The Fletcher School

By Jon J. Rosenwasser, Ph.D. ‘04

“How am I going to ever finish my dissertation without you?” I asked in a panic of Susan Fink and Karen Coppock. Susan had entered the Ph.D. program with me in the fall of 2000 as a direct-admit candidate and for the past three years had been my intellectual partner in international relations theory and tutor on military culture. Karen had earned her MALD in 1996 and entered the Ph.D. program in 2001. The three of us sat together in a cluster in the Fares Research Center and egged each other on, with starry aspirations to graduate in 2004.

But now Susan was moving to Newport, RI, to teach at the Naval War College, while Karen was moving to San Francisco and would serve as a visiting scholar at Stanford. I would be moving to Washington, DC, to be a predoctoral Research Fellow at The Brookings Institution. The indomitable troika was dispersing, scattering to the winds as is so commonplace among ambitious Fletcher students.

While excited about the pending moves, the fear was palpable. Writing a dissertation is a lonely and isolating experience, but we had kept it engaging. The aphorism, “The time it takes to finish a dissertation varies directly and exponentially with the distance from your home institution,” loomed large. But this proverbial band of brothers would not retreat from the challenge.

“We’ll make a pact,” Susan and Karen said, in the typical Fletcher entrepreneurial spirit.

On a cold February day in 2003, we lunched at The Parish Café on Boylston Street in downtown Boston and made an unflagging commitment to finish our dissertations by spring 2004, an ambitious target. I dubbed it the “Treaty of Parish,” a geeky nod to the 1763 international treaty that had concluded the French and Indian War. Toshi Yoshihara, a Ph.D. classmate who would be working at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis in Cambridge while writing his dissertation, became a signatory the following week.

Over the next year, the four of us held hour-long conference calls every month, checking in and checking up on each other.

“Email us a draft of your methodology chapter in two weeks so we can read and discuss it in our next call.”

“What do you mean you don’t have your second case study chapter done? I don’t want to hear that your dog ate your hard drive.”

“I’m having trouble managing my committee. One professor’s traveling all the time; another’s giving me flak over my methodology. What can I do?”

“I’m considering revising my case studies from 12 relatively thin ones based on geography to 6 deeper ones based on function. Does that make sense?”

We each aspired to write the next Sam Huntington treatise, but knew ultimately that the best dissertation was a done dissertation. And the Treaty brought us home.

Susan excitedly reported that she had a defense date set for December 2003. Toshi and I arranged to defend on consecutive days in March 2004. Karen was delayed by an unanticipated move, but remained squarely on track to submit a full draft by early fall. Promises made, promises kept.

I proudly display a picture on my desk of Susan, Toshi, and me from this past May’s graduation, tassels waving across our exuberant faces. We’ll all be at Karen’s defense later this year to share in her joy and complete the obligations under our treaty. We’d have it no other way.