One of the chapters of my latest book “Diplomacy for Professionals and Everyone” (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022) is devoted to greetings. Chapter 9 is called: “Greeting as Micro-diplomacy or Coordinated Social Engagement”. In it, I discuss the connection between diplomacy and greeting and say that greeting has always played an important role not only in human communication in general but also in diplomatic practice. I considered greeting as an act of diplomacy and analyzed greeting interactions and symbolism in diplomatic ceremonies. Thus, different forms of the visit of heads of state or government to another country such as state, official, or working visits, involve different welcoming ceremonies for the guest. The entire state visit of the head of state to another country, which usually involves various ceremonies of greeting, can be considered as one large and extended greeting of the guest in a host country. In short, greeting occupies a vital place in international diplomatic intercourse.

In my book, a special place is given to the handshake – the most common visual symbol of diplomacy. This makes sense: a cordial handshake represents an act of goodwill and marks positive engagement and dialogical interaction.  Many people judge the state of relations between countries or organizations by the peculiarities of their leaders’ handshakes. However, in a broad sense, it is not just a handshake as such, but a greeting does matter. Greeting represents a microcosm of diplomacy.

The chapter also approached greeting in the context of strategic interaction, the game of strategy, coordination game, and relationship management.

Here are the titles of the subchapters of this chapter.
Greetings, COVID-19 and Human Engagement.
Greeting as an Act of Diplomacy.
Greeting as an Interactional Instrument of Relationship Management.
Greeting as a Meaningful Social Exchange.
Greeting as a Strategic Interaction and Coordination Game.
The Relationship Payoff Matrix in a Greeting Negotiation.
Getting to Yes in Greeting, or Social Diplomacy of Greeting.

By the way, on the cover of my book, there is an image of a diplomat extending her hand to greet.

I hope readers will find this chapter of my book interesting and useful.

https://brill.com/display/title/62469

Negotiation is not usually viewed as a religious category, but religious values and beliefs can affect negotiation strategies. Many religions point to the importance of honesty, patience, tolerance, altruism, love, generosity, forgiveness, compassion, humility, mindfulness, integrity, collaboration, cooperation, justice, fairness, respect, courtesy, balance, and harmony. But how can we ensure that these virtues are actually reflected in negotiations and in approaches to various types of conflicts? In conflict situations and negotiations, people, organizations, countries, and other actors often behave very selfishly, thinking only about their own interests, and completely oblivious to the high values they espouse. How can the high values inherent in religious beliefs help people resolve conflicts and negotiate constructively?

For religion and religious convictions to play a positive role in negotiation strategies, perhaps we should discuss this. Maybe even hold a conference or seminar on this topic. That is, not only to talk about religious tolerance and interreligious dialogue in general but to discuss the specific negotiating potentials of religious beliefs and values. In other words, approach this issue very pragmatically. And, perhaps, even create some tools that could help in practice.

Negotiation, in a purely secular sense, is a business practice aimed at achieving agreement between two or more parties. Does the meaning of negotiations change if we approach them from a religious point of view? Is there a significant difference between the Christian and Islamic understanding of negotiation, or the Buddhist or Judaic approach to negotiation practice? Of course, religious values, dogmas, concepts, and practices influence the understanding of the phenomenon of negotiations, and some works have been written about this. However, I am unaware of any work conceptualizing negotiation as a religious practice. That is, they would consider the purpose of negotiations not as an agreement between the parties involved, or not as a solution to a problem, but as a way to comprehend God or achieve harmony with divine laws. I think the secular understanding of negotiations prevails in all corners of the earth. But who knows. Maybe some people practice negotiation as a spiritual practice.

Recently, I traveled to Samarkand. There was a tourist from one of the European countries on the high-speed train next to me. We got to talking.

“I guess you don’t work anymore, right?” she asked.

“No, I’m working,” I said.

“Why?” the interlocutor was surprised.

“My work is interesting and gives me pleasure,” I said.

“Oh,” she said incredulously. “Our retirees try not to work,” she added.

On the way back from Samarkand, another tourist from Europe happened to be nearby. We started talking again.

“Are you working?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Very nice,” said the interlocutor. “It’s good when a person, even of retirement age, works. Otherwise, it would be bad.

“Of course,” I agreed.

Returning home, I began to wonder which of my two European interlocutors was right. Probably both are right in their own way. But I’m also right. And I mentally thanked these two tourists for sharing their life wisdom.

I often see human suffering. This happens during my classes. I usually ask students not to use their cell phones in a classroom. And then the suffering begins! Sometimes they last 15 minutes, and sometimes 10 or 5 minutes, and some do not last even 2 minutes. In short, the suffering stops when the student gets to his or her mobile phone and manages to look at something there. Then, I feel, a real buzz pilings on him or her! But the suffering of the students begins again when I ask again to stop using mobile phones.

It is painful to see how young people suffer. But one day I received a compliment when I repeatedly reminded them not to look at mobile phones.

– Well, can’t you sit for at least an hour without a phone?! I exclaimed.

– Oh, teacher, if you knew that only in your classes I can withstand the absence of my mobile phone for half an hour, – said the student, hiding his eyes. – And that’s because you have a lot of games. As it is, I usually look at my mobile phone every two or three minutes.

“Hmm,” I said, and began to think about whether to give this student an A or be even more strict regarding mobile phones. And then, suddenly, I looked at my mobile phone. Oops. Sorry guys.

It seems that I have come up with a very simple but quite effective model for approximate assessment of the research strength of universities. I call it RFI, which is Research First Impression. Its essence is as follows. We go to Google Scholar, then write the domain name of the university (for example, for Yale University it would be @yale.edu), then click on Profiles in the top left corner inside the three horizontal lines. After doing these operations we can see the names and number of cited works of scientists. We take 10 top names, add up the number of their cited works, and then divide by 10. The result is the RFI index. This will be the average number of cited works of the top 10 scientists of this university.

For example, below I present the RFI index for 14 universities occupying different places in traditional rankings systems.

Harvard University: 363,500.
Stanford University: 312,379.1
MIT: 240,528.5
University of Chicago: 218,237,2.
Columbia University: 202,483.5.
Yale University: 195,508.3.
UCLA: 166,568.1.
Tufts University: 153,909.2.
Caltech: 144,100.8.
Fordham University: 21,488.9.
DePaul University: 20,327.4.
Northeastern State University: 4,669.9.
Montana Technological University: 2,918.7.
University of North Georgia: 2,301.6.

As this table shows, the RFI index, or the average number of cited papers of the top 10 Harvard scientists on Google Scholar is 363,500 while the RFI index of the University of North Georgia is 2,301.6. Of course, these numbers may change over time.

This is, obviously, a very simplified evaluation system. It does not consider many traditional indicators, such as the H-index (the Hirsch index). But in this case, this is not necessary since the task of the RFI is to give the first impression of the research strength of the university or universities. However, it should be noted, that even such a first impression turns out to be useful and quite correlates with the indicators of research activity and the university’s traditional ranking.

Of course, in such cases, there are also questions about the expediency of any kind of scientometrics assessment. Apparently, there are supporters and opponents of such assessments. However the proposed method does not claim to be accurate and reliable, it only speaks about impressions. Although, again, impressions can be quite consistent with reality.

Another question arises: why take only the first 10 scientists/professors? Indeed, we can try to take 20 and 30 or another number of scholars representing a particular university. But in universities, as in sports teams, the main impressions are created by stars, that is, leading scientists or athletes.

Каждый отвечает не только за свои слова, но и за свое молчание, не только за свои действия, но и свое бездействие.

Создал свой YouTube канал, посвященный вопросам личной эффективности. Буду размещать свои небольшие видеоролики на узбекском, английском и русском языках. Первые три видео уже опубликованы. Будут новые видео. Добро пожаловать, подписывайтесь:

https://www.youtube.com/@alisher_faizullaev

It is also nice to see my article “Diplomacy and Self” among the most cited publications of the journal “Diplomacy and Statecraft” for 34 years of its existence.

Приятно обнаружить, что моя статья “Diplomacy and Self” оказалась среди наиболее цитируемых статей известного международного научного журнала “Diplomacy and Statecraft” за все 34 года существования этого издания.