Message from Chair
When I tell people I teach international relations, I often hear that this must be an especially interested time to be in that subject. I have heard that for many years, so I say that it is always an interesting time to study international relations. We are in a field where certainty about claims more interesting than “Katmandu is the capital of Nepal” is hard to come by. I often tell students that if they are interested in hearing only true statements in the classroom, they should switch to the natural sciences. Of course, the natural sciences are excellent vocations, but someone still has to think about international relations, because the phenomenon and its impact are not going away. In our department, neither do we proclaim absolute truths nor allow that anything goes.
Any student taking classes in our department will encounter contending theories, an ocean of factual claims – news reports from diverse sources, comparative descriptions, statistics, and thoughtful histories – and different methods of comparing facts and theories. Also, with a student body and faculty globally diverse in origin but united in a community of learning, our students learn from each other. Eventually, students draw their own conclusions. Our faculty cannot teach students what to think, only how to think. The only absolute truth in our department is that it is always an interesting time to study international relations.
Professor Sanjoy Banerjee
