Maxwell School of Syracuse University: Maxwell Perspective

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By Renée Gearhart Levy

s a sovereign-risk and banking-risk analyst at Brown Brothers Harriman, Anand Adiga ’97 monitors and analyzes political, economic, and investment conditions in Asian and Eastern European countries in which the bank has exposure. He draws on skills developed while earning his master’s degree in international relations: political analysis; microeconomic analysis of specific industries; macroeconomic analysis of exchange rates, inflation, growth, and debt dynamics; and the political economy of trade.

“Having an international relations degree with a focus on economics is ideal training for this sort of position,” says Adiga, a native of India who has also lived in Australia.

Because the I.R. program is interdisciplinary—drawing on courses across the social sciences—students customize the program to meet their interests. Adiga, for example, cites influential courses such as Professor David Richardson’s Microeconomics, and a geography course on East Asian politics. He interned with the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington, D.C., where his research focused on U.S.-Japan trade in semiconductors.

“Students build their expertise through coursework in various departments across the social sciences,” says I.R. chair Matt Bonham. “That interdisciplinary work exposes them to very different perspectives. The historian is going to have a very different view of Europe, for example, from an economist or political scientist. When our graduates encounter people from different backgrounds in their careers, they understand where those people are coming from.”

Professional training is at the heart of the I.R. program (now 10 years old). Adiga’s M.A. prepared him for a career—that much is assumed. But the breadth of his education speaks to the program’s greater significance. The ability of Maxwell to provide an I.R. program both depends on and encourages the internationalization of the curriculum, school-wide. It’s not just that I.R. is stronger because it draws on faculty from throughout the disciplines. Those disciplines are in turn stronger—more diverse—because they provide components to I.R.

When, as the new dean, John L. Palmer championed the internationalization of Maxwell, one high priority was replacing the small, liberal-arts I.R. master’s program—multidisciplinary but identified historically with Political Science—with a larger, professional-degree program. “Given our strong reputation and quality in public administration, I thought it was important for us to build an equivalent kind of presence in international relations,” says Palmer.

The Maxwell School recruited Bonham, an expert in comparative politics and in the application of information technology to the study of foreign policy, previously on the faculty of American University’s School of International Service. (He has served also as a political economist for the World Bank’s Sindh Project in Karachi, as an organizational behavior specialist for the Battelle Human Affairs Research Centers, and for the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Department of Policy Planning and Research.)

Bonham knew that, to qualify for accreditation by the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, the program would require 39 credit hours, career services, and an extensive web of seminar and internship experiences. The Maxwell I.R. program offers a myriad of opportunities, including the London Peacekeeping Seminar; summer internship programs in Geneva, Switzerland, and Washington, D.C. (with integrated policy seminars); and opportunities for study at partner institutions in Sweden, Japan, London, and Washington, D.C. It is now the second most popular degree at Maxwell.

Building a program that prepares students for leadership positions internationally also required a faculty with broad international expertise. Beginning in the early 1990s, faculty hiring throughout Maxwell coalesced around curriculum decisions regarding the I.R. program.

“We wanted people not just with international interests,” says Associate Dean Michael Wasylenko, “but those with an inclination to go abroad, to spend time overseas working with international organizations.” The School has added 20 faculty positions, making significant hires in areas including international economics, nonwestern history, and comparative political systems. (This is paralleled in some respects by I.R.’s effect on student diversity. With nearly half the I.R. students hailing from outside the United States, the program has school-wide impact in this area.)

As much as Maxwell’s interdisciplinary make-up serves I.R., there is one connection that’s special: the symbiosis between I.R. and the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts (PARC). “Between a third and half of I.R. students here are attracted to Maxwell because of PARC,” says Bonham.

In the last eight years, PARC’s international work has increased significantly, affected by the increase in I.R. students and by the program’s director, Robert Rubinstein, who arrived in 1994. “We’ve worked to develop several programs that brought us closer to the I.R. program,” he says. Today, PARC has students and faculty working on every continent except Antarctica.

“Students in the I.R. program are attracted by our ongoing research on crises and intervention; and by our attempts to bring a domestic understanding of conflict resolution to international conflicts and vice versa,” says Rubinstein. “For international students, these topics resonate with experiences they have either at home or in neighboring localities.”

In that respect, PARC is microcosmic. Like many other Maxwell units—economics, for example—PARC draws on and serves I.R.’s strength. The end result is a better student experience.

“We’re training the people who are going to go out and run government structures and agencies, not just domestically, but globally,” says Palmer. “A professional I.R. program based in a multidisciplinary environment truly prepares students to participate and compete on the global level.”

Renee Gearhart Levy is a free-lance writer, based in Fayetteville, N.Y., who specialized in higher education.