Goldstein Celebrated with Diplomacy & Statecraft Festschrift
Erik Goldstein, Professor of International Relations and History at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was presented with a special Festschrift volume of Diplomacy & Statecraft written by his academic colleagues and former students from across his career.
A Festschrift is a collection of writings published in honor of a scholar. This volume demonstrates the immense regard and affection that Professor Goldstein’s written work, teaching, and personal qualities have generated over the course of his more than four decades of sustained and influential scholarship.
The celebration and presentation was a surprise coinciding with Goldstein’s 65th birthday that brought together via Zoom all of the contributors from the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
An excerpt:
Like any good historian, [Goldstein] appreciates that political history – broadly defined – develops far greater explanatory force if it encompasses cultural and other background influences that shape national and international discourses. Cultural diplomacy and transnational exchanges in the heritage and preservation movements, especially in a transatlantic context, form another area to which his scholarship has made an important contribution. Foreign policy is not made by politicians and officials alone but throughout history has benefitted from a significant input by historians and other academics. In this area too Erik’s work has added enormously to our understanding of such processes, just as he himself has taken a very practical interest in the training of budding diplomats, which began with his participation in the British government’s Know How Fund programme for diplomats from former Soviet-bloc countries in the early 1990s.
The full volume can be read on Diplomacy & Statecraft‘s website.
Erik Goldstein’s research interests include diplomacy, formulation of national diplomatic strategies, the origins and resolution of armed conflict, and negotiation. He is the author of Winning the Peace: British Diplomatic Strategy, Peace Planning, and the Paris Peace Conference, 1916-1920 (1991); Wars and Peace Treaties (1992); and The First World War’s Peace Settlements: International Relations, 1918 – 1925 (2002, Italian translation, 2004). To learn more about Erik, read his faculty profile.