Why Diversity Matters in

International Affairs Education

And How It Can Improve U.S. Foreign Policy
By Carla Koppell, Jamille Bigio, and Miguel Centeno

November 1, 2021

The uproar in the United States following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020

highlighted the country’s long reluctance to grapple with issues of race, identity, and

inequality. Many institutions have failed to direct sufficient attention to these subjects,

even as the United States undergoes demographic change, grows more polarized, and

continues to treat racial and ethnic minorities in unequal ways. International affairs

schools, committed to teaching the next generation of national security leaders, must

embrace their responsibility to do better.

Too many contemporary international affairs schools provide their students with training

that fails to prepare them to tackle fundamental twenty-first-century challenges, such as

climate change, intractable conflict, and expanding globalization. Without reform, these

schools will leave future foreign policy experts ill prepared to consider how inequities in

the United States undercut Washington’s standing and will render them poorly equipped

to address the social forces that make societies fragile and fuel unrest worldwide.

To address these challenges, international affairs schools need to adapt. That

means diversifying student, faculty, and leadership pipelines; incorporating scholarship

on diversity, equity, and inclusion into curricula; and transforming their

campuses into inclusive and welcoming arenas for open discussion. This comprehensive

approach to international affairs education will ensure that schools

value diversity and aspire to equity and also equip students to strengthen U.S. diplomacy

and defend national security.

DIVISION AND NATIONAL SECURITY

In the United States, the continued neglect of diversity, equity, and inclusion creates

serious national security vulnerabilities. This inattention opens the door to foreign

interference, reduces Washington’s influence abroad, and limits the effectiveness of U.S.

foreign policy. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, for instance, Russia effectively

exploited socioeconomic and racial divisions within American society to foment

political discord, contributing to one of the most polarized and contentious electoral

contests in U.S. history.

The exploitation of these weaknesses by foreign actors continued in 2020,

when China and Iran joined Russia in weaponizing social media to stoke the kinds of

resentments and divisions that fueled the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The

damage that insurrection wrought was not solely domestic; it also led to a flood of

criticism from abroad, further reducing the United States’ global standing and

diminishing faith in Washington’s ability to spread democracy around the world.

Continued neglect of diversity, equity, and inclusion creates serious national

security vulnerabilities.

The United States is hardly the only country in which inequality and exclusion have

profound security implications. Studies link unequally distributed power, wealth, and

opportunity to radicalization and unrest. Tensions also tend to rise as countries grow ever

more heterogenous, whether through influxes of migrant workers seeking economic

opportunity or record numbers of refugees fleeing conflict and persecution. Although

immigration offers important social and economic benefits—including new sources

of labor for aging countries and security for refugees escaping war—it often provokes

political and social tension as societies absorb people of different religions, ethnicities,

perspectives, and preferences.

Inattention to these demographic trends inhibits societies’ ability to reap the benefits of

greater diversity. Promoting inclusion and equity among different groups, for instance,

improves stability by increasing social cohesion and augmenting faith in government.

Investments that promote equality also pay economic dividends. The full economic

empowerment of women around the world, for example, would generate trillions of

dollars in income and accelerate social, political, and economic progress. Policy

interventions designed to address grievances and inequities can also help prevent the

outbreak of violence and reestablish stability following conflict.

A FAILING SYSTEM

Despite the centrality of these issues to contemporary international politics, graduate

schools of international affairs have failed to keep pace. Conventional curricula often

overlook how racial, ethnic, and gender inequality threaten national security and global

stability. A 2014 review of 50 programs offering master’s degrees in public administration

programs found that only about ten percent of syllabi touched on issues of gender and

culture, and a mere seven percent explored race and ethnicity. International affairs

schools also do little to help U.S. foreign-policy makers address the effects of identity,

embedded biases, and historical narratives on current events. After the U.S. invasions of

Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, Washington would have benefited from greater
cultural competency, additional focus on addressing underlying inequities and grievances

in both societies, and more inclusive reconstruction and peace-building programs.

A lack of institutional diversity within higher education magnifies these problems.

Although the majority of students in public administration and international affairs

programs are women, men still occupy an overwhelming number of faculty and

leadership positions, including 60 percent of deanships. Racial and ethnic diversity is

also lacking among both students and faculty. Women and people of color are promoted

and granted tenure at lower rates than their white male counterparts, partly because they

face greater barriers to getting their research cited and published. Less than 20 percent

of deans at international affairs schools are female or people of color.

Some schools and institutions have made progress over the past several years. In 2019,

for example, the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration

strengthened diversity and inclusion standards in the accreditation process for public

policy programs. The Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs is

now focused on increasing the diversity of students embarking on careers in foreign

affairs. Multiple universities, including Georgetown, George Washington, Texas A&M,

and Tufts, have also created programs that focus on gender or social inclusion. And in

2020, the Harvard Kennedy School introduced a two-week mandatory course for

incoming students, “Race and Racism in the Making of the United States as a Global

Power.” Additionally, a network of deans from public and private schools across the

country is helping schools navigate similar issues by sharing best practices and

recommendations for promoting diversity and inclusion.

NO STUDENT LEFT BEHIND

Although these efforts are a good start, they still fail to address the severity of the problem.

International affairs programs need to collectively launch a comprehensive examination

(led by deans and program directors) of the composition of their faculties,

administrations, student bodies, staff, and curricula and the social and political climates

on their campuses—taking note of disparities in compensation, benefits, and financial aid

levels. Schools also should prioritize diversifying faculty and leadership pipelines.

Administrators often overlook and undervalue high-potential candidates from diverse

backgrounds, as even the most sympathetic evaluators tend to replicate what is already

familiar. To remedy this problem, schools should factor diversity, equity, and inclusion

concerns into tenure and promotion reviews, as faculty and administrators of diverse

backgrounds often bear a disproportionate responsibility for supporting and mentoring

an increasingly heterogenous student body.

This emphasis on representation should also influence curricula. Courses themselves

must consider how diversity, equity, and inclusion impact global affairs. Classes should

address the effect of U.S. history and contemporary domestic discord on national security

and the country’s global reputation. With this goal in mind, professors should revise

introductory international relations courses and introduce a new series of required

classes. These novel offerings would feature retooled syllabi designed to highlight

scholarship from diverse experts. Professors could also develop topical seminars meant

to discuss the intersection of diversity, equity, and inclusion issues and subtopics in

international affairs, such as how identity can underlie violent conflict. Finally, schools

should offer specialization opportunities such as in gender and public policy through

concentrations and certification programs.

Schools need to address their own legacies of racism, inequality, and

marginalization.

Educational institutions must also foster an inclusive climate that helps students from

underrepresented backgrounds thrive. The dearth of diversity among foreign affairs

professionals indicates that schools are not successfully cultivating the strongest possible

cadre of experts. The United States is weaker for it. International affairs schools need to

engage a wide array of communities, recruit the best candidates early in their education,

and offer them promising career paths. To do so, colleges and universities must first

address the racial, gender, and socioeconomic inequalities that persist within academic

communities, which the COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated. Low-income

students are abandoning their studies at far higher rates than their wealthier

counterparts, and research and publishing rates among female faculty

have declined precipitously, as women often assume a disproportionate share of elder-

and childcare responsibilities.

Schools also need to address their own legacies of racism, inequality, and marginalization.

Georgetown University, for its part, is reckoning with its troubled past through its slavery,

memory, and reconciliation effort, which examines the university’s legacy of slave

ownership and trade. Following the murder of George Floyd, the Princeton Board of

Trustees decided to drop Woodrow Wilson’s name from both a residential college and the

School of Public and International Affairs, stating that the former president’s “racist

thinking and policies make him an inappropriate namesake for a school or college whose

scholars, students, and alumni must stand firmly against racism in all its forms.”
A focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in global affairs is long overdue. The systematic

lack of attention that educational institutions have paid to these issues has created

vulnerabilities at home and abroad. Only by engaging the academic community can

leaders transform the face and shape of U.S. foreign policy to meet the challenges of

the twenty-first century. International affairs schools must undertake a comprehensive

effort to revitalize leadership, update curricula, and create an inclusive climate. Such an

effort will pay dividends for decades to come.