Summer Programs

Focus Area: SA Research Methods

This is an applied course on big data analytics with focus on data mining. R will be the main tool for problem solving with Python as the other option. Topics will cover data visualization, exploratory analysis, association rules, classification and regression trees, deep learning (neural networks), text mining, and social network analysis. Prerequisites: General understanding and experience with statistical models, including multivariable regression models, analysis of variance, and test of hypotheses. No previous programing experience is required, and the textbook offers extended code that can be used directly or modified.

Prerequisite: Statistics for Data Analysis

Instructor: Roumen Vesselinov

Course may also be available virtually

Focus Areas: Europe and Eurasia; Security, Strategy, and Statecraft

This course examines Russian foreign and national security policy and has five goals. The first goal is to enable students to make accurate and reliable assessments of the principal actors, main drivers, and structural constraints shaping Russian foreign and national security policy. The second goal is to enable students to make accurate and reliable assessments of Russia’s important relations and key issues with major powers and regions. The third goal is to enable students to determine what policy instruments and institutional mechanisms the Russian decision-makers use to defend Russia’s national interests, to advance Moscow’s strategic objectives, and to realize the Kremlin’s policy priorities in key functional areas. The fourth goal is to enable students to evaluate the accuracy, credibility, and utility of the main Russian open sources available online in the public domain for the policy relevant research and intelligence analysis. The fifth goal is for students to develop critical thinking and writing skills so that they can produce high quality analytical products for various types of consumers, using open-source information.

Instructor: Alexandre Mansourov

Course may also be available virtually

Focus Area: Governance, Politics and Society; Development, Climate and Sustainability

A great deal of international relations scholarship on Western intervention in non-Western societies lends itself to narratives that center the interveners' agendas and capabilities. This course delves into the complex dynamics of international interventions, focusing on the interplay between global policies and local communities within the context of geopolitics. It shifts the narrative away from the sole perspectives of intervening nations, instead highlighting the vital contributions of local actors in shaping their own social and political landscapes. Discussions and real-world case studies will explore how local communities actively respond to, adapt, and sometimes resist interventions labeled as humanitarian or developmental. By integrating indigenous insights with established theories, the course aims to unravel the rich tapestry of interactions that characterize these encounters. By placing indigenous scholarship alongside Western theories across a range of historical and contemporary cases, the course will build an analysis of these interactions to reveal the powerful dynamics and instabilities that shape interventions as they unfold.

Instructor: Omar Sharifi

Course may also be available virtually. 

Focus Area: United States; Security, Strategy, and Statecraft

This course examines the role that intelligence plays in the formation of national security policy. The course explores the forces and events that have shaped U.S. intelligence. It examines the steps involved in producing intelligence from requirements through collection, analysis and the actual making of policy. The role of intelligence in the major intelligence issues facing the United States today will be discussed as well.

Instructor: Mark Lowenthal

Course may also be available virtually. 

Focus Area: Leadership, Ethics, and Decision Making, SA Core Courses

This course will expose students to the theory and practice of leadership, ethics, and decision making in the realm of statecraft. We will take an immersive and practice-focused approach, wrestling with past and present policy challenges as a means to understand and internalize the struggle of policymakers trying to make and implement good decisions. Given that students will not vault immediately to the upper echelons of leadership upon graduation, we will take up the challenges that confront more junior and mid-level policymakers as well as senior officials. Our case studies will encompass historical successes and failures as well as simulations and exercises in which students will be forced to stand in the uncomfortable shoes of decision-makers facing no-win dilemmas. By the course’s end, students will have sharpened their skills of analysis, judgment, collaboration, decision making, and presentation. They will have formed preliminary views on the following fundamental questions and be positioned to take these lessons forward into their careers.

Instructor: Staff

Modality for summer 2026 still being confirmed

Focus Area: SA International Economics, SA Core Courses, SB Core

This course covers the basic theory underlying international macroeconomics. Topics include international financial markets and the macroeconomics of open economies; balance of payments and the trade balance; exchange rates and the foreign exchange market; expectations, interest rates and capital flows; monetary and fiscal policy in open economies; exchange rate regimes; and macroeconomic policy in open economies. Basic algebra will be used in this class. Students may not register for this course if they have not previously taken a Principles in Microeconomics course (an entry requirement for MAIR students).

Prerequisite: Principles of Microeconomics

Required for the Certificate in International Economics.

Instructor: Elie Canetti

Focus Area: SA Research Methods

The course is a critical review of human-centered quantitative and qualitative research applications in international affairs, with a particular focus on learning the tools used by social scientists to evaluate the quality and feasibility of different research approaches in developing country contexts. The first half of the course delves into the practical uses of validity theory as the gold standard to assess the victories and pitfalls of experiments, quasi-experiments and non-experiments in real-world cases around the world. The second half of the course is devoted to understanding qualitative research methods (in-depth interviews, focus groups, and a variety of observational tools such as photography and graphic novel techniques), and learning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative work in hard-to-access contexts across Africa, Asia and Latin America. The course provides a practical knowledge foundation for professionals who aspire to critically assess the real value of quantitative and qualitative evidence presented to them, while it helps them to determine the right opportunities to generate new knowledge for more informed and effective policy and program design.

Instructor: Raul Roman

Focus Area: Security, Strategy, and Statecraft

This course examines phases of conflict and techniques that may be introduced at various stages of conflict to halt escalation, minimize violence, and to move conflicts towards resolution. This includes an analysis of the prevention of violent conflicts, crisis management, negotiations to terminate violent conflict, the resolution and/or transformation of conflicts, and post conflict peace-building. Special emphasis will be placed on the role of third parties, such as international institutions, state governments, eminent persons, and NGOs in conflict management.

Instructor: Sinisa Vukovic

Focus Area: Asia; Security, Strategy, and Statecraft

The course is structured around the background, theory, and application of nuclear politics and history in East Asia. In the first portion of the course students learn about the development of nuclear weapons programs during the Second World War and the Cold War and the differences in proliferation and non-proliferation strategies among early proliferators (e.g. the United States and the Soviet Union). During this portion of the course, students will examine important incidents and policy decisions that shaped nuclear proliferation in world politics. In the second portion of the course, students will learn broader theoretical concepts in International Relations scholarship such as brinkmanship diplomacy, deterrence theory, and alliance security dilemma, and apply them to the study of cases of proliferation, attempted proliferation, and nuclear latency in East Asian countries, including China, South Korea, North Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Australia in order to understand the variance in nuclear exploration, pursuit, and acquisition. The course draws upon canonical texts in the nuclear politics and history literature, and also incorporates recent policy analysis. This course relies on declassified archival documents to illustrate the history and theories addressed in the class, thus fostering a breadth of knowledge on different nuclear weapons cases. While we analyze these cases, I encourage students to engage with primary source documents as well as to think critically and evaluate the arguments put forward by historians and political scientists on nuclear proliferation and non-proliferation.

Instructor: James Person

Focus Areas: SA International Economics, SA Core Courses, SB Core

This course provides an introduction to the study of international trade. The first part of the course will focus on theoretical frameworks designed to understand the drivers and implications of international trade and review empirical applications of these models. The second part of the course will cover distributional consequences of trade policy instruments, arguments for trade protection, and the organization of the world trade system. Advanced topics in microeconomics, not covered in most Principles of Microeconomics courses, will be introduced. Students may not register for this course if they have not previously taken a Principles in Microeconomics course (an entry requirement for MAIR students).

Prerequisite: Principles of Microeconomics

Required for the Certificate in International Economics.

Instructor: Christine McDaniel

Focus Area: China; Security, Strategy, and Statecraft

Along with China's emergence as a great power, Chinese Communist Party leaders in Beijing face a wide range of traditional and non-traditional security challenges. This course examines Chinese perspectives on, and responses to, contemporary national security issues such as competition with the United States, Taiwan and cross-Strait relations, maritime disputes, North Korea's nuclear program, and space and cyberspace security. This course also considers domestic security issues, as well as the responses of other countries to China’s rise in areas such as defense strategy and export control policy.

Instructor: Mike Chase

Focus Area: The Middle East; Governance, Politics and Society

The rise of Islamism and the role Islam has played in politics constitutes one of the most important and consequential developments of our time. In recent decades Islamic ideas have become embedded in society, economics and politics of large numbers of Muslim countries in Asia and Africa but have also became part of domestic politics in the West, China, India and Russia. Since 9/11 Islamic activism has also been integral to discussion of international security, deeply influencing ebbs and flows of global conflict. It has dominated news and foreign policy thinking from one major global event to another over the past four decades. In the process it has posed significant foreign policy challenges, but also raised important questions for historians and political scientists. This course will explain the origins and development of this important historical phenomenon. It will examine how and why Islam has become so politically influential, trace the origins and development of core ideas of Islamism, and how it has shaped global politics in recent decades. The course will examine the life and works of key thinkers and leaders and discuss those events that have defined Islam’s role in politics such as the Iranian Revolution, the Afghan Jihad, and the rise of Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Instructor: Vali Nasr

Focus Area: Governance, Politics and Society; Security, Strategy, and Statecraft

Politics affects risk on many levels (e.g., international, national, regional, and local), and is the result of the interaction of many different elements. In this course, we start by examining some basic issues with regard to risk analysis as well as why forecasts often fall short before examining three broad issues: country structural fragility; problems with collective action policymaking; and operational breakdowns. The first looks at how the sociopolitical and institutional dynamics of a country affects its evolution. The second looks at how the policy formulation process works and why it often yields a less than ideal result. The third looks at the challenges of implementation. As such, the class focuses more on the risks that face countries than on how particular risks might impact corporations or NGOs, though the latter is also examined. The two types of risks are related but are not identical (e.g., regulatory changes may be good for a country, but bad for a company or NGO). We conclude by examining how to prioritize and mitigate risk. Each class aims to provide students with a set of frameworks to think about and assess these issues. Students all get a chance to work on case studies to develop their skills.

Instructor: Seth Kaplan