Johns Hopkins SAIS

The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is a graduate school of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington, D.C., United States, with campuses in Bologna, Italy, and Nanjing, China. It is consistently ranked one of the top graduate schools for international relations in the world.

The school is devoted to the study of international relations, diplomacy, national security, economics, and public policy. The school has hosted world leaders on a regular basis for public debate in international affairs.

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. Originally founded as a standalone graduate school, it became a part of Johns Hopkins University in 1950.

The SAIS Washington, D.C. campus is located on Massachusetts Avenue NW's Embassy Row, just off Dupont Circle and across from the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and next to the Center for Global Development and the Peterson Institute.

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. Originally founded as a standalone graduate school, it became a part of Johns Hopkins University in 1950.

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.

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 its present 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 will remodel the building to house SAIS and other Washington, D.C.-based programs.

The school is a member of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA), a group of schools of public policy, public administration, and international studies.

Organization and academic programs

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. 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.

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 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. 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.

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.

A joint team from SAIS and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania received second place in the first "Global Challenge" competition, a first-of-its-kind competition that challenged teams of MBA and other graduate students to develop a public–private venture to support development and the tourism industry in Asia. The competition was organized in 2010 by the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Notable economists affiliated with the school include former World Bank Chief Economist Anne Krueger, and former Fulbright Chair in Economics at Harvard University Michael D. Plummer. Many influential political scientists are also affiliated with the school, including Pulitzer-prize winning historian Anne Applebaum, United States Institute of Peace Board Member Eric Edelman, member of the International Board of Advisors at Oxford University Blavatnik School of Government Vali R. Nasr, former Counselor of the United States Department of State Eliot Cohen, former Chair in Southeast Asian Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Vikram Nehru, former Chairperson of the United Nations Human Rights Council Advisory Committee Obiora Okafor, and former MIT Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy Studies Francis J. Gavin.

Annual themes

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 (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.

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". 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".

The drafting process included six expert group meetings, held in Singapore, Egypt, Costa Rica, Spain, Turkey, and the U.S. 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. It was also presented before the 129th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Geneva in October 2013. Accompanying the Child Protection Model Law, ICMEC and The Protection Project published a companion "100 Best Practices in Child Protection" guide in 2013.

Research centers

* JHU Foreign Policy Institute
* Alperovitch Institute for Cybersecurity Studies
* Bologna Institute for Policy Research (Italy)
* Center for Canadian Studies
* Central Asia-Caucasus Institute
* Silk Road Studies Program
* Center For Constitutional Studies And Democratic Development (Italy)
* Center for Displacement Studies
* Center for International Business and Public Policy
* Center for Strategic Education
* Center on Politics and Foreign Relations
* China-Africa Research Initiative
* Cultural Conversations
* The Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies
* Hopkins-Nanjing Research Center (China)
* Grassroots China Initiative

* Institute for International Research (China)
* International Reporting Project
* Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies
* The Protection Project
* Public-Private Partnerships Initiative
* 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'' – 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

Notable alumni

Johns Hopkins SAIS has nearly 17,000 alumni working around the world in approximately 140 countries. Over 130 SAIS graduates have become ambassadors for various countries.

* Mahamat Ali Adoum – former foreign affairs minister, Chad's ambassador to the United Nations
*Ebenezer Akuete – former Ghanaian diplomat
* Madeleine Albright – former U.S. Secretary of State (attended SAIS, but did not earn degree)
* Peter F. Allgeier – deputy U.S. Trade Representative (2001–09) and former acting U.S. Trade Representative
* 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
* Nancy Birdsall – founding president of the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C.
* 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)
* Wolf Blitzer – CNN journalist and television news anchor
* Adam Boulton – Sky News political editor
* Jeremy Bowen – BBC
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