American Diplomacy at 250

About The Event

Diplomacy is vital to the American experiment. Two-hundred-and-fifty years ago, the American Revolution would likely have been lost without the diplomacy that inspired critical foreign support. While soldiers fight war, diplomats—with rare exception—are the ones who must end conflicts and forge peace.    

Today’s diplomats face challenges that neither force nor any single nation can resolve alone. To examine the evolution of diplomacy during our nation’s first 250 year’s history, the 2026 Ambassador’s Forum will assemble a panel of esteemed experts for an interactive afternoon of exploration featuring keynote presentations and panel discussions. A live Q&A session provides an opportunity for audience members and students to candidly engage with the speakers on complex topics. 

Keynote Presentations

• Control and Delegation: The negotiations that ended the American Revolution occurred almost without supervision; modern negotiations see envoys on cell phones and being buffeted constantly by news from everywhere. What has changed in style as well as substance?   
• Technology and Diplomacy: Technology both enables diplomacy and threatens it. What are the new technological frontiers where diplomacy plays a vital role? What are the new challenges from technology?  What part can diplomacy play in safeguarding the nation from these threats, whether in negotiations for international standards or bilaterally with friends and enemies? What role will military coordination play in the future of diplomacy? 
• Diplomacy’s Next Generation: Where will the next generation of diplomats come from?  What skills will they need? How different need they be from our current diplomats? In particular, what training and education must they bring with them or be given to prepare them for the tasks ahead?  

Conference Speakers

Ambassador (ret.) John Bass is a career Senior Foreign Service officer and former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Turkey, and Georgia. He has also served in senior State Department leadership roles, including Under Secretary for Management, Acting Under Secretary for Political Affairs, and Executive Secretary. His diplomatic assignments have included Iraq, Italy, Belgium and Chad. In Washington, Ambassador Bass’s assignments have included service on Vice President Cheney’s staff, as Chief of Staff and advisor to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, as Director of the State Department’s Operations Center and in several assignments focused on European security issues.  

Nicole Brown is the Historian at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies (ICJS), where she runs the fellowship program. Brown's scholarship investigates women's political activism during the American Revolution and Black literacy in the Atlantic World, highlighting new perspectives on eighteenth-century culture and education and through interdisciplinary and descendant-engaged scholarship. She is also the co-editor of The Williamsburg Bray School, 1760–1774: A History Through Records, Reflections, and Rediscovery, an award-winning volume that illuminates the origins and legacy of one of the earliest educational institutions for enslaved and free Black children in America. 

Dr. Andrew M. Davenport is the Vice President for Research and Saunders Director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. He has published academic articles on Ralph Ellison in mid-century New York City, Thomas Jefferson’s death and its legacies, and the influence of Black literature on post-World War II French culture. He has also published in Lapham’s Quarterly, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Smithsonian Magazine. 

Glenn S. Gerstell is a former General Counsel of the National Security Agency (NSA), where he served from 2015 to 2020. He practiced law for nearly 40 years at Milbank, LLP, focusing on global telecommunications and serving as managing partner of the firm’s Washington, D.C., Singapore, and Hong Kong offices. A frequent guest commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and NPR, he has written and spoken widely about the intersections of technology and national security, with articles appearing in the New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, The Hill, Barron’s, and POLITICO. He has served on the President's National Infrastructure Advisory Council, the Future of Encryption Committee for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and the District of Columbia Homeland Security Commission. He is a recipient of the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service, and the NSA Distinguished Civilian Service Medal. 

Ambassador (ret.) Deborah A. McCarthy is a non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. She served as the U.S. negotiator to the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Cybercrime. A career diplomat, she served as Ambassador to Lithuania, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs, Deputy Chief of Mission in Athens, Greece, Special Coordinator for Venezuela, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Consul General in Montreal, Deputy Chief of Mission in Nicaragua and Economic Counselor in Paris. Other postings include Rome, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. 

Ambassador (ret.) Ronald E. Neumann is the President of the American Academy of Diplomacy. Formerly Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, he has served three times as Ambassador to Algeria, Bahrain, and finally to Afghanistan from July 2005 to April 2007. Ambassador Neumann is the author of two books: Three Embassies, Four Wars: A Personal Memoir (2017) and The Other War: Winning and Losing in Afghanistan (2009). 

Ambassador (ret.) Joan Polaschik served as Director of the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute from 2022 to 2025, following her tenure as Dean and Deputy Director. She served for 31 years as a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State as U.S. Ambassador to Algeria, Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya, and Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.