Colleen Graffy is a former United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for

Public Diplomacy In international relations, public diplomacy or people's diplomacy, broadly speaking, is any of the various government-sponsored efforts aimed at communicating directly with foreign publics to establish a dialogue designed to inform and influen ...

for Europe and Eurasia, and associate

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professor ...

of law and Director of Global Programs at Pepperdine University School of Law and Academic Director of their London campus. She is former Chairman o
SEAL
the Society of English and American Lawyers. Graffy is originally from

Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara ( es, Santa Bárbara, meaning "Saint Barbara") is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coa ...

. She earned her B.A. from Pepperdine University and her M.A. from

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original c ...

. She attended Pepperdine’s study abroad program in Heidelberg while an undergraduate and later became co-Director of Pepperdine’s campus in Heidelberg, Germany.Biography of Colleen P. Graffy
'' Department of State'' She moved to the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

after completing her master's degree to start Pepperdine’s new London undergraduate program where she was the director and taught international relations and British government. She earned a law degree at City University and the Inns of Court School of Law and an LLM at King's College London. She was called to the Bar of England & Wales and is a Barrister and Bencher at The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. She was chairman of Republicans Abroad for the United Kingdom. She joined the U.S. State Department in 2005 as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, the first person to hold that position. She reported to both the Assistant Secretary, Daniel Fried in the Bureau for European and Eurasian Affairs and the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs,

Karen Hughes Karen Parfitt Hughes (born December 27, 1956) is the global vice chair of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. She served as the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the U.S. Department of State and as a ...

, (later

James Glassman James Kenneth Glassman (born January 1, 1947) served as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs from 2008-2009. He was, from 2009 to 2013, the founding executive director of the George W. Bush Institute, a public policy ...

). She spoke and wrote on Guantanamo issues. On suicides in Guantanamo: "It does sound like this is part of a strategy - in that they don't value their own lives, and they certainly don't value ours; and they use suicide bombings as a tactic," Colleen Graffy, the deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, told BBC's Newshour yesterday. "Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good PR move."Killing themselves was unnecessary. But it certainly is a good PR move
''

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'' Graffy has also been quoted as saying to Kate Allen of Amnesty International UK via e-mail in 2004 that, "In the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

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and Britons who were captured were held until the end of hostilities. They were not read rights or given a dime to call their lawyer."Pressure grows on Guantanamo Bay
'' BBC'', June 12, 2006 She was the first high level US government official to actively advance "Public Diplomacy 2.0" and use Twitter. In response to criticism for tweeting as a diplomat she wrote an Op-Ed on the importance of social media as a tool of public diplomacy in the Washington Post. She introduced green diplomacy and the importance of visual communications in public diplomacy and launched the Ben Franklin Transatlantic Fellowship as well as the first "media hub" for the U.S. government with radio and television broadcasting facilities based in Brussels, Belgium. She is a frequent commentator in the broadcast media and the press. She debated for Intelligence Squared on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 and wrote an article from that arguing that Iraq was a catalyst for the Arab Spring. In an op-ed for the ''Los Angeles Times'', she drew attention to evidence of war crimes in Syria. She appeared on BBC’s Question Time with former foreign secretary David Miliband and Jerry Springer in the run-up to the US presidential elections.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Graffy, Colleen People from Santa Barbara, California Living people American expatriates in the United Kingdom California Republicans United States Department of State officials Boston University alumni Alumni of King's College London American women diplomats American diplomats Year of birth missing (living people) Pepperdine University alumni 21st-century American women