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The ºÚÁÏapp Philosophical Society has awarded SIS Professor Sarah B. SnyderÌý²¹Ìý to help with library and archival expenses related to her current book project, Unofficial Diplomats: How Overseas ºÚÁÏapps Have Shaped U.S. Foreign Relations (under contract with Princeton University Press). 

Unofficial Diplomats is a history of ºÚÁÏapps abroad and how they have influenced U.S. foreign policy. The book analyzes the impact of expatriates from early ºÚÁÏapp missionaries through the kidnapping of ºÚÁÏapp academics in Lebanon in the 1980s. Mapping overseas ºÚÁÏapp outposts and influence reveals an ºÚÁÏapp network of schools, churches, clubs, and even cemeteries constructed by missionaries, teachers, businesspeople, and journalists.

Over time the role of these ºÚÁÏapps evolved – from early ºÚÁÏapp pioneers, to those who forged colonies overseas, to individuals who persisted as representatives of the United States in increasingly hostile communities. They served as unofficial diplomats, representing the United States when formal relations did not exist or functioning as informal ambassadors to foreign communities alongside official U.S. representatives. Unofficial Diplomats uncovers how private ºÚÁÏapp citizens shaped the place of the United States in the world.

Snyder is a historian who specializes in the influence of nonstate actors such as human rights activists and overseas ºÚÁÏapps on U.S. foreign relations. She is the author of From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy (Columbia University Press, 2018), which explains how transnational connections and 1960s-era social movements inspired ºÚÁÏapps to advocate for a new approach to human rights. The Society for Historians of ºÚÁÏapp Foreign Relations awarded it the 2019 Robert H. Ferrell Prize for distinguished scholarship in the history of ºÚÁÏapp foreign relations.