On Tuesday, October 19th 2024, at 12PM in the Rhodes Conference Room at the Sanford School of Public Policy (room 223), The Duke Rethinking Diplomacy Program welcomes Ambassador Joan A. Polaschik, Director of the US Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI), for a conversation about the past, present, and future of the US Foreign Service.
Three years ago, Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined a vision to modernize American diplomacy, grounded in a keen understanding that an entirely new set of global issues, including climate, global health, and cybersecurity, is redefining national security. To successfully advance U.S. interests in this changing world, U.S. diplomats not only need fluency in these new issue sets, but they also need an organizational culture that values and rewards career-long learning. As part of Secretary Blinken’s Modernization Agenda, the Foreign Service Institute has embarked on an ambitious, multi-year program to better align diplomatic training to U.S. strategic objectives and change the way the State Department thinks about learning.
Director Polaschik will discuss the Civil and Foreign Service career paths as well as the diverse skills needed for a successful career at State. State Department representatives, Diplomats in Residence, and RDP Senior Fellows Ambassador W. Robert Pearson and Ambassador Patrick Duddy as well as members of the Carolina Friends of the Foreign Service will be available before and after the talk to speak with students interested in a career in the foreign service.
Lunch will be provided for attendees in the Rhodes Conference Room (Sanford 223) starting at 11:30am.
Joan A. Polaschik was appointed as Director of the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in May 2022. In this capacity, she serves as the Chief Learning Officer for the Department of State and the federal foreign affairs community. Ambassador Polaschik joined the FSI team in February 2020, serving as Dean of the School of Professional and Area Studies and the Institute’s Deputy Director prior to assuming her current role. She spent the 2019-2020 academic year as a Senior State Department Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, teaching courses on U.S. diplomatic statecraft and North Africa.
Ambassador Polaschik’s career has focused on the Middle East and North Africa, with assignments as Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (2017-2019) and U.S. Ambassador to Algeria (2014-2017). She previously served as Director of the State Department’s Office of Egypt and Levant Affairs; Director of the Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs; Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S Embassy in Tripoli, Libya; Regional Refugee Coordinator based at the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan; Political Officer in Tunisia; and other staff-level assignments in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. She also has served in Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.
Ambassador Polaschik holds a BA from the University of Virginia and an MSFS from Georgetown University. Thanks to the talented language instructors at FSI, she speaks French, Arabic, and some Russian and Azerbaijan.
This Rethinking Diplomacy Program event is part of a series of events on working towards an advanced, Anticipatory Diplomacy. The event is cosponsored by the Sanford School of Public Policy, the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy, Duke Global, and the John Hope Franklin Center (JHFC). Thanks especially to our Diplomat in Residence, Stephanie Hutchison, for her work mentoring future diplomats here at Duke and throughout North Carolina.
