Enabling Graduate International Affairs Programs’ Focus on Diversity & Inclusion

• In Event: Exploring Questions of Diversity & Inclusion

Abstract

Decades of effort have focused on advocating for greater attention to diversity and inclusion to strengthen diplomacy, development and conflict resolution efforts. In that time, a substantial body of scholarly research has accumulated underlining the need and the urgency. Countries and communities are increasingly diverse. There is growing evidence that exclusion can drive conflict. And data is accumulating that diversity is an under-utilized resource to drive development. At the same time, numerous international resolutions, national laws and plans, and declarations of commitment have been put in place globally to focus attention on meeting the needs of different groups within societies. Unfortunately, realization of commitment to inclusion are sorely lagging behind the rhetoric.

There are a number of reasons why implementation lags, but it is clear that one fundamental challenge is that pre-professional education fails to sufficiently prepare international affairs professionals to attend to diversity and inclusion in their curricula. For example, recent research by the New America Foundation confirmed the dearth of academic coverage of gender issues in international affairs curricula.

Graduate programs’ core curricula routinely fail to cover the range of diversity and inclusion issues; when included among courses, classes on related topics are generally offered as electives with topics limited in scope. Usually, the classes also focus on the needs of different sub-populations rather than discussing their potential role in making positive change. As a result, courses of study fail to provide students a general sense of the importance of the topic. They also fail to prepare most with the practical tools to actually advance the agenda.

This paper discusses how schools of international affairs and public policy, as well as instructors in the field of international affairs can bridge the instructional gap to better incorporate attention to diversity and inclusion issues in classes, syllabi, and curricula. Discussion will overview the scope of the need for greater coverage of these issues. It will also encompass a review of tested pedagogical techniques and tactics for facilitating course adoption and adaptation of syllabi to better address relevant diversity and inclusion research and topics.

The findings, conclusions and recommendations promulgated in the paper emerge from a multi-faceted project examining how best to close the gap. The project encompasses desk research into the curricula of graduate programs nationwide; semi-structured key informant interviews with practitioners, researchers, faculty, and academic administrators globally; and convening to strategize a road forward based upon empirically tested efforts in a range of graduate studies programs.

The conclusions also derive, in part, from discussions among leading academic deans from across the country, who convened over the year to strategize ways to strengthen the focus on diversity and inclusion within their universities. Academic leaders from a diverse pool of over 15 graduate schools participated, including Deans representing Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Texas A&M, the University of Denver, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Washington, among many others.

Author

• Carla Koppell, Georgetown University