign Service Journal. inbox and the immediate, rarely nding space or time for pondering trends and theorizing about international a airs. In bringing scholars and diplomats together, a more complete understanding could emerge. Our focus on teaching diplomacy begins with “A Practitioner’s Song” from Ambassador Barbara Bodine, director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Ser- vice. Speaking to diplomats who venture into the foreign world of academia, she o ers guidance on how to use their expe- rience as an e ective teaching tool. She o ers suggestions for how to bring theory to life and make the study of diplomacy relevant to policymakers and future poli- cymakers alike. In “Diplomacy Education Unzipped,” Donna Oglesby declares that the literature on diplomacy is essentially unknown to most members of the For- eign Service, including those teaching diplomacy. She points out that the study of “foreign policy” has been excluded from the “diplomatic studies paradigm” for decades. U.S. diplomats tend not to accept that distinction. Oglesby argues that the di erences between how academics and practitio- ners teach diplomacy, and the lack of a common core, raises the key question of whether U.S. diplomacy today is a unique profession with a de ned body of knowledge, or rather a practice by a col- lection of experts with assorted skills. Robert Dry, a retired FSO and chair of AFSA’s Committee on the Foreign Service Profession and Ethics, teaches diplomacy at New York University. His “Diplomacy Works: A Practitioner’s Guide to Recent Books” is a survey of the books he consid- ers key to understanding, and teaching, diplomacy. Paul Sharp, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota Duluth and co-editor of e Hague Journal of Diplomacy , describes the fraught relationship between academics and diplomats. He o ers suggestions for improving understanding, but explains why we needn’t be too concerned. In this month’s Speaking Out column, “De ning Diplomacy,” Ambassador Edward Marks cautions that there is much confusion among academics, as well as practitioners, as to what exactly diplomacy is. He spells out the progres- sion from foreign a airs to foreign policy to diplomacy, which he de nes as the instrument of communication rather than the message. Finally, we are pleased to bring you our most boring, yet popular, feature of the year, the annual tax guide for the Foreign Service. Please let us know what you think about how diplomacy should be taught, what role academics should play in dip- lomatic practice and what role diplomats should play in the academy. Send your letters to journal@afsa.org. n onna Oglesby, a retired FSO and former counselor for the U.S. Information Agency who teaches diplomacy at Eckerd College, o ered the spark for this month’s focus on teaching diplomacy. I met her at the International Studies Association convention in Toronto last year, and she described her research on how schol- ars and diplomats teach diplomacy. She found vast di erences in their approaches. Talking with many academics at the convention, I was struck by the gap between academics and practitioners. e work of each group seemed elusive to the other. Could the divide be bridged? Should it be? While this issue was in production, AFSA was fortunate to have a visit from Professor Abe Lowenthal, who had just published a new volume with Mariano Bertucci, Scholars, Policymakers, and International A airs , that makes the case for more collaboration between scholars and practitioners (see book review, p. 85). In his view, the gap between them is actually widening. To succeed in academia, scholars must publish works based on theory, methodologies and data that will be read primarily by other scholars. Diplomats, on the other hand, face the tyranny of the