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Former U.S. Diplomat to hold book talk in Galesburg Feb. 14

Galesburg, IL (02/10/2023) — Knox College is excited to welcome Elizabeth Shackelford to Galesburg to speak on her book The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age. Knox College and Monmouth College are co-hosting the event with Wordsmith Bookshoppe as part of the ACM and Chicago Council on Global Affairs Foreign Policy in Practice Series.

The event will take place at Wordsmith Bookshoppe (235 E Main St., Galesburg) Tuesday, Feb. 14, at 6:00 p.m. and is open to the public.

Shackelford was a career diplomat in the U.S. State Department until December 2017. During her tenure with the Foreign Service, Shackelford served in U.S. embassies in Warsaw, Poland, South Sudan, Somalia, and Washington, D.C. For her work in South Sudan during the outbreak of civil war, Shackelford received the Barbara Watson Award for Consular Excellence, the State Department's highest honor. Shackelford is a senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs where she works to promote greater awareness of diplomacy and the use of non-military foreign policy tools to address U.S. national security and global challenges.

In The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age, Shackelford shares her experience in 2013 during the precarious rise and devastating fall of the world's newest country, South Sudan. Shackelford's excitement about the possibility of encouraging democracy from the ground up quickly turned to questioning and eventually shock at the under-resourced American embassy in the capital and the miscommunication and willful ignorance perpetuated within the State Department itself.

The Foreign Policy in Practice Series has been in development between the ACM and Chicago Council for over the past year. As part of that series, Shackelford will visit classes at both Knox and Monmouth Colleges, meet students interested in foreign affairs careers, and attend multiple local events.

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