The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale is the University’s focal point for encouraging and coordinating teaching and research on international affairs, societies, and cultures around the world. It draws its strength by tapping the interests and combining the intellectual resources of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and of the professional schools. The MacMillan Center seeks to make understanding the world outside the borders of the United States, and the role of the United States in the world, an integral part of liberal education and professional training at the University. It provides seven undergraduate majors, including six focused on world regions: African, East Asian, Latin American, Modern Middle East Studies, Russian and East European Studies, and South Asian Studies. The seventh is focused on Global Affairs. At the graduate level, the MacMillan Center provides four master’s degree programs. Three are regionally focused on African, East Asian, and European and Russian Studies, and one is globally focused on International Relations. The MacMillan Center also sponsors seven graduate certificates of concentration: African Studies, European Studies, Global Health, International Development Studies, International Security Studies, Latin American and Iberian Studies, and Modern Middle East Studies. Language training is an integral component of each of the degree and certificate programs. In total, 250–300 students are enrolled in these degree programs in any given year.
Beyond the eleven degree programs and other curricular contributions, the MacMillan Center has numerous interdisciplinary faculty councils, centers, committees, and programs. These provide opportunities for scholarly research and intellectual innovation and encourage faculty and student interchange for undergraduates as well as graduate and professional students. The home of one of the oldest interdisciplinary programs in International Relations, the MacMillan Center is a founding member of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA), along with Columbia, Georgetown, Princeton, Tufts, and other institutions.
The MacMillan Center extracurricular programs deepen and extend this research-teaching nexus of faculty and students at Yale, with more than 700 lectures, conferences, workshops, roundtables, symposia, film, and art events each year. Virtually all of these are open to the community at large. Its annual flagship lectures, the Coca-Cola World Fund Lecture and the George Herbert Walker, Jr. Lecture in International Studies, bring a number of prominent scholars and political figures to the Yale campus. The MacMillan Center reaches a large academic and public audience with a variety of publications including journals, monographs, working papers, and books.
Through the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, the MacMillan Center also provides career counseling services to Yale students interested in diplomatic service or public policy careers with international agencies or nongovernmental organizations.
Its Program in International Educational Resources (PIER) reaches out to the larger public, especially targeting educators at the primary and secondary (K–12) as well as college levels, with professional and curricular development training programs and services, in addition to teaching materials and electronic resources.
The MacMillan Center produces The MacMillan Report, an Internet show that showcases Yale faculty in international and areas studies and their research in a one-on-one interview format. Webisodes can be viewed at www.yale.edu/macmillanreport.
The number of international visiting faculty with the MacMillan Center has also increased dramatically over the past years. In cooperation with several special externally funded programs facilitating exchanges, the MacMillan Center has brought more than seventy-five scholars each year from a range of disciplines and numerous countries to join the Yale community for periods ranging from six weeks to a full academic year. In addition to research, they collectively teach more than forty courses annually.
An enduring commitment of the MacMillan Center is to enable students to spend time abroad to undertake research and other academically oriented international and area studies-related activities. In 2010–2011 it awarded nearly $3 million to more than 500 Yale students for research, language and other study, and internships abroad.
The Fox International Fellowship Program is a two-way exchange between Yale and twelve partner universities—Moscow State University, Freie Universität Berlin, University of Cambridge, University of Tokyo, Fudan University, Institut d’études Politiques de Paris, El Colegio de México, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Bogaziçi University, Tel Aviv University, Universidade de São Paulo, and University of Cape Town. The fellowship promotes the development of individual relationships and understanding among future leaders on which world peace and prosperity depend. The intention is for the Fox International Fellowship Program to expand in the coming years to achieve worldwide status and coverage, adding other equally distinguished universities in other countries.
Additionally, the MacMillan Center is increasing its capacity to provide fellowships for graduate and professional students to come from various parts of the world to pursue a degree at Yale. The MacMillan Center has provided matching funds to federal grants such as the Muskie Fellowships that bring students from the former Soviet Union to pursue graduate and professional degrees at Yale. Through its success in federal grant programs, the MacMillan Center is able to support fourteen to sixteen U.S. citizens enrolled in advanced degree programs with intensive language study through the Higher Education Act’s Title VI, Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships. Other foundation sources provide similar, if smaller, portions of fellowship support targeted at graduate and professional students pursuing internationally oriented degrees or joint degrees between International Relations and the professional schools.
The MacMillan Center is not a school, and most of its faculty have appointments in other units of the University. It works with roughly 250 faculty across the University in any given year and supports fifteen ladder faculty positions, as well as more than 75 visiting scholars in different arts and sciences fields. The MacMillan Center has also appointed many language faculty to multiyear appointments in specific international fields and languages. Its regional councils regularly teach all levels of nine foreign languages (Zulu, Yorùbá, Vietnamese, Tamil, Swahili, Sanskrit, Modern Greek, Indonesian, Hindi) and collaborate with the Center for Language Study in supporting Directed Independent Language Study of another sixty-four languages for undergraduate, graduate, and professional school students.
A number of international, interdisciplinary professorships were created at the MacMillan Center in 2002 by the University. To date, four have been endowed—the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs; the Leitner Professor of International Law, Politics, and International Studies; the Howard H. Leach Professor of Economics and International Affairs; and the Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs.
The MacMillan Center is headquartered at Henry R. Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Avenue, with additional classroom and office space in Rosenkranz Hall at 115 Prospect Street. The business office and several MacMillan Center programs are located at 230 Prospect Street.
The MacMillan Center Executive Committee
2012-2013
Ian Shapiro, Chair; Henry R. Luce Director, The MacMillan Center; Sterling Professor of Political Science
Nancy L. Ruther, Secretary; Associate Director, The MacMillan Center
Julia Adams, Professor of Sociology
Elizabeth Bradley, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health; Associate Professor of Nursing
Richard Bribiescas, Professor of Anthropology and Archaeological Studies
Michael Cappello, Professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology and Public Health
Judith Chevalier, William S. Beinecke Professor of Economics and Finance, School of Management
Oona Hathaway, Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law
Susan Hyde, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs
Sandra Nuhn, Associate Director, The MacMillan Center
Timothy O’Connor, Associate Provost
Catherine Panter-Brick, Professor of Anthropology, Health, and Global Affairs
Thomas Pogge, Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs
Benjamin Polak, Professor of Economics, School of Management
J. Adam Tooze, Professor of History
Steven Wilkinson, Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies; Professor of Political Science and International Affairs
