The School of Foreign Service announced the appointment of Ambassador Barbara Bodine as the new director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.

After a search committee’s lengthy process of soliciting applications and interviewing candidates, SFS Acting Dean James Reardon-Anderson picked Bodine, whose tenure begins July 1.

“She is not only a successful diplomat, but she also has considerable academic experience. To have someone at a university you want to make sure that they know about and are experienced in higher education, and these two attributes make her a very attractive candidate,” Reardon-Anderson said.

Bodine spent the last seven years as director of Princeton University’s Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative, and served as the U.S. Ambassador to Yemen from 1997 to 2001, a tenure that coincided with the al-Qaeda bombing of the USS Cole in October of 2000. The Cole bombing resulted in the deaths 17 Americans and the wounding of 39 others.

According to a 2008 Washington Post article on the subsequent investigation, some contention surrounds the probe in regard to enmity between the embassy led by Bodine and the FBI, which may have hampered the investigation.

Bodine’s experience did not serve as the only factor in Dean Reardon-Anderson’s decision to appoint her.

“After interviewing her, I really liked her and thought she would be a terrific person to have on campus and among other things to have in the classroom,” Reardon-Anderson said.

Bodine will also serve as a distinguished professor in the practice of diplomacy. Although she will focus on the ISD come fall, which conducts research on the practice and processes of diplomacy through associates and student fellows, Reardon-Anderson has high hopes for her as a professor when spring 2015 rolls around.

“She will teach next spring, and she will be a terrific teacher,” Reardon-Anderson said. She hopes to decipher her aims and goals for the ISD in the months before she begins teaching.

“The first semester I want to spend the time really trying to figure out where and how the institute can best fit into the school and Georgetown. I know what I want the institute to be, I am still working on how to get it there,” Bodine said.

Bodine expressed excitement to work with the students of Georgetown, beyond the scope of the ISD, which is located in a townhouse on 36th Street.

“What I would like to see for the institute is that it really serves a purpose for the university and for the students. I don’t want it to be this funny little place that sits just outside the campus, and isn’t really part of the campus. I want it to be integrated into the life and the work of what the campus is doing,” Bodine said. “I don’t want the geographic position of the institute to be figurative of its position at the university as well,” Bodine said.

As Bodine plans to bring the institute to new places, her main goal is to work with and for students to facilitate participation in a broadening diplomatic world.

“The nature of diplomacy has really changed. A lot of the players are no longer just government employees, but NGOs, corporations and the like, and Ambassador Bodine is really going to lead the institute both in research and education on the new diplomacy and the new nature of this phenomenon,” Reardon-Anderson said.

Bodine’s appointment additionally emphasizes a newly founded diplomatic focus.

“Ambassador Bodine is a highly respected former diplomat with deep experience in academia. Her appointment as director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy and distinguished professor in the practice of diplomacy clearly reflects the high priority that Georgetown and the School of Foreign Service place on the field of diplomacy,” Interim ISD Director James Seevers, who assumed the role after former director Paula Newberg left for the University of Texas at Austin, said.

Current ISD staff indicated their satisfaction with the appointment.

“While I have not yet had the privilege of working with the Ambassador, she has a great reputation as an outstanding diplomat,” Seevers said. “We are very much looking forward to her arrival at Georgetown and her leadership at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.”

Bodine looks forward to the new campus as much as the new work that awaits her.

“I am not only glad that I am able to work at another top university. I am especially glad to be coming to Georgetown,” Bodine said.