Blog #1
Bruce Gregory
Twenty-five years ago, a small group of visionary George Washington University (GWU) scholars and Public Diplomacy Council (PDC) members established the Public Diplomacy Institute (PDI), later renamed the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication (IPDGC).
The Institute was launched in July 2000, pursuant to a Memorandum of Understanding signed by leaders of GWU’s School of Media and Public Affairs and the PDC, a non-profit organization committed to the study, advocacy, and practice of public diplomacy. A combined board was formed with representatives from the signatory organizations and the Elliott School of International Affairs. GWU Professor Steve Livingston was elected board chair. The PDC’s Barry Fulton, a recently retired US Foreign Service officer, was the Institute’s first director.
The Institute’s scholars and practitioners worked together in pursuit of two primary goals: (1) To advance the academic study and professional practice of public diplomacy through teaching, research, scholarship, publications, academic conferences, and public forums, and (2) To provide expertise on cutting edge issues in public diplomacy and collaborate with scholars, the media, diplomacy and communications practitioners, and government and civil society organizations in the US and abroad.
It was ten years after the Cold War and one year after the US Information Agency had been abolished. The Institute’s pioneers honored past achievements in twentieth century public diplomacy, but their focus was on the future.
That future quickly brought the terrorist attacks of 9/11, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, new digital technologies, the rise of social media, many more diplomatic actors in governments and societies, and an expanding array of transborder threats with no agreed definitions, solutions, and visible endpoints.
The PDI initiated a variety of activities most of which continue today. Its members taught academic courses, mentored US and international students, hosted public forums and academic roundtables, contributed to public diplomacy reports, developed courses for foreign diplomats, published books, sponsored visiting scholars and State Department PD Fellows, advised lawmakers and Congressional staffs, established its Walter R. Roberts Endowment, and initiated its annual Walter Roberts lectures.
The years brought leadership changes. PDC Council presidents McKinney Russell and Bob Coonrod represented the PDC on the Institute’s board. Successor Institute directors included Bruce Gregory, Mark Taplin, Sean Aday, Janet Steele, Will Youmans, and Babak Bahador, all of whom are participating in IPDGC’s 25th anniversary conference.
Key decisions in 2008 led to structural changes. The PDI was given a new charter, a new name, and an operating budget. Henceforth, a GWU faculty member would direct the Institute and a new MA program in Global Communication. The PDC, later renamed the Public Diplomacy Council of America (PDCA), maintained informal ties with the Institute but broadened its relations with other universities and non-profit groups.
The IPDGC’s mission and core functions continued unchanged. With the strong support of GWU’s faculty, visiting scholars, public diplomacy fellows, engaged students, and Roberts Endowment, IPDGC became a leading voice in discourse in the US and abroad on political communication across borders and diplomacy’s public dimension.
Today, IPDGC still looks to the future. But it does so in circumstances dramatically different from when it was founded.
Some countries, including the United States, are systematically dismantling diplomacy’s institutions, defunding its activities, and subverting its career services, while others such as China are building diplomatic capacity. Populism and illiberalism are ascendant. Digitalization and A.I. technologies, changing faster than strategies and operational decisions, are creating opportunities, disruptions, and a crisis in knowing what is true and real. Profoundly complex geopolitical conflicts and global problems continue to elude cross-border solutions.
Among IPDGC’s comparative advantages going forward, three stand out.
First, located in a major research university, IPDGC is a magnet not only for students seeking degrees, but for scholars engaged in research and practitioners who understand the value of professional education. No practitioner can have deep knowledge of all of today’s complex issues, technologies and policy domains. This gap between operationally relevant knowledge and diplomatic capacity incentivizes the need for career-long learning opportunities away from the pressures of daily activities. Practitioners gain from exposure to applied knowledge categories, diverse analytical perspectives, new technologies, critical and innovative thinking, and trends in operational environments. The fundamental goal of professional education is not to learn diplomatic tradecraft but to learn about what’s around diplomacy.
Second, IPDGC’s work is a blend of academic research, degree programs, practitioner-oriented courses, and public events. It is a community that understands the distinction between education and training, the essential importance of academic freedom, and that scholars and practitioners have different methods, priorities, and norms. At the same time, IPDGC recognizes that research on diplomatic practices can illuminate conceptual issues in theory building, just as academic study has value for practitioners seeking to change institutions and patterns of practice. Signature achievements include its MA program, foreign ambassador speaker series, and the talented US Foreign Service officers assigned to teach, learn, and engage with IPDGC’s faculty and students during the past 20 years. In July 2025, the State Department imprudently ended its Diplomat in Residence Program and terminated university assignments of career diplomats. In 2005, State had stated “that it is in the best interests of the Department to place a senior PD officer on assignment to PDI.”
Third, IPDGC and academic institutes elsewhere, perhaps not without some risk, are positioned to provide much needed expertise and civil discussion on polarizing issues in diplomatic practice, mediated discourse, and exigent controversies now challenging liberal democracies. IPDGC also is well suited to lead in a multidisciplinary research agenda that is extending the academic study of an increasingly “societized” diplomacy beyond international relations and communication studies to academic fields across the social sciences and humanities.
At IPDGC’s 25th anniversary conference scholars and practitioners will celebrate what has been achieved. Importantly they will engage in conversations about ideas and actions that will strengthen future study and practice. To be celebrated when IPDGC convenes its 50th anniversary in 2050.
Bruce Gregory is an affiliate scholar at George Washington University’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication.
