Educating future decision-makers

LOS ANGELES — Putting nasty politics and honest differences of opinion aside, can anyone seriously quarrel with the idea that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is a rather good role model for any young American, male or female?

"I am honored to be here today," the former Stanford educator recently told an enthusiastic university audience: "From George Kennan and John Foster Dulles, to George Shultz and James Baker, and, of course, Woodrow Wilson, many renowned American statesmen have worn the orange and the black," referring to the school colors of Princeton University.

The happy occasion was the 75th anniversary of the founding of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, America's first public-policy school. "I am especially honored to help all of you celebrate this historic anniversary," the secretary of state said. "As a former professor myself, I understand how important it is to root the practice of statecraft in the systematic examination of politics and history and culture that the Wilson School offers. ... "

The secretary of state did not mention it in her foreign-policy address, but the evolution of American public-policy and international-affairs schools may well be the most creative and important educational innovation in the U.S. since the end of World War II. Since then, America gradually morphed from one of the WWII victors to sole post-Cold War superpower, and thus inherited the grave responsibility for exercising that unique power with vision and wisdom.

How we have fared in that role is for others to judge. But that very question is the explicit and implicit core justification for America's schools of public policy and international affairs: to educate our future decision-makers so as to improve the quality of their decision-making.

To that end, the nation has spawned a number of superb institutions. Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), founded in 1946 in the aftermath of WWII, and located in New York City, offers 1,200 students from 100 different countries rigorous theoretical perspective on major international issues.

Not far from Boston is The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, founded in 1933 in the midst of the Great Depression. It is the nation's first graduate school of international affairs. More than 40 percent of its students are from outside the United States. Says Fletcher's Senior Associate Dean Deborah Nutter: "What makes us distinct is that everything we do is international. ... All our programs are globally oriented."

That's not true of the nearby John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. While seeking to admit only students who are committed to public service in government and the nonprofit sector, it offers programs of study that are both domestic and international. Its core curriculum emphasizes analytical and quantitative analysis skills; about one-third of its students come from outside the United States.

The nation's capital sports several excellent schools, including the grand lady of them all: the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, part of gorgeous Georgetown University. Its dean is none other than the widely admired Robert Gallucci, who negotiated the first nuclear agreement with North Korea in 1994.

Then there's the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. It is part of the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University, but the SAIS campus is located in the heart of Washington's Embassy Row. The school is particularly innovative, having established major overseas centers, one in Bologna, Italy, and the other in Nanjing, China. The latter was set up in 1986 and hosts as many as 100 Chinese and American students. Says SAIS Dean Jessica Einhorn: "Our job is to educate professionals to operate effectively in this globalized world. This challenge is greater than ever. But it is something we must do — and that we must do very well."

Excellent public-policy and international-affairs schools are to be found not just on the East Coast. The Midwest offers the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. In Texas, Rice University hosts the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Here on the West Coast, people rave over the innovative, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approaches of the University of Washington's Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, under its director, Anand Yang.

In California, the University of California, San Diego, is rightly proud of its elite Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, and we have excellent schools of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Make no mistake about it — all these schools make an invaluable contribution not just to America but to the world. I salute them for their efforts — and Secretary Rice for drawing attention to one of the very best of them.

UCLA professor Tom Plate, a veteran journalist and member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, is a graduate of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School.