The Institute of World Politics (IWP) is unique among graduate schools, filling several educational needs with a curriculum offered by no other academic institution in America, and perhaps the world.
This curriculum is designed to prepare students to be effective leaders in statecraft, national security, and foreign policy. It includes the study of all the instruments of power and how these instruments are integrated at the level of grand strategy. These include: diplomacy; military strategy; opinion formation and public diplomacy; intelligence and counterintelligence; psychological strategy; political action and political warfare; economic strategy; moral suasion and other forms of "soft power;" and effective leadership.
The Institute’s curriculum exposes students to the full spectrum of international realities, including history, political culture, the practices of foreign powers (including those that exceed traditional diplomatic norms), current and potential threats, and the strategic role of ideas, values, and belief systems in world politics. In doing so, the Institute’s courses examine subjects that the academy, official foreign policy and national security culture, and their training centers, do not.
The Institute has some of the best instructors in the world in their respective fields. These include ambassadors, senior intelligence officials, military officers, presidential advisers, and senior congressional staff members. Almost all are scholar-practitioners with both academic credentials and high-level governmental and nongovernmental experience in the subjects they teach. Each course is taught by a principal professor. Many courses have occasional guest lecturers, many of whom are prominent figures in government and the broader policy community. Several of the faculty occupy senior positions in government, but continue to teach at the Institute as well.
The Institute’s student body includes recent graduates of colleges and universities from the United States and around the world and a mix of mid-career professionals from government, the armed forces, industry, and foreign embassies and governments, whose various perspectives enrich the classroom experience.
Finally, the educational philosophy of the Institute, based on a recognition of the need to cultivate civic virtue and responsibility in the exercise of power, distinguishes itself from the widespread utilitarianism, relativism, and moral neutrality present in our culture.
All these factors unite to create the unique purpose, curriculum, philosophy, and method of instruction that are to be found at The Institute of World Politics.