Kushlis, Patricia
From Public Diplomacy
Patricia H. Kushlis was a career Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Information Agency from 1970-1998. She served in Europe, Southeast Asia and at U.S. Headquarters in Washington, DC as a specialist in international educational, cultural and media relations. Her assignments included Cultural Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Public Affairs Advisor to and member of the U.S Delegation to the CSCE (now OSCE) Helsinki Review Conference (1992), Information Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki, Asst. Cultural Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Athens and Executive Director of the Hellenic American Union. She also served in Moscow, USSR as Educational Exchanges Officer and at USIA as Branch Chief for European Academic Exchanges; Team Leader for International Politics and National Security Issues in the Bureau of International Information Programs; Country Affairs Officer for Greece, Turkey and Cyprus; and Program Officer for U.S.-German Youth Exchanges (included Congress-Bundestag).
She moved to New Mexico in 1998 and taught as an adjunct professor of Political Science at the University of New Mexico from 1999-2005. She managed Voter News Service’s coverage of New Mexico’s races for 2000 and 2002. She was a member of the Board of Directors of the Albuquerque Committee on Foreign Relations from 2002-6, a cofounder of World Affairs Forum, a foreign affairs discussion group in Santa Fe, a member of the Santa Fe Council on International Relations, the Public Diplomacy Council, the U.S-Indonesia Society, Foreign Service Retirees of New Mexico and the American Foreign Service Association. She co-writes with Patricia Lee Sharpe and Cheryl R. Rofer WhirledView, a foreign affairs and public diplomacy blog which the American Foreign Service Journal described in Cybernotes as a "fantastic resource for distinctive op-ed world affairs pieces."
Her latest publication was an article co-authored with Patricia Sharpe which appeared in the special public diplomacy issue of the Foreign Service Journal in October 2006. She has also written foreign affairs commentaries for the "Santa Fe New Mexican," co-authored with Dr. Beatrice Schultz the chapter "Empirically Derived Training Techniques for Facilitators of Group Discussions", in Facilitating Group Communication in Context: Innovations and Applications with Natural Groups (Vol. I) edited by Lawrence R. Frey, (Hampton Press, 2005). She wrote the Instructors’ Manual for the third edition of Monte Palmer’s Comparative Politics: Political Economy, Political Culture, and Political Interdependence (Thompson/Wadsworth Learning 2005) and was interviewed along with Jeffery Laurenti of the Century Foundation in February 2006 on KUNM, New Mexico’s PBS affiliate "University Showcase" on international relations and U.S.- United Nations relations.
Patricia H. Kushlis has a Ph.D. in Political Science and an M.A. in International Relations from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and a B.A. from Raymond College, University of the Pacific, Stockton, California. She also studied intensive Modern Greek, Russian, and Finnish language and area studies at the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute. Her Ph.D. dissertation is on Modern Greek politics.
