A More Inclusive Definition of International Relations

[Music]

okay

so as sarah said just a moment ago with

my introduction i think it’d be a good

idea to start out right now with exactly

that

in introduction so i assume that most

people especially students

at some point in their lives have

prepared an introduction in a new

setting

for most people this usually goes along

the line of name maybe where you’re from

what you study or what you like to do

and especially in college it’s a lot of

name major field of study et cetera so

my traditional intro goes a little bit

something like this hi my name is

susie veal and i study political science

and education studies

with a focus on nationalism and genocide

studies

now to focus on that last part first of

all i say it because

it’s true that’s just literally what i

study

but second and more strategically i say

that last part to subvert any

stereotypes that began to form in the

minds of people

once i said the first part introductions

are really important

and so are first impressions and they

start an immediate line of thinking as

soon as you say it

so let’s unpack that a little bit susie

woman

political science general education

studies

sweet or benign but what i want people

to know when i say that i also study

education and genocide studies and

conflict

is that i’m serious and mean business

about a real connection between

international relations and education

and i see that

and with a word a very provocative word

like a crime against humanity or

genocide

immediately you can provoke people to

make that connection in the eyes of

others

at that moment now of course i believe

that education and international

relations are related

but in reality it should not have to

take mention of a crime against humanity

to have other people make that same

connection in their mind

oftentimes we see international

relations as a way by virtue of the word

international

and education as home or domestic but in

reality the two fields actually shape

each other

and they’re incredibly related in both

practice and in theory

so practically education and

international relations coincide because

schools are the primary sites of

political socialization for

people people go to school become

citizens and then engage with the entire

world around them

and theoretically well everything is

essentially diplomacy

whether it’s negotiating interests

international excuse me interpersonal

affairs

or representing yourself to a certain

body of people they’re very intimately

connected

but in the us access to international

relations education in u.s public

schools

is incredibly limited and unequal in

part this is because we all have such a

narrow definition of what international

relations specifically

is supposed to be so if we were to open

that up more perhaps we would be able to

teach more about international relations

across fields

and this is a national problem so the

common core standards for social studies

state

nothing at all about international

relations global or area studies

or world geography at all

and this contributes to a pipeline

problem

so the school to international relations

pipeline has actually become a school to

career diplomacy pipeline

and this is because those who are

encountering an international relations

education in their public schools

are really just getting in the sense of

what it means to be in the most narrow

sense

a diplomat someone engaging in

international relations i’m talking

u.n i’m talking think tanks i’m talking

foreign service

and the result of that problem is

reflected by the demographics of the

foremost diplomatic source

of the united states which is the

foreign service itself so as you can see

on these

statistics here the us department of

state career diplomats for 2016

were only 18 percent non-white whereas

in the u.s there was 28 percent on y as

of the 2010 census

and for sex in the us excuse me in the

foreign service career diplomats only 40

percent of them are women

and in the u.s 51 of citizens

are women so you can see that there’s

obviously a disconnect between the

people who are going abroad to represent

americans and

america and that’s because in part of

this narrow definition of ir

who gets access to it and who practices

it

so i’m going to prompt you all to

imagine what a more inclusive definition

of international relations

might look like if we could expand what

we think of as international relations

perhaps we could illuminate the need for

a broader education

of people who don’t just want to go into

the state department to be career

diplomats but simply people who want to

engage with the world

all around them the tools to make the

world a better place

should not be limited to those who are

lucky enough or have the ability to

encounter

and afford them but unfortunately in the

us

we’re not there yet so as a result when

people try to

seek out any type of education and

international relations

what they’re primarily looking to are

supplementary programs

such as model united nations or summer

sessions and summer academies

and the problem with these supplementary

programs while enriching for sure

is that they require a lot of extra time

and prior knowledge about ir

a lot of time dedicated to practicing

and prepping and finally a lot of

money so model united nations programs

are really exciting

but the bottom line is that they often

self-select for hyper-academic and

extroverted students

who have the means time and money to

travel around to different conferences

practice take weekends away from home

and finally of course buy a business

casual wardrobe

and that’s not accessible to everybody

and then on the other hand you have

summer sessions and summer academies

these are often very highly selective

again

expecting people to already have this

amount of prior

information about international

relations before they apply and they can

be incredibly expensive

so i fall into this latter category i

had no formal international relations

education during my time in u.s public

schools

so the summer of my junior year i

applied to a two-week long intensive

crash course program in ir

had a 30 global acceptance rate and a 6

500

price tag for two weeks and the bottom

line of all this is that had i not

gotten very generous financial aid

i would not have been able to attend

this program and for me that was my only

chance to learn about ir

so no aid equals no program fortunately

i got some very generous aid

so i went to the program and let me tell

you i had the best time

i absolutely loved it this program

completely

blew my mind and i ran the whole gamut

of everything that’s stereotypical about

international affairs

so i read like sun zoos the art of war

learned about the un and the world bank

and the international monetary fund

i did a crisis simulation as an acting

member of the kenyan government

things i never really thought i would be

doing i learned the word hegemony means

all types of things like that and i had

an amazing time and after that program

i thought i knew it all about ir i

thought i kind of had it had it nailed

down the patent in the bag

so i set my sights on it i was already

determined to restructure all my college

applications

around this newfound passion that i just

discovered and i thought it could be

pretty easy

so again changed my whole plan was

determined to do this in college

and didn’t see a reason why my interest

in education would not be

easily fit into this new scheme of

international affairs so i got to

college and here’s my five year plan i

had it all laid out

summer after my first year i’ve done an

internship at the un simple

summer after my sophomore year i’d get a

return offer at the un even simpler

summer after my junior year i’d be

promoted to assistant secretary general

of

something and then after graduation i

personally would be one of three on the

shortlist to be the next secretary

general of the united nations

easy right can anyone guess what

happened

certainly not that so i basically got to

college

and realized almost immediately three

things number one

my plan was absolutely ridiculous number

two

that this whole plan that i had laid out

did not include my interest in education

that i was so dedicated to prior to

attending the summer program

and number three that this debate that i

imagined was already rich and laid out

between international affairs and

education

did not exist at all so having fallen

from grace from my diplomatic

aspirations

i was sad and i was discouraged because

i really thought that i

got the full sense of what i wanted only

to realize that that wasn’t what i was

practically going after at all but even

so throughout all of this i really still

believe that there was a deep connection

between international affairs

and education and i didn’t want to give

that up so i reconfigured my approach a

little bit

so i knew that the disconnect between

the two fields was a problem in my own

community

so i kind of redirected all my energy

and started there

and my mother always told me that if you

want something done right you just have

to do it yourself

so that is what i did

and this began with a program called

hemispheres uh it was talked a little

bit about before but hemispheres would

end up being

the most rewarding and fulfilling

experience that i’ve had in my whole

time in college

it is a non-profit teaching group under

the yale international relations

association that provides free weekly

classes and international affairs to

local new haven high school students

and when i first got to yale i started

applying to a bunch of things as you do

to make friends kind of foiling around

like a fish on the water

and i found chemistry and i thought this

is great there’s this pulp cloud that so

seamlessly

mends together my two interests in

education studies and international

affairs

but i didn’t really get the whole story

at first that was kind of all that i got

i thought this is nice this is education

that just happens to be about ir

i never associated hemispheres with

being ir and it wasn’t until a couple of

weeks in

that i started to realize the really

disruptive and innovative work that

hemispheres was doing

what they were doing was disrupting the

knowledge pipeline of who gets to learn

about international relations

they are providing free classes to

students who otherwise would not have a

chance to develop the literacy in ir

therefore giving them a whole new seat

at a whole new conversation that these

students would have never

been a part of and i thought that was

amazing

so fortunately i had the privilege of

being appointed their director for the

2017-2018 year

and along with a team of three other

incredible yale undergrads

we poured ourselves into expanding

hemispheres as widely as possible

so throughout the year from 2016 to 2018

we went from having 20 students

attending each week to 70

offered from two to four classes per

week and increased

from serving three to ten schools around

the new haven area

and this is really when i started to

think wow maybe ir isn’t exactly what i

thought it was before

because here i was disrupting this

pipeline and changing the normative

culture

about who gets to learn about ir and for

that matter what ire even is

but it was happening in a classroom on a

friday afternoon with pizza

it was not in the hallowed halls in the

state department in a business casual

cat suit

so my role is kind of being flipped

around

and then it happened even more so so

then in the fall of 2018

i began to work as a student liaison for

the yale world fellows program

this is a program wherein global leaders

from all around the world come to yale

to serve as visiting fellows essentially

for one semester

and when i looked around at the fellows

i was suddenly surrounded

by 20 of people who had become my

coolest best friends ever

but also 20-ish people who became global

leaders by first starting in their

communities

and identifying problems that they had

access to and personal stake in

so looking around they didn’t look like

this traditional career diplomat that i

thought

encapsulated and embodied ir it was

totally different

the people around me had made jumps

between industries they had taken time

to take care of their families and even

start families

and they really started their work at

home yet now they were global leadership

they were international relations again

this whole idea of what ir was supposed

to be in my mind was totally

flipping around in seeing the fellows

their boldness

and their ability to disrupt empowered

and inspired me

to then pursue a different type of ir

because the diplomacy that i thought was

normative was not something that i could

fit into

myself so

what we think international relations

should be is in essence limiting

what it actually could be if ir were

wider it were a wider field that was

spread out

more in different fields we could have a

more comprehensive education about it

and more students could have the tools

to interact with the world beyond their

doorstep

to identify things that they think are

wrong to stand by things that they think

are right

and to ultimately speak the language of

effecting change and this should not

just be limited again to those who are

able to access it

so i kind of took a cue from this lesson

myself and i began to in the past year

or so work with iris integrated refugee

and immigrant services it’s

connecticut’s largest refugee

resettlement agency

and now i spend my time mentoring young

adults and helping them learn how to

self-advocate and thrive and remove

schooling environments that are

worlds away from where they were now in

the us safe from persecution

that is international relations and a

couple of years ago that is not

something i ever would have attributed

to being part of this field that i

previously thought

was so narrow and i really wish that it

didn’t take me such a long time to

realize this it shouldn’t have taken me

such a

reality slap in the face when i realized

how absurd my five year plan was

to open my mind to all this different

world that ir could be

but it did and i’m glad that now i’m

here at this point to realize that ir

has many faces yes it’s definitely

happening happening at the un

in the state department and among the

foreign service but it’s also happening

in a hemisphere’s classroom

weekly on fridays from three to five

it’s also happening among the world

fellows

and it’s also happening at iris during

english language classes

ir has a lot of faces so long as we can

contribute it to them

so a lot of things have changed in the

grand scheme of my time

in college and what i was up to um but

some things have not also

i still go back to this introduction of

introducing myself as hi i’m susie i

study political science and education

studies

focusing on nationalism and genocide

studies and yes

i still say that because it is still

true that is just what i study

but now i’m not saying that to prove

that anything is connected to anybody

i’m saying that now because i’m proud of

the work that i’ve done to ideologically

expand the definition of what

ir is and my students and my co-teachers

and my mentors all know that

because they were there along the way to

help force that path when nobody else

was

and we’re seeing results from it too so

just last week in the hemisphere’s class

on social movements we were learning

about the us’s involvement in latin

america

during the cold war era and we asked the

students are you surprised by this

because we know that they’re not

learning this in their social studies

curriculum at school

and one of the students responded no of

course not whatever i just learned that

hemispheres last year

that is what a broader definition of ir

could be so when i introduced myself to

people now yeah i still want to confuse

them by putting into conversation

international affairs and conflict with

school but again

not to prove anything to anyone instead

i want to show that i’m someone who

wants to complicate someone else’s

worldview

and for the sake of having a more

exclusive

inclusive definition of how we coexist

with each other and how we follow those

rules

i hope that they will apply the same

exact thing to me thank you

you