DiploNews – Issue 242 – 18 December 2013
Upcoming study opportunities
Introduction to Internet Governance
Internet Governance (IG) may be more important to you than you realise.
Have you been reading and worrying about the Snowden revelations? Does online surveillance concern you and your colleagues? These are important IG issues. Learning more about IG will help you understand these personal and professional issues, and what can and should be done about them. Net neutrality? Privacy in online storage? Guidelines for cross-border Internet issues? How can regulators enhance and protect without interfering with the innovative principles that are the core of the Internet? Diplo's Introduction to Internet Governance online course will give you a foundation for discussing and addressing these issues. The next course starts the week of 17 February. Visit the course webpage to read more and apply by 13 January 2014 for Diplo Certificate course.
Online Diploma Course in Humanitarian Diplomacy
We are accepting applications for the next session of the Humanitarian Diplomacy online diploma course, offered by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and DiploFoundation. The course willl start the week of 17 February 2014. This 12-week course, led by Ambassador Christopher Lamb, will extend the knowledge base and develop practical skills of current and future practitioners in humanitarian diplomacy and policy. The application deadline is 6 January 2014. For more details and to apply, please visit the course webpage.
February 2014 Diplomacy Courses
We've opened applications for our first set of diplomacy online courses next year, starting the week of 17 February:
Apply by 13 January 2014 for Diplo Certificate courses. For further information or to apply, click on the titles of the courses above, or visit our courses website. These courses are always popular, so register now to reserve your place.
Sign up for our courses mailing list to be informed about upcoming courses.
Download the latest book by G.R. Berridge: A Diplomatic Whistleblower in the Victorian Era: The Life and Writings of E. C. Grenville-Murray
Unlike Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, the most well-known whistleblowers of the present day, Eustace Clare Grenville-Murray (1823-1881), the illegitimate son of an English duke and an actress who was also a lover of Lord Palmerston, did not make public highly classified documents. Instead, while serving as a diplomat, behind the fragile shield of anonymity he employed satire and ridicule in books, periodicals, and newspapers to attack the aspects of diplomacy he disliked. His chief target was the use of patronage and favouritism in appointments to the diplomatic service but he also urged many other diplomatic reforms. His writing was powerful but his gift for satire was sometimes over-indulged. As a result, he made armies of enemies and was eventually dismissed from the diplomatic service. In exile in France in the first years of the Third Republic and after many personal and financial trials, he eventually became a rich man by means of his novels and journalism. But the impression of him created at the time, not least by organs like The Times of London, was so unflattering that it has become part of the historical furniture: he is still either ignored altogether or routinely dismissed as a ‘scurrilous journalist’ or even as a ‘pornographer’. As this biography tries to establish, such descriptions trivialise the life and accomplishments of a major figure. He was in fact not only one of the most gifted journalists of his day but also a diplomat of high intelligence and great energy who thought very creatively about his profession. This book is based on private family papers, diplomatic correspondence, recently digitised nineteenth century British newspapers, and Grenville-Murray’s own vast literary output, as well as on many other primary sources. It is the first biography of this journalist-diplomat to be published. Dowload the pdf from the author's website.
What's been happening in Diplo's blogosphere
In his post ‘It's two million, dude’: more on reach and tracking social media, Pete Cranston summarises the crucial issue of tracking engagement. If you missed Jovan Kurbalija’s webinar last week, you can still catch up on the Webinar digest: Information gathering in the post Snowden era. We also look at the Humanitarian Diplomacy course presented at Red Cross Red Crescent Statutory Meeting.
Guest blogger Alexandra Oxborough highlights the role languages play in diplomacy in the UK in her post Lost for words: the value of investment in language training for diplomats.
Remember, you too can have your say by commenting on these or any of our blog posts. And, if you’d like to be a guest blogger, let us know.
Diplo IG community endorses 1Net Steering Committee nominee
Diplo’s IG community has endorsed Vladimir Radunovic as the nominee for the 1Net Steering Committee. 1Net is an initiative of the global community, whose aim is to encompass the widest possible stakeholder community.
Diplo forms part of the emerging Civil Society Coordination Committee, which seeks to support inclusion of civil society in global steering committees and representation on multistakeholder IG initiatives, such as 1Net, using legitimate, transparent nomination processes, as well as coordination of other CS issues.
More info on the 1Net initiative is available here; more details about the call for nominees, which took place last week, is available here.
Subscribe to Diplo's News
