The Fletcher School

Director: Charles Bralver
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Throughout the last two decades, the mass movement of capital and economic transactions from intrastate marketplaces to the global economy has resulted in an increasingly complex system of economic activity and growth. From globally dispersed corporate investments to individuals sending remittances to their home countries, economic globalization has reallocated capital and shifted economic power giving emerging markets more traction and visibility. Consequently, there is a critical need for organizations in developing countries to expand their capacity to enter the global marketplace while developed country organizations must refine their abilities to operate in these formerly non-traditional areas.

Fletcher's Center for Emerging Market Enterprises (CEME) considers not only particular geographies but also the topic areas that affect these emerging markets through events, research, executive education, visiting scholars, and conferences. CEME's focus areas range from the global economic players like India, China, and Brazil to countries of regional or industry-specific importance such as Venezuela, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Romania. Issues including microfinance, governance, and labor markets are also a key part of CEME's focus.

Director: Professor William Moomaw
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This program explores the importance of environment and resource issues in determining the relationships among nations and the linkage between national patterns of economic activity and the environment. A major emphasis is on translating the scientific basis for environmental concern into policies, technologies and strategies that address both the needs of human societies and the requirements of natural systems.

Research activities within the program examine the link between patterns of economic development and environmental degradation, comparative national environment and resource policy development, and the role of international organizations, corporations and other institutions in responding to environmental challenge. The interdisciplinary nature of the program brings together faculty and students with backgrounds in economics, law, negotiation, political science, natural science, resource management and engineering.

In collaboration with the student-directed Energy and Environment Forum, the program brings speakers to campus and holds symposia and conferences. Students are encouraged to work on topics of active policy concern, and to learn whenever possible by contributing directly to the resolution of important environmental and resource issues.

Director: Professor Ayesha Jalal
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Established in 1989, The Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies at Tufts University has served as New England's focal point for scholars of and scholarship on the South Asian subcontinent and the Indian Ocean rim.

With an emphasis on history, culture, literature, religion, politics, economics and diplomacy, it is committed to promoting interdisciplinary approaches to the study of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka , Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives, which together make up the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.

The Center fosters comparisons and links across the Indian Ocean which connect the people of South Asia with those of Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Director: Professor Alexandros Yannis
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The Constantine Karamanlis Chair in Hellenic and Southeastern European Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy is committed to promoting Hellenic and Southeast European Studies in the US while honoring a towering figure of Greece’s recent past.

Acting Director: Prof. Miguel E. Basáñez
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Since development became a priority international issue a half century ago, strategic paradigms have come and gone. While some positive outcomes have been realized, none has produced the advertised broad-scale transformations in poor, often authoritarian, often unjust countries. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to cultural values, beliefs, and attitudes. The Cultural Change Institute (CCI) works to promote awareness of the significance of culture and of cultural change in lagging societies through country case studies; studies of the instruments and institutions of cultural transmission (e.g., child-rearing practices, education systems, religions, the media); pilot projects; value and attitude surveys; and conferences.

Director: Crocker Snow
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The Murrow Center was established in 1965 as a memorial to the man whose distinguished reporting and analysis of world news and imaginative leadership of the United States Information Agency set a standard of excellence in the field.

Mr. Murrow's library and papers are housed at the Digital Collections and Archives at Tufts University. 

The Center awards Murrow Fellowships to mid-career professionals who engage in research at Fletcher ranging from the impact of the "new world information order" debate in the international media during the 1970's and 1980's to, currently, telecommunications policies and regulation.

Director: Professor Leila Fawaz
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The University-wide Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies is concerned with the countries of Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, and the neighboring countries of Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Israel, and Turkey, together with any other country or region of the world whose history and politics affects them. It has an interdisciplinary approach and deals with cross-regional and comparative issues.

• To provide a better understanding of the region and to increase the region’s visibility and capability to raise issues of concern.
• To provide a broad and diverse forum for a critical analysis of past and current issues.
• To serve scholars, policy makers, government officials, and international organizations whose work focuses on the region.

Contact: Jenifer Burckett-Picker
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The Global Issues Seminars (GIS) are an outreach program of The Fletcher School. The seminars are held two to three times a year. Lectures by Fletcher professors and more pedagogically-oriented sessions by local high school teachers provide an intellectually stimulating day for some 50-60 Boston area high school history teachers.

Director: Professor Pat Schena
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The growing centrality of technology issues in international affairs has raised new and complex issues for government policymakers and corporate executives. To address the pressing domestic and global issues engendered by the impact of technological change and advance on the conduct of nation-states and transnational relations, The Fletcher School established a center dedicated to the study of global technology management, comparative national technology policy and strategy, technology transfer to the Third World, techno-nationalism, cross-border R&D and technological competitiveness. The Center, which was initially endowed with a major grant from the Hitachi Corporation, focuses on global, regional and national technology issues that are linked to the interaction between government and business.

Director: Peter Uvin, Henry Leir Chair in International Humanitarian Studies
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Throughout the world, people engage in dynamics of social change in the developing world. They do so through the thousands of bilateral, international, and non-governmental organizations that are active in the fields of humanitarian relief, development, human rights, and conflict resolution. Traditionally, practitioners and researchers have tended to specialize in only one of these fields. As a result, while in principle in favor of the other aims, they are often unaware of the positive or negative impact their actions may have upon these other fields. 

We are now beginning to understand that any progress made in one field without attention to the others is sub-optimal at best and often unsustainable, since people who live in situations of extreme deprivation often face all these conditions simultaneously. Practitioners and researchers everywhere now urgently seek to gain insights about the overlaps and interactions between these fields, train staff who are able to collaborate with people from other areas of expertise, and develop strategies that cut across traditional professional borders.

Some scholars, governments, and international organizations have recently begun using the term "human security” to bring together the concerns and practices that deal with the many faces of, and close relations between, freedom from fear and freedom from want. Under this rubric fall a broad variety of issues and trends, but they all share a desire to cross boundaries between fields of social change until now usually treated separately, and a strong ultimate focus on the inclusive well-being of all human beings. The Institute’s work is based on these principles. 

The Institute is resolutely interdisciplinary. All its activities make a fundamental choice in favor of crossing academic and professional barriers. It integrates economics, politics, law, nutrition and health, and all other perspectives it needs.

Director: Charles Bralver
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Through a global lens, the IBC provides students, employers, companies and alumni a range of multidisciplinary tools and perspectives essential to working in today’s complex business environment.

Director: Professor Richard Shultz
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The International Security Studies Program (ISSP) provides a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the sources of conflict, conflict resolution, the role of force in international relations, and the maintenance of international peace.

Each year the program sponsors a guest lecture series on international security issues. Some of the many speakers sponsored in the past year included: Sir Richard Dearlove, KCMG, OBR, Former Director of M16, British Secret Intelligence; The Honorable Chang Hee Lee, Ambassador, Ret., Republic of Korea; Lieutenant General Joseph R. Inge, Deputy Commander, USNORTHCOM, and Vice Commander, USELEMNORAD; Dr. William Luti, Assistant to the President and Senior Director, Defense Policy and Strategy; Brigadier General Joseph Dunford, USMC, Director, Operations Division Plans, Policies and Operations, HQ USMC; Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, Head, International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, Singapore; Sir David Manning, KCMG, Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States of America; Rear Admiral (Ret) Rudolf Lange; Professor Ralph Begleiter, "Distinguished Journalist in Residence,” University of Delaware; Dr. Jonathan Tucker, Senior Researcher, Chemical & Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program; BG Michael Ferriter, USA, Director for Operations, Plans, Logistics and Engineering Directorate, US Joint Forces Command; The Honorable Francis J. Harvey, Secretary of the Army and Mr. Bruce Lemkin, Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force, International Affairs.

In addition, during the fall semester, ISSP conducts its annual crisis simulation exercise (SIMULEX) involving an international scenario. Assisting the exercises are representatives from the official U.S. government gaming agencies.

Every year, the armed services send distinguished senior officers to The Fletcher School to take part in seminars and to participate actively in those ISSP "outside-the-classroom" educational activities that offer students essential practical insights to complement their coursework.

The program was initiated and has been sustained with the generous support of the Scaife Family Charitable Trust and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Other grants have come from the John M. Olin Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Allegheny Foundation, the William H. Donner Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, the Anderson Foundation, the Raytheon Company, as well as the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Director: Professor John Curtis Perry

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Previously known as the Oceanic Studies Program, the study of maritime affairs at Fletcher is not organized in a center but forms an incipient special program, providing an intellectual focus for those who might choose to include a salt water perspective in their work.

Director: Professor Steven Block
The Program in International Development combines coursework in the fields of Law and Development, Development Economics, and Comparative and Developmental Political Analysis with workshops, seminars and visits by experts in an integrated program of development studies and research.

The program's goal is to provide a framework for analyzing contemporary aspects of development including problems of social and political change; theories of economic development and growth; the role of law in development; trade and balance of payments problems of developing countries; international development organizations; the role of financial and technical assistance in aiding developing countries; food and agricultural policy; and, the economics of consumption and nutrition. The program is closely linked to the School's curriculum through the Certificate in International Development.

Director: Professor Eileen F. Babbitt

As a field of study and practice, international conflict resolution explores the various causes of conflict in the current international system and the non-violent strategies and approaches for constructively managing such conflict. This academic program is inherently multidisciplinary and draws courses and faculty from all three divisions at Fletcher. It includes:

• Concepts and skills of negotiation, for use in diplomacy, business, and law
• Methods of third-party intervention, from mediation to coercion
• New approaches to international intervention, recognizing the roles played by the coordination of political, military, and non-governmental actors
• Crisis management and arms limitations, as modes of containing or preventing conflict
• In-depth analysis of specific contexts in which conflict must be managed, such as trade, environmental and resource issues, international organizations, business ventures, as well as in struggles of war and peace

We consider negotiation to be a basic life skill, which is important as a foundation for work in any of the fields of international endeavor, and conflict resolution in general as an approach that can be adopted by managers and decision-makers in all career paths. It is a perspective that combines strategic analysis with constructive approaches to problem solving.

In addition to the academic courses, the program offers a non-credit mediation practicum, in which students receive 32 hours of mediation training and then apprentice with experienced mediators in local small claims courts. The practicum training is offered in the fall semester and is limited to a maximum of 20 students. In this and other activities, the program works closely with the International Negotiation and Conflict Resolution student group.

Director: Professor Hess
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This program concentrates on the strategically important area that extends eastward and northward from the Arabian Peninsula to include Pakistan and Central Asia. Since this same region forms the core of classical Islamic civilization, understanding its cultural and institutional history is a necessary part of the analysis of its contemporary problems. Among subjects receiving special attention are: international competition in Southwest Asia; security in the Gulf and Red Sea; military competition and the arms trade; modernization of Saudi Arabia and Iran; regional economic development and international trade; Islamic fundamentalism; ethnic violence; politics of oil and petrochemicals; and modern technology and social change.

During the academic year the program sponsors lectures, colloquia and an executive seminar series.

The program offers a range of language learning opportunities in conjunction with Tufts University, other colleges and universities in the greater Boston area, and institutions of higher education in the Middle East. The program sends several students each year to universities in the Middle East, Central Asia and Southwest Asia for summer language training and/or to pursue internships in the public and private sectors.

The program also engages in a number of special educational activities. It sponsors a special training program in international affairs for the Foreign Ministries of Gulf countries and it engages in administrative and academic training activities for the Jerusalem School, a graduate school of economics and diplomacy in Palestine.