$ 0 0 John Brown's Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review: An Attempt to Unify the Public Diplomacy...PUBLICDIPLOMACYPRESSANDBLOGREVIEW.BLOGSPOT.COM|BY JOHN BROWNLike Comment ShareJohn Brown An example of the "over-intellectualization" of what is essentially person-to-person contact that's not based on abstraction, but the real world (I'm speaking about "public diplomacy").Like ·· 57 minsJohn Brown ... And the abovementioned call themselves "scholars": Well, so be it. I'd rather read Aquinas than their "research" -- he's more comprehensible, even in Latin. All I can say is that I'm glad I had a good time "practicing" public diplomacy for some 20 years without having an "M.A" degree it in as an academic "discipline" -- but rather "prepared" myself for the Foreign Service by studying languages, history, and literature (I made sure to avoid "poli-sci" and "sosh" courses because of their abuse of the English language.) I also traveled to places where I hoped, if ever, to serve, or traveled -- more simply (or importantly) -- to places that gave me pleasure and opened my eyes to the outside world (including a "magical mystery tour" bus ride from Tehran to Istanbul after one year of archival research in Leningrad [73-74]). Need I also mention, to those who despise irony, that I wanted to serve -- humbly -- my country overseas, by being as prepared to do so as much as possible?