Do you want to learn diplomacy?

 Last week, we talked about how MicroCon seems to suit the bill as a good venue for diplomacy. However, what if you can't get to MicroCon, or are not sure where/how to start with diplomacy? Not everyone is a born diplomat, after all! Well, as with so many things in the Internet age, there are online courses you can take for that! I'm sure this sort of post is why Google claims my blog is "low-content", since it's basically just a number of links leading elsewhere, but whatever. I've given up on them ever agreeing to let me actually make money off of ads here anyway.

A good place to start seems to be the US Institute for Peace, disregarding their recent "rebranding". They sponsor something called the "Ghandi-King Global Academy" which has self-paced courses that are both free of charge and open to the public. According to one online document I found, they offer courses such as "Introduction to Peacebuilding", "Nonviolent Action", "Conflict Analysis", and several courses in "Civil Resistance". I've signed up for an account but I'm currently waiting for approval. Oh, and for the mobile-device-inclined, they seem to have apps in both the Apple and Google app stores.

Alison also offers a number of free courses to help learn diplomacy, such as "International Relations", "An Introduction to Foreign Policy", and "Conflict Management: Resolving Conflicts with Confidence". 

I found this course on Coursera easily - "Global Diplomacy - Diplomacy in the Modern World", but I'm sure there's more. It has five modules, including "What is diplomacy?", "Success and Failure in Diplomacy", "The Qualities of a 'Good' Diplomat", "Diplomacy in Action", and "Reflections and Futures of Diplomacy". That seems like a pretty good first-glance treatment of the subject to me.

Finally, there are a bunch of United Nations bodies that offer online learning courses. There's a "meta-list" of the bodies (with links to each one's specific learning page) here.

Yalta Conference, 1945 - Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND