Mission and Programs

The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD), founded in 1978, is part of Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and is the School's primary window on the world of the foreign affairs practitioner.

ISD studies the practitioner's craft: how diplomats and other foreign affairs professionals succeed and the lessons to be learned from their successes and failures. Institute programs focus particular attention on the foreign policy process: how decisions are made and implemented.

ISD conducts its programs through a small staff and resident and nonresident associates. Associates, who include U.S. and foreign government officials and other foreign affairs practitioners, are detailed to or affiliated with the Institute for a year or more. The Institute seeks to build academic-practitioner collaborations around issues.

The Institute's immediate constituency is Georgetown students. ISD staff and associates teach courses, organize lectures and discussions, mentor students, and participate on university committees.

ISD's larger constituency is the broader academic and policy community. The Institute reaches this group through its conferences, working groups, publications, and research activities, which include participation from the men and women who make and influence foreign policy. Also, ISD's international affairs case studies are utilized in classrooms across the United States and around the world.

The United States has been embroiled, since September 11, 2001, in significant conflict in the Middle East and South Asia. . . . [F]undamental questions have been raised in the United States and around the world about America's global role and the future directions of its policies. These policies, of course, are up for popular review as Americans enter the 2008 election year.

ISD, building on staff and associate research in 2006-2007, remains focused on the global challenges facing America.