Studying Diplomacy Is Not Just Academic at the Dickey Center

May 23, 2017  |  Dartmouth News

by Bill Platt

Students taking the seminar "U.S. Policy in Africa and the Great Challenges Africa Faces in the Future” knew they would be studying various aspects of recent politics on the continent. What they quickly discovered was that the scholar guiding their studies had firsthand experience with a good part of modern African political history.

The 37-year foreign service career of Ambassador Johnnie Carson, the Allen Bildner Distinguished Fellow in International Affairs in residence at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, includes service as assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of African Affairs, and ambassadorships or Foreign Service postings in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Botswana, Mozambique, and Nigeria. By the time he retired from government service in 2013, Carson had worked under a long line of secretaries of state, including Cyrus Vance, Madeleine Albright, and Hillary Clinton.

“We’re learning so much because everything that he’s teaching is his lived experience, and that’s something that you can’t get from just reading an article,” says government major Janice Fidalgo ’18. “In this class I’ve had experiences that I don't have in other classes, just because of who he is and what he’s done.”

Read the entire article by Bill Platt in the Dartmouth News.