Colleges and Universities Fail to Meet Demands for Teaching International Relations
By Jean Krasno
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| There is a perception that students and the general public are confused as to what extent countries are under the control of international institutions, particularly the World Trade Organization (WTO). Students have a set of worries about these institutions which is different from past concerns. They want to know how the United States and the major powers can get along with the rest of the world. There is very strong interest in things international; however, this is not captured by the courses currently being taught. Students also want to know more about the role of the United Nations, which acts as a counterpoint to unilateralism/isolationism in symbolizing multilateralist perspectives, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan personifies that image. An elaborate dance is ensuing and one critical player is Kofi Annan. It is hard to think who in our political science departments could tell us about the role of the UN Secretary-General or even how the United Nations works. Specifically, college and university departments have not adequately responded to students who are demanding courses that address international security issues as they interact with trade, finance, health, human rights, the environment and more. Currently, political science departments lack programmes that address these questions, have not been able to overcome bureaucratic obstacles which discouraged interdisciplinary degrees and teaching, and do not necessarily encourage research and writing on such relevant issues as international organizations, international law and governance, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Yet, many scholars are coming to the realization that international relations (IR) and other disciplines, like international law and economics, need to be better integrated into the curriculum in order to educate students when they leave college or graduate school for the real world. International law is a major case in point. Harold Koh, a Yale law professor and participant in the seminar, stressed the significance of international organizations and Governments, and the implications for international law with the classic interaction of national, international and the supranational, the UN being the latter. From Koh's experience, the "I"s have it, meaning concepts which start with the letter I. The first I is the inevitability of tension between international organizations and national Governments, simply because these organizations, as they grow in activity and institutionalize their zone of jurisdiction, will increase, thus inevitably increasing the zone of what lawyers call "concurrent jurisdiction". This is particularly true in two cases: first, the powerful national Governments like the United States, which have extraterritorial influence and reach, will inevitably come into conflict with international organizations; and second, there will be cases in which there is a substantial difference in political approach between an international organization and a powerful Member State. At this writing, several new elements are being introduced into the international law of war and the use of force. One is the notion of preemptive self-defense, which the Bush Administration's national security strategy paper asserts is an appropriate doctrine to combat the use of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism involving non-State actors. What this may mean in practical terms is the United States avowal of Security Council resolutions that go to a certain point and then stop, thus leaving ambiguous whether or not they specifically authorize the use of force and permitting the most powerful nations to proceed to use force based on claimed customary rationales that may never be tested in an international forum. That is what happened in Kosovo and Iraq. The Iraq crisis stands potentially as a watershed on three issues: the strength of international law as a constraining force on powerful nation-States; the rationales for using human rights as a reason for international intervention; and the question of whether the United States will continue to play the role as the primary shaper of international organizations and international law. But the question now is whether it will pursue a power-based or norm-based international order. If we say that the United States is the problem, we are likely to ignore the many issues in which it is the solution, and if it is not, there may well be no solution. Chris Joyner, an international relations professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, agrees with Koh's points, but adds the "R"s have it as well. In the field of international law, there are three major "R" themes: international law is real for state behaviour; it is relevant to world politics; and it is a requisite for today's international interactions. Part of a teacher's job is to have students realize that there are international legal rules, and States do conform with them most of the time. International law serves the same thing that law in general does—to preserve order and create a set of expectations which allows Governments to have a clue as to what other Governments or actors in international relations are going to do. It sets out a regularity of activities that can be anticipated in our international society and, in that sense, helps to promote harmony and common values. International law is a way of dealing with international problems, whether it is the use of force, environmental threats, how to use the airspace or outer space, the polar regions, the oceans, human rights, how technology should be used to facilitate development, transportation and communication—the list is endless. In summary, in addressing the important relationship between IR and international law, both the "I"s and the "R"s have it: institutionalization, international organization, inevitability, interpretation, and internalization, plus real, relevant and requisite. Yale School of Management professor Paul Bracken says that the great neglected actor today in teaching IR in globalization is the multinational corporation (MNC). In some sense, MNCs have been recognized as being very important, but are also some of the least considered actors in globalization when it comes to how universities teach the subject. NGOs are central to current IR studies of globalization and more or less the glue of regime theory. But organizations like Goldman Sachs, Alcatel, General Electric, Sumitomo and IBM are either not considered at all or are lumped into a pot dealing with international economics. Why should the MNC be considered central to what is happening in globalization? Three reasons exist: David Denoon of New York University claims that in many regards, IR has drifted off into the ether and is not dealing with the real world. There was a time when theory played a critical role in the development of American foreign policy, for example the development of containment policy. He states that George Kennan, a historian, diplomat and the author of containment, was really combining his own sense of realism and of area studies, the way he looked at the Soviet Union at that time. Democratic peace theory, promoted by Bruce Russett and Michael Doyle, became a large part of the Clinton Administration's view of how it should focus on dealing with the developing world. Tony Lake's speech in 1993 at Johns Hopkins University talked about that Administration's goal of trying to enlarge the community of democratic States. That comes directly from important theorizing. Containment, deterrence and democratic theory are three examples of how theorizing has been important and where the debate as to whether they do or do not apply both by academics and practitioners led to important policy achievements. Denoon contrasts this with some of the issues which deal with globalization and international capital flows today. Very few articles are found that have dealt seriously with this problem. The current theoretical focus in IR does not deal effectively with issues like MNC governance or how technology affects the calculus of business, the rapidity of the flow of capital, micro-political or economic behaviour inside countries when that capital or technology moves. The two dominant areas in international political economy are regime theory and developmental state theory. The problem is that there is a big disconnect between the broader generalization about the field and the relative visibility and success of organizations like the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation and the WTO, and actual behaviour, for example China. The problem of developmental state theory is that it did not master the details. Why is this important? Because the status rewards in the profession are for making these sweeping generalizations. Those are the things that will get you an article in one of these journals but not the things that are actually going to have you say anything relevant about the Asian economic crisis or why these countries are having so much trouble adapting to the problems after 1997. Our real dilemma is that much of this theory is not very applicable or adaptable, and other fields like economics, management and anthropology are getting much closer to looking at the details on how these actors are behaving than IR is as a field. International relations has drifted off. This interdisciplinary disconnect is not just across international law, business and economic development, but also applies to environmental issues, sustainable development, demographics, human rights, health and other areas of study, as well as bringing the experiences of practitioners into the field in a more substantive way. There are other inadequacies in the IR research agenda. There is a lack of understanding in universities of different political cultures, who these agenda setters are, and what part of the body politic they really represent. Yet, many of them make major policy decisions. There has been very little study of nations and how they interact with international institutions and, importantly, regional organizations. Personality and the understanding of its influence are also important in policy decision-making, which crosses into the field of political psychology. Institutions of learning need to find ways to bridge these gaps. Those at the seminar enumerated a series of obstacles within colleges and universities, the field of IR, and in departments to changing the status quo. These vary from resistance by the old guard to any shift in the IR paradigm to a lack of resources and outright discrimination against those who venture outside the box. One participant went so far as to say that department leaders seek to clone themselves when hiring new faculty and shun those who are doing research or teaching that does not fit their own vision of the field. It is hard to change departments within a university. Careers are made at critical stages, e.g., who gets into a programme, who gets funded, who gets hired, who gets promoted. Students, particularly graduate students, do not want to take risks that will have career implications. The question is: Will people get rewarded for this new work? Students demand interdisciplinary applied courses, but graduate students and young faculty cannot teach them because they would not get tenure if they do. They do not have support from the leadership in departments and, as mentioned, department leaders tend to want to clone themselves so that young faculty will carry on their work. Therefore, change has to happen at the provost or university president-level, at the institutional level. But you cannot create international relations or studies programmes on the cheap, and you have to make any new IR positions tenured. In addition, teachers do not have time to develop their own teaching materials, and those who are doing research are not writing the kinds of materials which integrate various fields and can be used for teaching. We need things that can be transported into the classroom. Teaching is a problem, but that presents an even bigger question: Who will teach the teachers? Budgets also become a factor and, at many schools, departments prefer when they do offer these courses to have them taught by adjuncts or temporary personnel, but that means that when that teacher leaves, those courses will disappear with them. Special centres within a university or college can address some of these issues. However, for an international centre to establish its own faculty slots within the university requires not only funding but some autonomy. If a centre has its own endowment, this allows it to hire its own people, take a multiple-year approach and use its endowment to leverage international studies more generally. Centres can build links between academic research, interdisciplinary approaches and policy-making. Working through centres can be a positive step, but many institutions do not have the resources to do this. Other steps to open the system can also be productive; for example, being able to draw on faculty from various disciplines to form a dissertation committee or an advisory group for senior essays and other projects would certainly be more feasible. Several schools are experimenting with offering courses with team teaching across disciplines, which can be successful, but the problem remains how to integrate the material. There is still the issue of a paucity of interdisciplinary teaching material that can speak across the communication gap in the languages created by different disciplines. For the labour of those people who are in the trenches, access to course syllabi is a very useful way to show how people who have taught such a course have put together a reading list that makes sense in terms of planning out a semester. This syllabi-sharing is important. Putting together a collected set of syllabi both for undergraduate and graduate classes would be a useful contribution to those who are out there teaching. Those already with tenure do not care about the power hierarchy in the university; they can do what they want, and they are the ones who are teaching the masses and need the information. It is not an either/or strategy; there can be multiple strategies. We need more resources, as well as the collection of more course syllabi. ACUNS has done this twice and has now posted a new syllabi and reading list on its website, along with a longer version of this article. To meet this challenge, those who see the need for change must press forward. We are not saying that we want departments to eliminate what they are doing, but we are asking them to be more inclusive and realize the importance of those who have expertise to offer and should be brought in and given status, to respect both the issues and the people who can teach them. We also need to train more teachers who can teach across disciplines and have a broad knowledge of international organizations. We know that students are demanding courses that reflect the world they see around them, unencumbered by baggage from the past, meaning courses that address phenomenon which cross politics with the multiple, critical issues that challenge us on a daily basis, from law to trade to the environment. Obstacles should be removed, and new research and writing that cross boundaries and bring together information in a way that can speak to students must be supported and encouraged. The incentives have to be there. Leadership is key and may have to be cultivated at the university and college president and provost levels. If we can engage them in this challenge, we can surmount the obstacles enumerated here, but we will also need the support of colleagues to open this debate to a much broader audience. |
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