Former foreign service officer to speak at SU on “Public Diplomacy and the War on Terrorism”

Former foreign service officer to speak at SU on”Public Diplomacy and the War on Terrorism”March 22, 2004Edward Byrnesedbyrnes@syr.edu

Internationally renowned speaker and author Dorothy Robins-Mowry will speak on “Public Diplomacy and the War on Terrorism,” March 25 at 4:30 p.m., in Room 113 of the Heroy Geology Laboratory at Syracuse University. She is a Fellows Lecturer of the national Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) Society and her visit to SU is sponsored by PBK’s Kappa Chapter of New York. Following the lecture, which is free and open to the public, there will be an opportunity for questions, answers and general discussion.

“Last fall, SU professor William Wiecek gave a PBK lecture titled, ‘The First Freedoms in a Time of Peril.’ Dr. Robins-Mowry’s lecture will continue a theme of examining the war on terrorism from the perspective of civil liberties, public diplomacy, and the qualities of a liberal education,” says Marion E. Bickford, Jesse Heroy Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences at SU and president of the PBK’s chapter at SU.

Robins-Mowry is a former senior foreign service officer with the United States Information Agency (USIA). Following her many years at USIA (1963-84), Robins-Mowry was associate director for seminars at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies; research associate for South Asia (Asia Program) at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. from 1984-89; and president of The Pacific Institute from 1992-97. Her overseas service included Japan, India and Iran, with special duty in Korea, Singapore and Indonesia. She has frequently traveled to Japan, East and Southeast Asia. She holds a BA and LLD from the College of Wooster, from which she received the Distinguished Alumni Award. Additionally, she holds an MA from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from New York University.

She is a board member of the Public Diplomacy Council, and past president of the USIA Alumni Association. She has received a Bunting fellowship from Radcliffe College, and grants from the NEH and AAUW.

She is well known for her book, “The Hidden Sun: Women of Modern Japan” (Westview, 1983). She is also editor of “Canada-U.S. Relations: Perceptions and Misperceptions” (Rowman & Littlefield, 1988); and author of “What’s Wrong with Japan, anyway?” (Pacific Institute, 1993); “What’s Wrong with the USA, anyway?” (Pacific Institute, 1994); and “Conversations between Jews and Japanese: Exploring the Mindset of the Peoples of the East and West” (Pacific Institute, 1995).