By Giselle Lee | Staff Writer
Before students can understand international conflict, they have to learn to see the world through someone else’s eyes. That’s the philosophy Baylor diplomat in residence Joanne Cummings brings to her classroom.
Before coming to Baylor, Cummings worked with the Department of State and the private sector, with experience spanning multiple countries in the Middle East, North Africa and East Africa.
Her journey to Baylor is a story of homecoming: Her father, Dr. Colbert C. Held, served in the same capacity more than three decades ago. With this, she grew up in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, attended high school in Tehran, Iran and graduated from a university in Beirut, Lebanon.
Cummings credited her success as a diplomat to her upbringing in places where most students were not American and having “sophisticated” discussions with various groups of people.
“I think what my father represented most for me was an acceptance of different people as all having dignity and worth,” Cummings said. “They never displayed a difference among races or religions or national background. That is formative in a way that is almost hard to put into words.”
According to the U.S. Department of State, diplomats in residence serve as educators, mentors and storytellers, sharing their firsthand experience in international affairs with students and communities. They work with academic institutions to help people understand the importance of diplomacy while also guiding those interested in public service careers.
With this, Cummings is an adjunct professor of political science and a geographer by training. In her classes, she said she “puts on the hat” of the various countries involved to help students better understand the power of diplomacy.
“If you don’t understand the motivations and fears of another country, you cannot effectively adjust what they’re doing,” Cummings said. “There are a lot of ways to suggest that maybe they could do it a different way; there are different kinds of statecraft: there’s economic statecraft, economic coercion and at the very end should be anything that involves armed action.”
Dr. Steve Gardner, Emeritus Professor of Economics and International Business, said a typical conversation with Cummings will “challenge your assumptions” about current affairs.
“If you ask her a question and if she hears an assumption embedded in the question, which is often true, she will say that you need to maybe at least entertain the possibility of thinking of this topic a little differently from the way that you’re even thinking about it,” Gardner said. “She is somebody who is incredibly enthusiastic and gregarious.”
Dr. Lisa Lacy, a part-time lecturer in the history department, echoed the sentiment.
“What’s interesting with Joanne is she can discuss absolutely anything,” Lacy said. “It’s so stimulating to be able to discuss things with each other. She has walked the walk and talked the talk. I think her lived experience gives her an extra level of legitimacy that is wonderful.”
Bob Darden, Emeritus Professor of Journalism, Public Relations & New Media, said Cummings has an “inexhaustible well of jokes,” which he believes is a valuable skill for students to learn from.
“If you can come up with a professional comedian-caliber story [on any topic], humor is a great leveler,” Darden said. “If you’re going into strange settings with Americans or non-Americans, it’s always handy to have another arrow in your quiver.”
Cummings said Baylor’s campus offers a wealth of resources to help students learn about the world around them, from cultural festivals and evenings to discussion groups. But she encouraged students to “take full advantage” of individual students, especially those with an international background, and build connections with them.
“It’s a little bit scary, but this is a skill that you need as a diplomat,” Cummings said. “If we do not view other Americans who are different from us as interesting and as worthy of our understanding and curiosity, then why do we think we’re going to view people in the rest of the world that way?”
Darden urged students to talk to professors like Cummings to learn through lived experiences.
“Students who stay in their own tight circles, many of them continued from high school or fraternities or sororities, are missing what I think may be equally important as the academics,” Darden said. “She has seen and done nearly everything, experienced great highs and great lows, and been places that most of us corporately will never get to go, much less want to go, and that kind of exposure and experience is invaluable.”
Gardner said that within Cummings’ first year at Baylor, she had already made a large impact on students, and that impact continued to grow throughout her years of teaching.
“She would be getting messages from students who said that she had changed their lives,” Gardner said. “People would write notes to her saying, ‘ You were my most important faculty member at Baylor,’ and for that to happen in the first year or two that somebody’s teaching at Baylor, in my experience, is pretty unusual.”
Cummings’ goal as Baylor’s diplomat in residence is to help students and faculty understand the “fascinating things” going on in the world through regular discussion groups and tabling events.
“Sometimes we’re a little nervous about doing that because understanding them [might be] like agreeing with them that we’re the bad guys,” Cummings said. “It is simply understanding how other people see things.
“You don’t need to know anything to join in the discussion,” she continued. “You can just come and sit and listen. You can come and ask questions. You can come and share your experiences. It’s not limited in any way, and I hope that we’ll have just an excellent time with these discussions.”
