The Nitze School was established in 1943 by Paul H. Nitze and Christian Herter who were seeking new methods of preparing men and women to cope with the international responsibilities that would be thrust upon the United States in the post-World War II world. Nitze feared the diplomatic and economic expertise developed in World War II might get lost if the nation became isolationist.[1] Originally founded as a standalone graduate school, it became a part of Johns Hopkins University in 1950.[2]
The SAIS Washington, D.C. campus is located in the 420,000-square-foot 555 Pennsylvania Avenue building, which was purchased by the university in 2019 and has undergone extensive renovation.[3] Previously, the school was based on Embassy Row at Massachusetts Avenue.
History
The Nitze School of Advanced International Studies was established in 1943 by Paul H. Nitze and Christian Herter who were seeking new methods of preparing men and women to cope with the international responsibilities that would be thrust upon the United States in the post-World War II world. Nitze feared the diplomatic and economic expertise developed in World War II might get lost if the nation became isolationist.[1] Originally founded as a standalone graduate school, it became a part of Johns Hopkins University in 1950.[2]
The founders assembled a faculty of scholars and professionals (often borrowed from other universities) to teach international relations, international economics, and foreign languages to a small group of students. The curriculum was designed to be both scholarly and practical. The natural choice for the location of the school was Washington, D.C., a city where international resources are abundant and where American foreign policy is shaped and set in motion. When the school opened in 1944, 15 students were enrolled.[4]
In 1955, the school created the Bologna Center in Italy, the first full-time graduate school located in Europe under an American higher-education system. By 1963, Johns Hopkins SAIS outgrew its first quarters on Florida Avenue and moved to a location on Massachusetts Avenue. In 1986, the Hopkins–Nanjing Center was created in Nanjing, China, expanding the school's global presence. In January 2019, Johns Hopkins University announced that it had purchased the Newseum building on Pennsylvania Avenue NW and would remodel the building to house SAIS and other Washington, D.C.-based programs.[5]
Campus building on Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.
Johns Hopkins SAIS is a global school with campuses on three continents. It has nearly 700 full-time students in Washington, D.C.; 190 full-time students in Bologna, Italy; and about 160 full-time students in Nanjing, China. Of these, 60 percent come from the United States and 37 percent from more than 70 other countries.[7] Around 50% are women and 22% are from U.S. minority groups. SAIS Europe is home to the Bologna Center and the only full-time international relations graduate program in Europe that operates under an American higher-education system, and the Hopkins–Nanjing Center, which teaches courses in both Chinese and English, is jointly administered by Johns Hopkins SAIS and Nanjing University.[8]
The school offers multidisciplinary instruction leading to the degrees of Master of Arts for early and mid-career professionals, as well as a Doctor of Philosophy program. Approximately 300 students graduate from the Washington, D.C., campus each year from the two-year Master of Arts program in international relations and international economics. Unlike most other international affairs graduate schools that offer professional master's degrees, Johns Hopkins SAIS requires its Master of Arts candidates to be proficient in another language outside their mother tongue[9] and fulfill the International Ecopass, a one-hour capstone oral examination synthesizing and integrating knowledge from the student's regional or functional concentration and international economics.[10] The oral examination and international economics requirements of the Master of Arts curriculum have been the signature aspects of the school's education.
Reputation
A study conducted in 2005 examined graduate international relations programs throughout the United States, interviewing over a thousand professionals in the field, with the results subsequently published in Foreign Policy magazine as "Inside the Ivory Tower" rankings. 65 percent of respondents named Johns Hopkins University–SAIS as the best terminal master's program in international relations. SAIS received the most votes, followed by Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. The latest edition of the study was produced in 2014, with the master's program at SAIS ranking second globally after the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. SAIS students and alumni have been informally known as the ‘SAIS Mafia’ among international relations circle especially by networks inside the Beltway owing to their presence within the field and close-knit community.[11]
Since 1990, SAIS and the Fletcher School have been the only non-law schools in the United States to participate in the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition. Competing against full-time law students, SAIS generalists have performed very well. SAIS has twice placed second overall out of 12 schools and advanced to the "final four" in its region. In head-to-head competitions, SAIS has defeated schools such as Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Virginia School of Law.
SAIS students have successfully competed in the Sustainable Innovation Summit Challenge hosted by Arizona State University's Thunderbird School of Global Management. Two different SAIS teams won first place in both 2007 and 2008.[12][13]
From 2005 to 2012, Johns Hopkins SAIS dedicated a substantive theme for each academic year in order to encourage its students, faculty, academic programs, policy centers, and alumni to examine the role of the particular theme within international affairs. These specific themes provided opportunities for the school to review scholarship and exchange views through special lectures, conferences, and guest speakers. The school hosted public events during the following themes of Energy (2005–06), China (2006–07), Elections and Foreign Policy (2007–08), Year of Water (2008–09), Religion[15] (2009–10), Demography (2010–11), and Agriculture (2011–12) and enhanced its fundraising with high-profile public events such as the lecture delivered by then–vice president of BP, Nick Butler, during the Year of Energy in 2005.[16]
Child Protection Project
In June 2009, The Protection Project at SAIS partnered with the Koons Family Institute of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC), creating the Child Protection Project, to draft a model law focusing on the issues of child protection; in particular: "neglect, abuse, maltreatment, and exploitation".[17] The primary objectives of the Child Protection Project are to "research existing child protection laws in the 193 member states of the United Nations (UN); convene a series of regional expert working group meetings to establish a common definition for 'child protection'; create a database of national legislation and case law on child protection issues from around the world; and draft, publish, and globally disseminate model child protection legislation".[18]
The drafting process included six expert group meetings, held in Singapore, Egypt, Costa Rica, Spain, Turkey, and the U.S.[17] The final version of the Child Protection Model Law was published in January 2013. It was presented to the members of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child during its 62nd Session in Geneva, Switzerland, in January 2013.[17][19] It was also presented before the 129th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Geneva in October 2013.[17][20][21] Accompanying the Child Protection Model Law, ICMEC and The Protection Project published a companion "100 Best Practices in Child Protection" guide in 2013.[22]
Bernard L. Schwartz Forum on Constructive Capitalism
SME Institute
Swiss Foundation for World Affairs
Global Energy and Environment Initiative
Global Health and Foreign Policy Initiative
Publications
In addition to the different books and periodicals edited by SAIS programs or research centers, several school-wide publications are to be mentioned:
SAIS Review – A journal on leading contemporary issues of world affairs, founded in 1956
SAIS Observer[23] – A student-written, student-run newspaper founded in 2002, the official student newspaper of the global SAIS community
SAIS Reports – A newsletter that highlights new faculty, research institutes, academic programs, student and alumni accomplishments, and events at the school, published bimonthly from September through May
SAIS Europe Journal of Global Affairs (formally the Bologna Center Journal of International Affairs) – A student-run journal on scholarly contributions to international relations, published online and annually as a print version
Centerpiece – The alumni newsletter of the Nanjing Center
Working Paper Series – A series of papers managed by the PhD students
SAIS Perspectives –[24] Publication focused on Development, Climate, and Sustainability
Notable alumni
Johns Hopkins SAIS has nearly 17,000 alumni working around the world in approximately 140 countries.[15] Over 130 SAIS graduates have become ambassadors for various countries.[25]
Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley – Current Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer for The Department of State, former U.S.Ambassador to The Republic of Malta (2012-2016)
Mark Andersen – Washington, D.C.-based activist and author. Co-founded punk activist group Positive Force and senior citizen support and advocacy organization We are Family.
Cresencio S. Arcos – U.S. Ambassador to Honduras (1989–93), deputy assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement (1993–95), and Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for International Affairs (2003–06)
David Berger – 38th commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps
Robert O. Blake, Jr. – U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia (2013–present), former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs (2009–13), former U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives (2006–09)[26]
April Glaspie – American diplomat, first woman to be appointed U.S. Ambassador to an Arab country, best known as the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq in the runup to the 1991 Gulf War
Brad Heckman - Artist, and peace activist who founded the New York Peace Institute
John E. Herbst – former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and Uzbekistan, current Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization as a career member of the Senior Foreign Service[27]
Colin F. Jackson—former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia; Chairman of the Strategic and Operational Research Department (SORD) at the U.S. Naval War College
Angela Kane – UN Undersecretary General for Management
Loretta Napoleoni – bestselling author of Terror Incorporated and Insurgent Iraq. She is an expert on financing of terrorism and advises several governments on counter-terrorism
Lucius D. Battle – former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East and Africa, and president, Middle East Institute; founded SAIS Foreign Policy Institute
Eliot A. Cohen – professor of strategic studies and director of the Strategic Studies Program, former counselor of the U.S. Department of State, author of Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War and Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime
Kendall Myers – former U.S. Foreign Service Officer and SAIS part-time faculty member who was arrested in 2009 on charges of 30 years of espionage on behalf of Cuba
Paul H. Nitze – drafter of NSC 68 modifying the U.S. Cold War strategy of containment from a primarily economic and diplomatic strategy to one based more fully on military confrontation
Robert E. Osgood – third dean of SAIS, former director of the American Foreign Policy program and co-director of the Security Studies program, and former member of the U.S. Secretary of State's Policy Planning Council from 1983 to 1985.[31]
Henry Paulson – former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, distinguished visiting fellow at the Bernard Schwartz Forum on Constructive Capitalism
Robert W. Tucker – former professor of American foreign policy, and co-author of The Imperial Temptation: The New World Order and America's Purpose
David Unger – journalist, member of The New York Times editorial board, author of The Emergency State: America's Pursuit of Absolute Security at All Costs
^See Norton Wheeler, Role of American NGOs in China's Modernization: Invited Influence (Routledge, 2014) online review, on the history of the Nanjing Center
