Lobbying the president of The Gambia during his first overseas tour. Traveling up and down Iran’s border with Iraq to gather information on a Kurdish rebellion. Unexpectedly leading the U.S. Embassy in Yemen for three months. These are a few of the stories Ronald E. Neumann, a retired U.S. ambassador, shared with students during a two-day visit to the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences.
During a conversation moderated by Chuck Cobb, a former U.S. ambassador to Iceland and a long-serving member of the University’s Board of Trustees, Neumann gave students an inside look at a career in the Foreign Service.
“You have a sense that you work on things that are important,” said Neumann, speaking in a conference room at the Frost Institute for Chemistry and Molecular Science. “You might disagree with decisions, you might not like how something comes out, but in 37 years, I never went home at night—no matter how frustrated I was with some individual issue—and wondered whether what I worked on mattered.”
Neumann, who served as U.S. ambassador to Algeria, Bahrain, and Afghanistan, is now the president of the American Academy of Diplomacy. During his visit to the University, which included attending several political science classes, Neumann shared the joys and challenges of representing the United States overseas.
“In the end, I think people come in because the work fascinates them, because you can’t do this in business,” Neumann said.
Neumann’s visit was part of a larger effort spearheaded by philanthropists Sue and Chuck Cobb to encourage more students at the University to pursue careers in diplomacy and public service. The Cobbs are the only couple in U.S. history to both serve as non-career ambassadors and the ambassador’s spouse at their respective embassies. Sue Cobb, an alumna of the University of Miami School of Law and a member of the advisory board for the George P. Hanley Democracy Center in the College of Arts and Sciences, served as U.S. ambassador to Jamaica.
The Cobbs recently made a generous gift to establish the Ambassadors Sue and Charles Cobb Endowed Distinguished Professor of Practice in Diplomacy, which will enable the college to hire former ambassadors or other renowned experts in diplomacy to teach students and engage with members of the community.
“International [work] has been the most inspirational part of our life, and we would like more UM students to catch the bug early,” Chuck Cobb said at the event with Neumann.
Cobb and Neumann also discussed broader issues impacting the Foreign Service, such as how to encourage U.S. ambassadors to better promote U.S. business interests overseas and whether the Foreign Service should have a reserve corps that could be deployed during crises. Throughout the conversation, they both emphasized the sense of meaning and purpose that comes from a career in public service.
“The idea that you actually are serving is important,” Neumann said. “I think these days people are a little uncomfortable talking about concepts like duty or honor or service, but if those things mean something to you as an individual, this is a profession where that also has meaning.”
