Three decades ago, if BU students wanted to study international relations, they had to carve out their own major from the related disciplines of history, political science, and economics. Today, more than a thousand undergraduates major in International Relations, more than in any other department in the College of Arts & Sciences.
What caused this tremendous growth? According to William Keylor, the acting chair of the Department of International Relations (IR), the success of the department is the result of outstanding faculty and administrative leadership. Faculty recognized early on that many students are passionate about world affairs, but their interests don’t fit neatly into the existing social science departments. “There was a tremendous exhilaration among the faculty involved in creating the department, because there was this explosion of student interest,” recalls Keylor. “We were excited that they wanted to learn about this stuff. The students seemed to thrive in this interdisciplinary environment.”
Since its inception, the department has added its voice to the discourse on world events—both on campus and on a national and international level. Keylor recalls how, in the days following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the department hosted an open forum on what the attacks meant in a global context. “Students and faculty were literally hanging from the rafters,” he says. “Hermann Eilts (the founding director of the Center for International Relations at BU and a former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and Saudi Arabia) began his talk with ‘I have known members of the Bin Laden family for 25 years,’ and he went on to give this riveting speech.”
IR has grown in leaps and bounds since becoming an official department in 1989, and has continued its upward path under the leadership of its current chair, Professor Erik Goldstein. (The major in International Relations was formally established in 1982 with the creation of the Center for International Relations.) Cross-disciplinary majors added new opportunities: International Relations & International Communications, International Relations & Environmental Policy, and International Relations & Religion. At the same time, the Center for International Relations remains active within the IR department, augmenting students’ academic experience with lunch discussions, workshops, and other activities. Thousands of IR majors have gone on to tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Graduates work in a wide range of fields, including international business, journalism, military affairs, and international development.
In addition to a strong undergraduate program, the IR Department boasts a vibrant graduate program. The department was recently selected as an affiliate member of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA), an international organization that works “to promote excellence in professional, international affairs education worldwide.” APSIA chooses programs and schools with two-year master’s programs that maintain a high standard of excellence. At CAS, graduate students can pursue a variety of interdisciplinary master’s degrees in international relations through the IR Department or study international relations through the Department of Political Science Ph.D. program, which benefits from the collaboration and expertise of many IR Department faculty.
Keylor, a former chair of the Department of History, looks toward the future of the IR department with optimism. “Our goal is to preserve and augment the high quality of instruction and advising that the department offers to students. We hope that our majors graduate with the curiosity, knowledge, and learning skills that will help them to understand and have an impact on the world they will live in.”