THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2025 17 No timeline has been announced for nominating a permanent Director General. Public Diplomacy 2025 Winners Announced The Public Diplomacy Council of America (PDCA) announced two winners of the 2025 Award for Achievement in Public Diplomacy. The Northstar team in the State Department’s Office of Global Public Affairs won for the “design, development, and deployment of the Northstar AI-powered global media analytics tool.” The tool enables the department to efficiently track real-time news as it occurs, with AI translation of more than a half million news articles and social media posts per day. Former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Liz Allen estimates that it has saved 180,000 annual labor hours and freed up significant amounts of contract dollars. The U.S.-Saudi Higher Education Partnerships Forum received the award for its work that “markedly enhanced U.S.-Saudi education and research partnerships, positively impacted bilateral relations, and helped support American colleges and universities.” The Partnership Forum was developed by U.S. Embassy Riyadh’s cultural affairs office personnel and representatives of the Institute of International Education. It has led to a memorandum of understanding outlining both countries’ commitment to educational and scientific collaboration, as well as a Saudi commitment to increase the number of Saudi students in the U.S. by 2,000 per year over the next five years. PDCA President Joel Anthony Fischman said of this year’s winners: “Both sets of recipients demonstrate the creative use of diplomacy in advancing U.S. interests and model the opportunities available to other public diplomacy practitioners in the State Department.” Architecture of Peace 50 Years Ago T he greatest threat to our future security and welfare lies in the disintegration of the international order. We talk of a “structure of peace,” yet seldom in history have so many existing structures fallen apart. The United Nations system of collective security has broken down, the Bretton Woods financial system has broken down, the GATT system of open and nondiscriminatory trade has broken down. The survival of human civilization will depend on mankind’s capacity to fashion a new international order. —Richard N. Gardner, from “The Challenge of Multilateral Diplomacy” in the June 1975 edition of The Foreign Service Journal. PDCA promotes excellence and honors achievement in public diplomacy professional practice, academic study, and advocacy. Its 500 members include American diplomats, scholars, rising professionals, and retired Foreign Service and Civil Service officials interested in the public dimension of U.S. statecraft and in educational and cultural exchange. The awards program was established in 1993. Open Letter Warns of Threats to Democracy More than 200 former U.S. diplomats, national security officials, and senior government leaders have issued a forceful open letter warning that American democracy is under serious threat. Titled “The Assault on American Democracy: A Call to Action,” the letter expresses deep concern over what the signatories describe as President Donald Trump’s erosion of democratic institutions at home and weakening of U.S. leadership abroad. Signed by former ambassadors, assistant secretaries, military officers, and intelligence officials from both political parties, the letter argues that the moral foundation of American power—democracy, liberty, and human rights—is “in grave danger.” The authors cite actions by the administration that they claim undermine alliances, damage the global economic order, intimidate the free press, politicize the judiciary, and dismantle key institutions such as USAID. The signatories call for immediate action, urging former senior officials, business leaders, universities, media outlets, and legal institutions to publicly defend democratic norms. They warn that waiting passively for electoral solutions risks allowing authoritarian practices to become entrenched.
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