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GRADUATE EDUCATION IN____ INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS: A DISCIPLINE IN TRANSITION Roger S. Leeds HE EFFECTIVENESS OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY and the competitiveness of American business in an era of global interdependence hinge on the quality of practitioners occupying positions of influence and leadership in the international arena. Many of these individuals have been trained in five select graduate schools of international relations: the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, the School of Public and International Affairs (SIA) at Columbia, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Given the influence of these schools' graduates in setting corporate and public policy, it is no exaggeration to suggest that the performance of these institutions is of some consequence to the nation at large. It is therefore legitimate to question how well this small community of graduate schools is fulfilling its mandate, and whether adjustments could be made to improve their performance. The issue is timely because some of these highly competitive schools are being squeezed by financial pressures and academic changes that were unforeseen a few years ago. An increasingly familiar reproach from the students themselves is that too many in their ranks pay too much money in search of too few acceptable job opportunities in a field that has been transformed fundamentally in the past twenty years. Other danger signals are also evident. After decades of steady growth in the number of applicants for admission, some of the schools saw a levelling off of applications in 1985. The career placement officers at the larger schools are also Roger S. Leeds is a senior staff member of the International Finance Corporation , an affiliate of the World Bank. He is also a professorial lecturer in international finance at SAIS, where he received his M.A. and Ph.D. 205 206 SAIS REVIEW concerned by the high numbers of graduates still unemployed months after receiving their diplomas. Unless these institutions can sustain their reputations as the primary advanced training ground for international careers, they will falter, and some may not survive. BY THE MID- 1940s IT WAS APPARENT that the conduct of relations between nations and basic power relationships had been fundamentally transformed. Political coalitions were shifting. Old adversaries became new allies and the United States emerged as a superpower, rendering its isolationist tradition obsolete. Trade and investment patterns provided convincing evidence of an unprecedented degree of economic interdependence . Commercial air transportation and sophisticated international communications networks made the world seem to grow smaller. It was a dynamic era in international relations, which demanded a new generation of professionals trained in the tools of internationalism. It was during this period that a number of major private universities located along the Eastern corridor initiated graduate programs in the broad discipline of international affairs. The new programs emerged in response to initiatives by prominent academicians and statesmen who perceived a gap in the range of graduate education available. Among the founders of SAIS were two future secretaries of state, Christian Herter and Dean Acheson, and arms control negotiator Paul Nitze; at Tufts, A. Lawrence Lowell and Roscoe Pound, respectively president of Harvard and dean of the law school, were instrumental in launching the Fletcher School. These visionaries believed that the advanced study of international affairs was too heavily focused on abstract political and economic theory and was divorced from the practical concerns of policymakers. They perceived a need in the United States to provide a rigorous, practical international education for a select group of young men and women of promise. Thus, the discipline of "international relations" entered the lexicon of graduate education and became recognized as an appropriate subject of academic endeavor. Soon, interdisciplinary programs in the study of the political, economic, and social relations between nations were being established at major academic institutions. Although each of these new schools was started at a different time and each claimed to be unique, there were common points of departure. They were very small at the outset, seeking to attract a limited number of students from elite social and academic backgrounds. In 1949, for example , SAIS...

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