NEWS & EVENTS

The Role of Embassies in International Affairs

In our first seminar of the new school year on September 15th, Dr. Kent Calder, Director of the Reischauer Center at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies | SAIS, Dr. William L Brooks, Professor at SAIS, and Dr. Kotaro Shiojiri, Visiting Scholar and Lecturer at SAIS, sat down to discuss embassies in the era of globalization.

In his introduction, Dr. Calder emphasized the importance of understanding how embassies have adapted to the global age, and how the internet has changed public diplomacy. Dr. Brooks discussed his twenty years working at U.S. Embassy Tokyo, where he spearheaded the embassy’s public diplomacy efforts and helped modernize the embassy’s translation department. Dr. Shiojiri discussed the key roles of embassies in the modern era, including facilitation across language barriers and timezones, and managing the general trajectory of the relationship.