Dartmouth Events

In October 2023, Josh Paul, a director in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which oversees U.S. military assistance, resigned in protest of the U.S. government’s continued arms transfers to Israel. In 2017, Elizabeth Shackelford, a U.S. Foreign Service officer, resigned in protest of policies of the Trump administration on human rights and diplomacy.

Paul and Shackelford will be in conversation with Dickey Center Director Tori Holt to discuss their decisions to resign, why dissent is critical to improving our foreign policy, and what lessons they’ve taken away from their experiences.

This event will be recorded and livestreamed. Please register for the webinar here. 

Elizabeth Shackelford served as a career diplomat in the U.S. State Department, with postings in Warsaw, Poland, South Sudan, Somalia, and Washington, D.C. Her outstanding work in South Sudan during the civil war earned her the prestigious Barbara Watson Award for Consular Excellence.

She gained international recognition for her principled resignation in protest of the State Department policies of the Trump administration, which sparked important discussions about diplomacy and governance. That led to her book, The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age, which chronicles the challenges facing US foreign policy in the modern world. 

Josh Paul resigned from the State Department in October, 2023 due to his disagreement with the Biden Administration's decision to rush lethal military assistance to Israel in the context of its war on Gaza. He had previously spent over 11 years working as a Director in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which is responsible for U.S. defense diplomacy, security assistance, and arms transfers. He previously worked on security sector reform in both Iraq and the West Bank, with additional roles in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Army Staff, and as a Congressional staffer for Representative Steve Israel (D-NY). Josh grew up between London and New York, and holds Masters degrees from the Universities of Georgetown and St Andrews, Scotland. He is currently a Non-Resident Fellow at the organization Democracy Now for the Arab World (DAWN) and a recipient of the 2023 Callaway Award for Civic Courage.

This conversation is part of the Dickey Center's Dissent & Democracy Initiative which aims to highlight the ways in which dissent contributes to healthy democracies, and engages Dartmouth students with individuals who courageously take the risk to speak and act out against anti-democratic movements.