by Patricia Lee Sharpe | Feb 27, 2015 | Monitor
By Patricia Lee Sharpe The taxi driver anecdote gets too much ridicule. I’ve found you can learn a lot by listening to the guy (usually) behind the wheel. Taxi drivers from Boston’s Logan airport to Lexington, for instance, added humanizing texture to my academic...
by Patricia Lee Sharpe | Feb 9, 2015 | Monitor
By Patricia Lee Sharpe with Patricia H. KushlisThe U.S. and Cuba have been negotiating the terms for normalizing relations. This means it’s not too early to think of what an appropriate American public diplomacy strategy might look like. The most visible stumbling...
by Patricia Lee Sharpe | Jan 20, 2015 | Monitor
By Patricia Lee Sharpe Take a good look at the photo of Mahinda Rajapaksa, the two term president of Sri Lanka who called a snap election, expecting to win by a landslide, then lost, decisively. Note the aggressive mustache, the arched eyebrows, the bug eyes. Shift...
by Patricia Lee Sharpe | Jan 5, 2015 | Monitor
By Patricia Lee SharpeI wish I were still in the foreign service. This serendipitous conjunction of US and Russian foreign policy makes for a beautiful public diplomacy message: as Vladimir Putin’s Russia fights viciously to hold on to Ukraine, its uppity Cold War...
by Patricia Lee Sharpe | Dec 18, 2014 | Monitor
By Patricia Lee SharpePinch me!Wake me from this nightmare!Am I really stuck in an America awash in arguments pro torture put forth by fellow Americans proudly proclaiming they’d do it again? Waterboarding. Rectal rapes. Chaining. Hanging. Agonizing stress...
