The Maxwell School's Social Science Program was established in 1946 as the nation's first interdisciplinary doctoral program in the social sciences. It continues to be a leading center for creative scholarship for students whose intellectual interests do not easily fit within the confines of a single discipline. With guidance from their faculty advisers, Social Science doctoral students develop their own programs of interdisciplinary study. Recent graduates and current students have chosen areas such as  urban affairs, international relations, national security studies, conflict resolution, media and culture, network theory, immigration, labor relations, gerontology, women's studies, social services and policy, African American studies, citizenship, environmental policy, social movements, Native American studies, health, peace studies, and globalization, among others.

The Social Science Program was founded in the conviction that a broad interdisciplinary education would often better prepare higher education faculty in the social and policy sciences than would narrower, more specialized training in one of the traditional disciplines. The founders of the program believed that many questions about the nature of society rested not just in one discipline, but required the integrated contributions of political science, geography, sociology, anthropology, history, international relations, economics, and public administration. This conviction is today being even further reinforced by the growing complexity and interdependence of societies in the modern world.

Institutionally, the Program serves to create a formal academic environment for scholarly work within which doctoral students can more readily pursue important questions across the boundaries of the traditional disciplines. While preserving its core commitment to prepare college and university faculty, the program mission has broadened over the years to include educating doctoral students who have professional interests in research and institutional leadership outside  the academy as well.

Over the years, with each new phase of Maxwell School leadership, the Social Science Program taken on new dimensions, and it has played a key role in developing entire new areas of inquiry and instruction within the School. In the late 1950s, Dean Harlan Cleveland used the Social Science Program to support and expand International Relations. Later, under Dean Scotty Campbell, Social Science was a vehicle to strengthen Metropolitan Studies. More recently, Social Science has worked closely with the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts. Today, the program has been asked by Dean Mitchel Wallerstein to join with other interested Maxwell units and faculty in helping to implement a new school-wide initiative centered on the interdisciplinary study of citizenship.