Aspiring policymakers can look forward to a Spring semester lineup of prominent speakers for Duke American Grand Strategy, an interdisciplinary program focusing on U.S. foreign policy.
"The people who study Grand Strategy share some common ideas about what it is, but there is not a universally accepted definition," said Professor of History Alex Roland, who leads the program along with Professor of Political Science Peter Feaver. "My definition of it is how a nation-state uses its total resources-which can be military, economic, political, diplomatic or social-to achieve its foreign policy objectives."
Duke's program is just five months old and has potential for growth, said Feaver, who added that he hopes to start a summer internship program similar to one at Yale University and incorporate Grand Strategy into a freshman Focus program. He also plans to build a network of Grand Strategy alumni in Washington, D.C. to link to current Duke students and hopes to fund more graduate and postdoctoral research in the Triangle area.
"To add a research dimension would be a great goal because by bringing in outsiders who come in for one to three years, we can greatly increase the number of people in the community that are working at the cutting edge of scholarship," Feaver said.
The program aims to create a community of scholars with a common interest in American Grand Strategy through coursework, social events and guest lectures. It is built around a core course on American Grand Strategy taught by Roland and Feaver, who was a special adviser on the National Security Council Staff at the White House from 2005 to 2007. The course, which is cross-listed as political science, public policy and history and taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, will always be taught by two professors from different departments.
"Imagine you have Professor Roland and Professor Feaver sitting across the table asking different questions from a historical perspective and a political perspective," said Alex Lorber, a graduate student in the course. "Whether you're a history or public policy major, you can add a lot to the conversation about Grand Strategy and get a lot from it that you might not ordinarily get."
Yale's Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, which started in 2000, is the original and most well-known program. It is centered around a two-semester course with intensive policy-making simulation exercises and study of classical texts, selective summer internships and intimate dinners with prominent figures in national politics.
The program was so successful that it prompted other schools to start their own. But Grand Strategy at Duke plays up to the University's particular strengths and sets it apart from the original because Duke has its own public policy major and institute, Roland said.
"There isn't a separate public policy program at Yale, so the core faculty running their program are from history and political science. [The program at Duke] has the added dimension of public policy," he said. "Their program is more historically oriented than ours-we're much more oriented to current policy formulation."
The course is just the "centerpiece" of the program, Feaver said, and there are planned speaker series, workshops and conferences meant to create a community of scholars interested in the topic in various settings.
Daniel Bessner, a second-year Ph. D. candidate in history, said he gave high ratings for the course partly because of the interaction between two professors and their respective fields of study.
"Both Feaver and Roland are at the top of their respective fields and both had an enormous amount of knowledge that they were lucidly able to share with the class," Bessner said. "Moreover, the two professors clearly enjoy each other's company and get along on a personal level, so class was always filled with good natured jokes and ribbing regarding the methodological differences between history and political science. This was probably in my top three favorite classes of all time."
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