Research Initiative

Intellectual Priorities for a Global Era:

An Initiative of The MacMillan Center
From its genesis in the middle of the last century, the Center has been the University’s primary vehicle for encouraging interdisciplinary, area-focused research and teaching. The constituent councils, committees, centers, and programs have made tremendous contributions to our understanding of the world, and have trained generations of scholars. Now, with so many of the world’s most intractable and immediate problems requiring collaborative, interdisciplinary, and regionally-expert inquiry, the Center is focusing its activities on the following three substantive areas. These topics are not intended to be the preserve of, nor exclusive to, any particular academic discipline or geographic area. Rather, they are intended to complement and draw upon the existing intellectual and financial resources resident in the Center. One hallmark of these inquiries will be a conscious emphasis on the global implications of these topics.

Identity, Security, and Conflict
Religious, national, racial, ethnic, and other identities are among the most powerful sources of human motivation. They structure much human conflict, and they are integral to the age-old human search for meaning and security. Identities have proved more resistant to the forces of modernization and globalization than many influential theories predict, and they are not easily accounted for by the dominant explanatory models in the social sciences. Moreover, their normative dimensions are complex, because they often live in tension with widely held commitments to democracy and individual freedom. Nor are the various types of identity obviously alike, despite the common scholarly tendency to classify them together. Yale seeks to illuminate identities from multiple disciplinary perspectives, account for their similarities, differences, and resilience, and explore their implications for the study of security and conflict—sub-national, national, and international.

Democracy: Past, Present, and Future
The last quarter of the twentieth century saw the advent of democracy in more than a third of the world’s countries. Yet the great majority of the earth’s population continues to be governed by undemocratic regimes. Moreover, the histories of fascism and communism remind us that democracy can often be a vulnerable achievement. Some of the newest democracies have already collapsed; others are creeping toward authoritarianism. In the older democracies, organized interests, urban blight, and violence at home and abroad challenge institutional capacities in unprecedented ways. The very idea of democratic citizenship is hotly contested. Some see it as a universal right, others as little more than a coveted ticket to membership in an exclusive club. There is no reason to assume that democracy’s survival, let alone its spread, is guaranteed. Yale seeks to advance our understanding of how to create and sustain democracy, how the tensions between democracy and other goods—notably efficiency and liberty—are best managed, and how established democracies can renew themselves in the face of internal and external challenges.

Justice and Distribution: Local, National, Regional, Global
In an era of unprecedented global integration—of markets, information, technology, and travel—the political organization of the world remains centered on nation states. As the main organs of political accountability and collective enforcement, national governments remain the central focus of demands for justice and redistribution. Governments confront many limits to their effectiveness in such a world, but also profound moral dilemmas. Should international courts and transnational legislative bodies be strengthened, and, if so, how and at what cost? To whom will they be accountable? How should demands to reduce inequities within countries be viewed if the predictable result is to increase inequities across borders? When public goods like clean air must be provided globally, how can national governments—often in competition with one another for power and influence and under massive pressure from private interests—do the providing and the regulating? Yale seeks to study these moral and practical dilemmas from multiple disciplinary vantage points.

Implementation

In order to refocus its scholarship as set forth above, the Center must:
Appoint a number of eminent senior scholars of international affairs over the next several years. These Professors may be appointed to any Yale department or school, and in some cases to more than one department or school. The Professors will be chosen primarily for their record of achievement and potential to advance scholarship and teaching in the three subject areas. In addition to their departmental or professional school affiliation, incumbents of these Professorships will be appointed Professors of International and Area Studies.

Attract and retain a cadre of junior faculty across a wide range of international disciplines, who teach the bulk of the courses in international topics. Yale’s talented junior faculty are highly desired by other universities, and supporting them in their early career development is the best strategy to keep them here..

Provide resources to enable Yale’s distinguished faculty to pursue the research that will maintain their places at the forefront of their fields. Integral to this mandate is developing courses and projects that involve undergraduate and graduate students in the study of these issues and train them to ask and seek answers from a broad array of sources.

Develop resources that will enable Yale undergraduate, graduate, and professional school students to pursue international independent research projects that will contribute to their own education and that of their peers and professors. We must meet the ever-increasing student demand for year-round opportunities for international research, education, and experience. Enhancing resources for study abroad and graduate fellowship support in these three areas are important priorities.

Convene conferences, symposia, lectures and workshops to bring to Yale the wide range of perspectives relevant to these inquiries.

Publish the results of our explorations in these subject areas, for the benefit of those inside the Yale community and beyond.