Kindergarten Feet

Joshua Midgett

SIS 628

Applied Public Diplomacy

Professor Hayden

            The Last Three Feet Response:

            In reading this book, and most of the other readings in this class, I feel in some ways like a kindergartner. Since I’m coming from such a separate world, I feel as though I’m asking the obvious, silly questions. But, bringing these obvious questions to class, or landing them on these books, gives the opportunity for philosophical debates that center around the simplest truths of a complex profession. And so, what is central to me in The Last Three Feet, as well as what’s beginning to become a trend for me in this class is the ‘small’ challenge of defining what Public Diplomacy actually is.

            Before this book, like a kindergartener, I’ve been told by experts what it was, and I just agreed because they ‘knew’. But here, this time, I am just shown what is. I get to point at the zebra at the zoo and proudly pronounce, “Zebra!” I read a cinematic reel of experiences everywhere from Bahrain to Brazil, from Turkey to Twitter and I get to absorb from these experiences what it is to be a Public Diplomat and what that person and that term is trying to accomplish.

            I suppose now I should tell you what I think it is. My crude assessment is that Public Diplomacy is a simple challenge made complex by an endless array of variables. It’s the challenge of taking a message, any message, and delivering it to people in such a way that by the time you bring it back, they’ve not just signed for the message like a package, but they’ve left their fingerprints on it, and it has done the same to them. The challenges to this are many; and the responses to those challenges are detailed in this book. They show how deaf ears can halt messages, and how education exchange systems can become a sort of hearing aid, or leverage. They discuss how vital it is to ask dangerous questions in order to create real relations. And, in staying with the title, the expand upon the impact of “the last three feet” – the significance of being there, of offering your time, heart, and being.

So: Public Diplomacy is the Pony Express of ideology and culture. To me, at least. To the now proud 1^st grader. But much like that 6 year old unaware of who Christopher Columbus really was beyond sailing the ocean blue in 1492, I am sure to evolve that definition in the coming weeks, months, years and I look forward to doing so.