Educating to Be Human Podcast
Lisa Petrides
The Promise of Public Diplomacy with Paul Kruchoski
SEP 16, 2025
38 MIN
The Promise of Public Diplomacy with Paul Kruchoski
SEP 16, 2025
38 MIN
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![<description><p dir="ltr"><img src= "//assets.libsyn.com/show/284546/Episode_Paul_Kruchoski.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="200" /></p> <p dir="ltr">In this episode of Educating to Be Human, Lisa Petrides is joined by Paul Kruchoski, a former senior diplomat at the U.S. State Department and often described as a changemaker within the institution, about the human side of public diplomacy and its deep ties to education. Far from being abstract negotiations behind closed doors, public diplomacy is about learning across borders, listening across cultures, and building the kinds of relationships that make peace possible.</p> <p dir="ltr">Paul shares insights from his work leading initiatives like the Open Book project, which brought openly licensed educational materials to educators across the Middle East and North Africa. He also reflects on how programs like Fulbright create lasting networks of connection, and what it means to push for change inside large bureaucracies.</p> <p dir="ltr">Together, Lisa and Paul explore the promise and the fragility of diplomacy today.</p> <p dir="ltr">Paul Kruchoski is a former senior U.S. diplomat and a career member of the Senior Executive Service. In his final role at the State Department, he served as the chief operating office for public diplomacy, managing a $1.5 billion budget and 5000 person global organization. His won the State Department's Sean Smith Award for Innovation in the Use of Technology.</p> <p dir="ltr">Previously, Paul led the creation and growth of the Research and Evaluation Unit (REU), which helps Public Diplomacy practitioners use evidence and knowledge to make better informed decisions. Previous assignments include Deputy Director of the ECA Collaboratory, Special Assistant in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and several positions in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs.</p> <p dir="ltr">He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a graduate of the University of Cincinnati. Outside of his work, Paul is an accomplished cellist.</p> <p><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Full Transcript: <strong><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Helvetica;" xml:lang="EN-US"> </span></strong></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:00:00 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">When you talk about what it means to educate to be human and why public diplomacy connects into that, there's this great line from the UNESCO constitution: that since wars began in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:00:22 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">This is Educating to be Human, and I'm your host, Lisa Petrides, founder of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education. In each episode, I sit down with ordinary people creating extraordinary impact, people who are challenging notions of how we learn, why we learn, and who controls what we. Thank you very much for listening.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:00:53 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Today on Educating to be Human I'm delighted to be speaking with Paul Kruchowski. Paul, a former senior diplomat at the US State Department who was often described as a change maker within that institution, is here with me today to explore the idea of public diplomacy. We often think of public diplomacy as simply the government's way of representing nations abroad, but at its core it is, or will be again, really about education in the broadest sense: helping people learn about one another, exchanging ideas, and humanizing differences that might otherwise feel abstract. That resonates deeply with what we have been asking here on Educating to be Human. Why is it important to cultivate the skills, values, and curiosity that allow us to connect across boundaries? Many ways, public diplomacy is about listening, engaging, and influencing all at once. And most importantly, it's about recognizing our shared humanity. So welcome, Paul. I am truly glad to have you here today. Thank you for joining me</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:02:08 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">; it's a delight to be here. I'm really happy to get to have this conversation with you and to share it with other people too. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:02:17 ]</span> <span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Great! So I think, as we get going, you know, we talk about these words, public diplomacy. And how would you explain that public diplomacy to someone, say, at a dinner table who's not heard the term before? </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:02:31 ]</span> <span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Yeah, so public diplomacy is two things: It's the way that a government engages with the public in another country and also the way that we connect people in one country with another country, right? So, government to people and people to people. And that's really different than government to government diplomacy, where you generally have people in institutional power talking, trying to work things out. And because of the different way that public diplomacy works, it has some kind of different goals to it too. And we really talk about public diplomacy being aimed at four things: Understanding informing, influencing, and building relationships between people in the United States and people in countries around the We do that through a bunch of different ways, but that's really what it is at its core. And it really comes back historically to this really interesting moment in time at the end of World War Two that also created a lot of the other institutions that we have come to know and love today. So, I think when you talk about what it means to educate, to be human, and why public diplomacy connects into that, there's this great line from the UNESCO Constitution that "since wars began in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed." The guy who wrote that is a poet and former State Department official as well, named Archibald MacLeish. He was really influential and helped write and stand up UNESCO. But he was also one of the senior-most public diplomats at that kind of early moment in the Cold War period. And I think this ethos that he embedded in the UNESCO Constitution is what animated a lot of what public diplomacy is today, right? And why we do it.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:04:32 ]</span> <span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">It's this idea that we can have a freer, more peaceful world if people understand each other, and you build those connections beyond just the government to government work</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:04:44 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Yeah, and that we thank you. I think that really helps us understand how this is important not only for governments and government to government, but people and people to people, and people to governments. And that reminds me of a project that you and I worked on, or that I was grateful and lucky enough to be part of some years ago, that was really about education diplomacy, which is something also that I think people don't think of when they think of diplomacy. And it was called the Open Book. And maybe you could tell a little bit about that project? It was it was a collaboration between the Department of Education and the U S. State Department. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:05:25 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Yeah, so the thrust of Open Book and then why we started doing it. So the idea was that we wanted to figure out ways that we could create some openly licensed educational materials in Arabic. And I think a lot of us, and particularly some of your listeners, may know about OER, open educational resources, and open education and the movement of the United States, which is really designed in a lot of ways to liberate, to bring out creativity in the educational movement and also reduce costs for a lot of people. But, you know, in a lot of other languages and places around the world, you don't even have choices about textbooks. You may not have textbooks available. You know, college students complain, I think rightfully, that they're now on the 19th edition of some core book that gets updated every other year, and you can't use the old editions. But when I, when I and many of my colleagues were talking to students at universities in the broader Arab world, they're still using textbooks where the last edition was published in the 1970s. That became a really big problem for thinking about how you cultivate an entire education sector, how you connect them across borders, but also create opportunities for them to be learning from some of the same standards and opportunities in their native language. And we really wanted to figure out how we could pull that together and do it as a joint project between the U. S. and many of our partners in the Arab world, where we have this joint interest in doing that, this joint interest in exposing people to greater ideas with fewer barriers to entry along the way. </span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:07:13 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Yeah, and what was quite amazing about that project is there were a group of 15 or 20 higher education faculty and administrators who came to the U. S. on an exchange and then, of course, went back the other way as well. But what was so telling about that for me, at least, as we began, was putting educators from the U. S. and from the MENA region, the Middle East North African region, together and meeting as friends and educators and talking about what the needs were of education and how they're met and not met. And when I just think about how that creates such a synergy, such a greater understanding of who we are, what we deal with in our classrooms, in our institutions, in our society, yeah, I think the idea of creating an openly licensed textbook that was more than 50 years old was certainly a goal. But I think that what surrounds that, the relationships, the understanding, the, you know, of course, the building of the materials themselves, but this other piece seems to play a much greater role when we think about, you know, what public diplomacy is like the Fulbright, right? That's another example I think of just an exemplary program. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the context of what it means when we put education into the diplomacy mix as opposed... I think people think about diplomacy as something you do around wars and, you know, or post-war or something like that, or to avoid wars. And education is such a decor as how we think about these things. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:09:01 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">You're touching on something that's really fundamental about what diplomacy is, which is it is about people and relationships. It is not about always the things you do together, right, or the outcomes, or specific tangible things that manifest out of that. And I think Open Book is a really good example of that, that you know we started originally with this idea of why don't we just figure out how to write and publish an Arabic language textbook. And, as often happens when you start to think about it from a public diplomacy perspective, you don't just write a textbook and hand it off to people. That's not actually a smart or good intervention. The investment and cultivation of a relationships build something that may produce a textbook; it may produce some other things but it sustains itself over time through the power of those relationships. And I know you know I think we launched Open Book in 2016. I have talked to you several times since then, and you've stayed in touch and continued to exchange notes and do work with some of the people that you met through that program. And if we had just produced a textbook, okay it may be out there, but then we would be one and done, right? It is a thing that exists instead of a network or a community that is sustained over time. And when you think about the larger framework of how U. S. public diplomacy and how we think about education diplomacy fitting into that, it's the same idea, right? That what you are doing is you are building networks; you are building communities through the programs and experiences that people have that continue to share knowledge, continue to exchange views, continue to humanize each other even when you may see something in the news that may otherwise try to put you on opposite sides from one another. And what I found so many times in the work that I've done is when people have those genuine relationships, it's harder for people to be othered because they know someone. They know someone who lives in country X, Y, Z that we are in conflict or in tension with. And those ties are what allow a bigger picture, countries to sustain peaceful relationships with one another. When you have a place where people hate, when you have a place where people have contempt for another country, another group of people, it makes it easier to be in conflict, to be at war, to hurt someone. But when you know that they're members of a community just like yours, when you know that they have a family just like yours, that they have parents, whether they have kids or not, they have kids around them, and it just humanizes it for everyone. And I think that that has been hugely successful, not just for the United States but for the whole country. And you spoke about the Fulbright program, which is probably the best-known public diplomacy or education diplomacy program we have, where students have an opportunity to study in another country. Foreign students in the U. S., U. S. students abroad, and scholars can go through that exchange as well. And it builds these incredible ties of knowledge, but also just human relationships, that, I think, are part of why the US has been able to thrive so much over the last half century is because of that dense set of relationships that we've built around the world.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:12:43 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">It's also why the Fulbright Program is kind of unique among government programming, where we co-fund it with many of the other countries that participate in it. It is a bi-national program by design. We co-own the program with each country that we run it in. They participate in the governance the same way we do. And I think that becomes a really, really valuable thing in a moment where even in the worst times we can say we still have this in common. We still have a joint interest in helping our people connect, of exchanging ideas, of growing together, of thinking about the trajectory of our people in our society. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:13:24 ]</span> <span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Yeah, and that's just such a beautiful example and way to put the sort of role that public diplomacy plays in helping societies, helping us recognize our shared humanity, which is really seems to be the most important thing that we could be doing today and 50 years ago as well. Well, you know, I want to kind of shift a little bit because in this work that you have been doing in the past, you've often been described as a change maker inside maybe one of the more bureaucratic institutions, like the State Department. But what does it mean to push for change in a system like that? </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:14:02 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Yeah, so two things are definitely true about an institution like State, and I think most other capital-I institutions. The institution as it exists serves someone well, and it is deeply imperfect. And those two things sit in tension, right? We can complain about the bureaucracy, about the stifling things that exist in a place like state, but the things that feel stifling clearly serve someone well. If you can't figure out who it is, you probably have not dug enough, right? So for me, a lot of what being a change maker in State has been, has been looking out and saying what is not serving the end goals that we have well? What is not taking care of people well? What is under delivering? Who is that system currently serving? And how do I help deal with the losses that they will experience? All changes to any institution or to anything entails some form of loss, and a lot of what change is is helping people grapple with the loss and also figure out themselves - what loss can be positive for them? What loss can be compromised with where you find a little to gain a little to lose? To how do you help people grieve along the way? I, you know, I have worked on two major reorganizations at State now. And the first question that I always ask people as we start going into a reorg process is: at moments of change, what are things that you are really excited to let go of? </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:15:46 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">That's a great question. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:15:47 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">And I think when we think so much about change as a moment of loss and uncertainty, thinking about how you can take some of the locus of energy back and say, OK, what would I like out of this process of change? What sings a song in my heart? And then, as a leader, try to be good about inventorying those and trying to make them real for as many people as you can. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:16:16 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Can you give an example? I completely get that in theory, right? Like you're trying to balance maybe, in some cases, top-down government priorities with the more human bottom-up engagement piece. Can you share an example of something like that? </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:16:32 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Yeah, so I'll talk about one that I think about a lot from kind of the early in my career, so mid-2010s at State. Policymakers always really want to connect with young people, right? There is a directive that we will connect with young people, and they generally have things that they wanna talk to young people about I helped write the State Department's Youth Policy in 2011. And you know, young people really don't like being talked to by institutional figures. They wanna have a two-way conversation. Most policymakers don't really wanna do that. Like, they have an idea about what they wanna get out of a dialogue. They have a very clear outcome in mind. And that means that when you're in the middle, like I am, you can do some really interesting things, like say, hey boss, if you want to get to outcome X with the young people, you really have to be able to talk to them about why. I can go out and talk to them. And in that period, a lot of it was about climate, right? And State at that time was not talking a about the climate change. But you ended up in this very interesting place where you can get the policymakers at the highest level to listen if you can help them see that the outcome they want is only possible through engaging with what the grassroots or what the bottom of the system looks like. And that is a repeated theme over my career. Like sometimes to get to where you wanna be with young people around you, you have to be able to talk about climate change. You have to be able to talk about LGBT issues in a coherent way. You have to be willing to grapple with what internet freedom means. And if you don't, you can explain to people at the top of an institution that they are never going to get to the outcome they want. And that's language that they often understand. And like being in the middle like that can be a really powerful place if you can figure out how to channel up, channel down, so that you can get people to compromise somewhere in the middle, which is a lot of what diplomats do, right, is being in the often not having a lot of institutional power but having the power of relationships to figure out how you get people to a place where they can all feel like they're winning a little bit.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:19:04 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Yeah, let me ask let me kind of delve more into that too. You know I know you talk and write about uncertainty and complexity in diplomacy, right? And you're kind of getting into the weeds of that now, right? So how do diplomats like navigate uncertainty? And is there something we all can learn from that as we are also trying to be change makers and in education and do the things that we do? </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:19:30 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Yeah, so when people think about diplomacy, they mostly think about two things. There's a really great board game called diplomacy that is the worst depiction of actual real-world diplomacy I've ever seen because the entire thing is based on deceit, right? It is a game that is entirely about how you can not reveal information and mislead other people. Where the business that diplomats are in is exactly the opposite, right? Your word is the only thing that is good, and you can never lie if you want people to trust what you say. And all we do is talk. When I talk about lessons from diplomacy, listening and figuring out how to insightful and incisive questions is the core of the work that we do. And listen not just for the words that people are saying, but to the point I just made: to listen for the deeper meaning of what they're trying to express that they may or may not be able to articulate or be able to say out, and then figure out how to process that. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:20:40 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">No good exchange starts with talking. It has to start with listening and understanding what you don't know. The thing that the game of diplomacy gets right is it's all about incomplete information. And your goal as a diplomat is to get the most complete set of information that you possibly can and talk to a lot of people, right? We talked a lot in kind of the COVID years about how, why do we actually need embassies overseas anymore? If leaders can just get on Zoom and talk to each other directly, why do you need all of these intermediaries? One of the reasons, of course, is time; the other one is a Zoom call loses a lot of the local context. It's not just about what leaders say in a government institution; it's about what the businesses say about what the leaders are saying. It's about how people feel about it. And you don't get a feeling of what life is like in a foreign capital on the streets when a government is taking action until you're there. And it's one of those unique things that I don't think can ever be fully digitized because it isn't a signal in the way that data is a signal. It's about understanding the feelings and the very human interactions that come out of things. Are people afraid of being out on the street? Are they hiding inside? Do they avoid talking to a foreigner in a capital now? Those arent things you are ever going to figure out unless you are on the ground.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:22:19 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Well, you know, speaking of Zoom and digital technologies, I wonder if you could talk a bit about the role of technology, you know, in diplomacy and how is that changing what we do? You gave a great example of how it doesn't, but yeah, I'd like to kind of think more about in today's world with AI and, you know, what does this mean when we talk about technology? </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:22:43 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Yeah, I mean, I would think about three things, the first of which is technology allows people to sustain relationships, both as diplomats and as public diplomats. It doesn't help you create relationships in quite the same way, but it really does help you sustain them. I have to say we've tried a lot of virtual exchange programs over the years where we start people online. I have not found those to be particularly effective at creating the same deep relationships that people have. However, once you've gotten people together in person, they've had a chance to bond, and then they go apart, Zoom and everything else create these incredible opportunities to stay connected. And I think your experience with OpenBook is one of them, right? Where, through WhatsApp, through all of these other tools, it's much easier than it would have been 20 or 30 years ago to stay in touch and to continue to work together. Second is the ability to actually gather and process data and information. So I talked a lot about the signals that you don't see. But one of the most interesting programs of the State Department in the last 15 years is when we put air quality monitors first on our embassy in Beijing and then on a whole bunch of other embassies around the world. And we started publishing that data; we also started collecting and using it ourselves. Because in a lot of governments, they are not always honest about what the actual air quality is. They manage very carefully the official reporting on air quality. And putting things out there and having the ability to collect and look at data in the allows you to think about stories like how is the climate changing in a really, really different way. And 40 years ago, it was almost impossible to get at the snap of your fingers access to really large and high-quality datasets on some of this stuff. Now you can, you can use that as part of the diplomatic negotiation process, but you can also use it as a way to communicate with people about what matters and just the facts of what's happening around the world.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:24:58 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">And then there's this final part that is state as a giant bureaucracy. And my best guess is that about 30% of most people's time is spent on work that is pretty low value. I don't think that routing a bunch of leave slips through the system of people that we have to pay hundreds of dollars an hour for their time. I don't want them looking at leave slips; I want them to be able to say yes, you may take leave, and the system to do the rest of it. And I think we're at this really interesting moment with AI and a lot of AI, but also more broadly process and system automation, where we have some really interesting choices to make.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:25:45 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">We can elect to have robots and computers become the artists for us while we toil away and do the and fill out the leave slips. Or we can choose to have them do the leave slips while we're out meeting with contacts over coffee. Doing the artistic and creative work, doing the strategic work. And that for me is kind of an inflection point, not just for state but for a lot of institutions and for societies: what do we actually want to embrace technology for? And I am really excited to continue to push the idea that we should allow humans to do the most human things, and then use a lot of the technologies we have to allow them to remain there with other things happening in the background. That really excites me.</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:26:39 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Right, so public diplomacy there, we're talking about a set of human tools, right? Or I think I've even heard you refer to them as, like, human technology tools. I don't know if that's the right phrase or not, but it's not the digital technology, right? It's the humans. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:26:54 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Yeah, so I kind of have two different ideas, right? One is how do we help use technology, digital technology, to allow humans to do the things that only they can do. An AI can't have coffee with someone and have a sensitive conversation, no matter what people are using it for. It's not the same, right? You don't have that same connection that way. So that's part of it. But then I think there's also this really interesting moment in technology right now where we've forgotten about all sorts of non-digital technology.</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:27:30 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">We've gotten so hung up on AI and digital tools, social media, and everything else that we forget that a lot of the most basic things that we have to do every day are also technology, right? Standardized reporting, that is a technology. Having one on one meetings having one-on-one meetings, having coaching, having mentorship. Mentorship is a technology. And I think when you look at large organizations today, a lot of them are missing out on some really powerful human technology that could make them more humane and a lot better. But we don't talk about it in those terms, right? We don't talk about them adopting human technology the same way we do digital ones. And consequently, people kind of shove it to the side. And I am not at all surprised when I look at the Gallup reporting that a lot of employees are less engaged. A lot of organizations are less healthy today than they were a decade ago. And I think it's largely because we've neglected some of that human technological side while we've been chasing kind of the digital side of it as well. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:28:44 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">You know, I want to think a bit about, you're talking about today and what we're neglecting in this way. It also feels like we may be in a situation where we're neglecting some of the importance around public diplomacy. And you know, I want to think a little bit with you about what's at risk for governments, for societies, for the people that you're talking about, you know, sitting in the cafe for future generations. So, you know, if we neglect this public diplomacy, what's at risk? </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:29:16 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Yeah, I think the greatest risk is of isolation and loneliness. And I don't just mean that on an individual level, but on a social, on a community level too, right? Public diplomacy is about how you get communities across borders, across cultures, across contexts, connected together. I think a lot of the events of today are pulling people apart. I think social media is, in fact, quite antisocial in a lot of significant ways. And it's pushing ourselves, you know, particularly as we retreat from a lot of the kind of more open public forums. We often retreat into ourselves, and that can be deeply isolating and lonely, particularly when people are really deliberately trying to other people right now.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:30:09 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">What I worry about at a moment in time where we see a direction towards less global trade, less economic ties, is we start to lose some of those cultural and social ties too, that are really foundational to keeping a sustained peaceful relationship between the United States and other countries, and between other countries themselves too. I think we all have to own the fact that loneliness is a shared problem. It is experienced individually, but it is a collective problem. And the more that we can do to connect with each other, not only the mentally healthier are we going to be, but I think the socially healthier as well. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:30:56 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Yeah, so when I think about the future of public diplomacy and in our role in it, right, particularly in this era of AI and disinformation, what do we need to do? What could we be doing now to make sure it remains human at its core?</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:31:12 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">I think one of the greatest things that people can do is actually go out and participate in it. Public diplomacy is not just an act that governments do it's an act that people do. And there is a wonderful network of institutions across the United States who are really deeply committed to this. The Global Ties Network that runs a lot of the local International Visitor Leadership Program chapters, the World Affairs Councils, the Sister Cities Network. These are all public diplomacy tools that are intended to be participatory. There are several here in my hometown of Albuquerque and in Santa Fe there's a thriving community, a lot of which is just sustained by people who really care about that work and about the ties that they have around the world.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang="EN-US"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:32:06 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">So I think we can participate in the political process of it, but there's really also nothing like going out and doing and helping particularly young people go out and do too. I think everyone you talk to who gets the spark, they catch the bug for international travel, for international curiosity, can tell you a story about that first moment that made them curious. It's often an interaction, right? Right, right. It's an encounter that they have with someone who is fundamentally different, who makes them curious. We all have ways to help orchestrate those. So we should.</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:32:48 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">You know, as we talk about public diplomacy on the human level, on the institution. level I think sometimes we can get discouraged by what we build. I mean we build these beautiful structures and things emerge, and lives are changed. And then, you know, something comes crashing down on it and we think, oh, all that was for nothing. You know, how do you address, how have you addressed that? Or what do you think the model is for seeing that differently? </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:33:18 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Yeah, so one of my favorite metaphors that you're doing a beautiful job at teeing me up for, one of my favorite metaphors is the idea of building sandcastles on the beach, right? Which is when we're doing a lot of work in government, in community-building, we're sitting there on a beach, we can see the ocean out there. We're building this beautiful structure. We're really happy; it's gorgeous. And then the water just comes up a little too high, maybe because we didn't look too carefully at the tide calendar, or, you know, maybe there's a boat offshore that pushes the waves a little bit higher, and it just completely sweeps it.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:33:59 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">And I think we make a mistake by focusing on the sandcastle rather than the building of sandcastles. As soon as you build a sandcastle and someone sees it, they're impacted by the beauty, by the experience that they have. And the sandcastle is washed away, and it's gone, and it's returned to the flat sand. You can build another sandcastle, but the experience of having encountered that is gonna stick with people. And I think back to the question just before, right? Or talking about the OpenBook project. Every single program that I have, almost every single program I have worked on had a lifecycle where it lived and then it ended. OpenBook, we are not still running exchange programs on that. I did some incredible work on education technology programming earlier in my career too. We don't do that anymore.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:34:57 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">However, I still hear from people in the diplomatic core and overseas whose lives were changed by that? The sandcastle doesn't still have to be there to have impacted people in a beautiful way. And I think for a lot of us, every time the sandcastle is knocked down is a chance for reinvention and for redesigning it in new ways. Maybe you didn't like something you did; maybe you saw something that someone else did that was really cool. Take a moment to mourn the loss, and then figure out on what you're going to build next that's beautiful, and just keep doing it over and over again, faster and faster, again, because you're going to end up doing incredible things that continue to have really good impact for people.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa I</span> <span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">love that. Thank you. And what a perfect ending. And of I was just reminded, as you're talking there, I'm hearing Jimi Hendrix and then also Tuck and Patty did a beautiful version of the song, you know, sandcastles eventually fall into the sea or they fall into the sea eventually. You know that song, right? Yeah, of course. Castles made of sand. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:36:14 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Before we finish, I always like to leave space for one final question, something I ask all my guests. Can you make up the title of the book that you wish more people would read?</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Paul [ 00:36:32 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">This is going to be a little bit cliche but, particularly at this moment in I think we need a book that is government by the people and for the people. I think people so often today forget that government is not just for them. Institutions are not just for them. It is made up of them too. It is built by them. And even at moments where it feels very distant, you have ways to contribute, to influence, to create change, to make it work better for you, and to make it work better for the world that you want to have in it. And I don't want people to lose sight of the agency that they have in making the world a better place for themselves, for the children, and for the people that they love.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span lang= "EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; color: #a6a6a6; mso-themecolor: background1; mso-themeshade: 166;" xml:lang="EN-US">Lisa [ 00:37:21 ]</span><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;" xml:lang= "EN-US">Paul, thank you so much for joining us today. I've really appreciated the way you've helped us see public diplomacy not just as a government-to-government work that often feels out of reach for most people. but as something deeply human about connecting across boundaries. It's been such a thoughtful reminder of how education and relationships really sit at the heart of. Thank you, everybody, for listening to the show this week. This has been Lisa Petrides with Educating to be Human. If you enjoy our show, please rate and review us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can access our show notes for links and information on our guests. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram, Blue Sky, at edutobehuman. That is E D U to be human. This podcast was created by Lisa Petrides and produced by Helene Theros. Educating to be Human is recorded by Nathan Sherman and edited by Ty Mayer, with music by Orestes Koletsos.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style= "font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 10pt;" xml:lang= "EN-US"> </span></p></description>](https://us-central1-podcastguru-217d6.cloudfunctions.net/gcf_get_image?image_url=https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts211/v4/71/64/51/71645124-15ea-3904-4b17-b7d95fe79a4d/mza_9284714588987662117.jpg/600x600bb.jpg&width=300&height=300&api_key=xqFmUFX5BHLBTA)
