By Alex Kessler At the beginning of every semester, SAIS students gamble on their education through a complex bidding system. Popular classes such as Illicit Finance, Risk Modeling, and The Rise of Economic Nationalism drive a competitive auction, often resulting in a clearing price above 1000 points. While bidding exists to allocate finite classroom seats... Continue Reading →
SAIS Pandemic Finances – The Odd School Out
By Richard Pedersen SAIS Pandemic Finances - The Odd School Out Over the coming year, SAIS students will navigate a graduate experience largely devoid of student interaction, deprived of necessary academic facilities, and disrupted by online learning difficulties, all at a higher tuition price. SAIS faculty, staff, and administrators are not much better off, facing... Continue Reading →
Struggling to Thrive: SAIS International Students in the COVID-19 Era
By Qianrong Ding After a month of distance learning in this new semester, people seem to have been used to the particular circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic– and they may start enjoying the benefits it brings. But problems are not solved yet. With so much uncertainty, international students - a significant component of the SAIS... Continue Reading →
A Snapshot of the SAIS Virtual Student Experience
Zachary Wheeler “I am writing to inform you that we have changed our earlier position and have reluctantly decided to conduct all SAIS-DC classes and activities in virtual and online formats for the Fall 2020 semester,” wrote SAIS Dean Eliot A. Cohen on July 17th. That night, I imagined the coming semester filled with technological... Continue Reading →
The Future of Strategic Studies
By Dennis Murphy The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies is in a period of transition. The next few years will bring many changes, not the least of which will be the school’s move to 555 Pennsylvania Avenue. It is with an eye to the future that the SAIS Observer reached out to the... Continue Reading →
The 75th anniversary of SAIS invites reflection on its past—and its future
By Yilin Wang October 29, 2019 WASHINGTON, D.C. – On a summer morning in 1943, Congressman Christian Herter and Paul Nitze were chatting about international affairs as usual over the breakfast table in a Georgetown house, while their wives were on vacation. At that time, the world was still shocked by the traumas of World... Continue Reading →
Student Trade-offs = SAIS Identity Loss?
By Nikole Otolia October 25, 2019 WASHINGTON, D.C. — While much attention has been paid to SAIS’s future move to 555 Pennsylvania Ave., word on the street is that changes may be coming to SAIS’s language department as soon as the next academic year. The SAIS Observer reached out to the SAIS administration, current faculty... Continue Reading →
SAIS unveils new Master of Arts in European Public Policy
October 13, 2019 By Gerhard Ottehenning WASHINGTON, D.C. — Prospective SAIS students with an interest in European Union institutions and governance may have noticed the addition of a new program: the Master of Arts in European Public Policy (MEPP). Beginning in Fall 2020, SAIS Europe will welcome its first cohort of MEPP students to its... Continue Reading →
Six-figure salary? There’s a class for that.
September 24, 2019 By Nikole Ottolia WASHINGTON, D.C. — As SAIS students settle into the joys of economics problem sets and language proficiency training this fall semester, our contemporaries at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (HKS) are diving into, “Fundamentals of Negotiation Analysis.” Taught by Professor Brian Mandell, who has been teaching public policy,... Continue Reading →
Are you learning “rational” economics?
By Leif Olson It began with a simple question: Are people rational actors? More importantly, are people rational enough that we can predict and model their behavior? Many SAISers will recognize this as the fundamental question that economics, and, to an extent, social science in general, is trying to answer. But, to what degree do... Continue Reading →