The Hamilton Lugar School ranks first in the nation in the number of languages taught—more than eighty. You are doing this when some universities are moving in the other direction, shrinking or eliminating global and language programs, and at time of growing appeals to turn inward. What do you make of this moment from your viewpoint as a university that looks outwards?

The Hamilton Lugar School is built on a longstanding commitment to global studies, whatever the political mood. During the McCarthy period, for example, the university resisted political pressure on its Russian and East European Institute and, in later years, we prioritized Russian studies, even when attention turned to other subjects. Today, we have a new Russian Studies Workshop, supported by the Carnegie Corporation, a language flagship in Russian, and new faculty in the social sciences and humanities. This same commitment applies to the study of all critical areas and subjects, from East Asia to the Middle East, Eurasia, and the Americas. Our commitment was recognized last year, when eleven of our area studies and language centers were awarded funding under the prestigious Title VI program—the best in Indiana University history and the most in the nation.

You’ve been both a teacher and a practitioner of foreign policy, including as a diplomat. What trends do you seeing defining the tenure of tomorrow’s diplomats and students of foreign affairs?

The ethos of the Hamilton Lugar School is to “change the world, first seek to understand it.” At the nuts-and-bolts level, what that means is we seek to leverage our area studies strength and combine it with multidisciplinary offerings in international studies. Supporting that goal, we have added more than twenty tenure-track faculty in the past four years. In bringing area and international studies into conversation, we believe we are helping to plug an important gap in academia and, we hope, helping to bridge the worlds of scholarship and policy. Organizations are becoming flatter and challenged to think more broadly—even the famously compartmentalized State Department. We have designed our programs to help ensure our students graduate with global perspectives and regional specializations.

When considering graduate programs, many prospective students know what they want to study but aren’t sure how to pay for it. What funding opportunities are available for Hamilton Lugar School students?

We never want cost to be the reason students don’t pursue their dreams. Most Hamilton Lugar School graduate students receive support from the school. For example, our school is the largest recipient of Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships, prestigious Department of Education awards that cover tuition and provide a stipend to our graduate students and some undergrads. We award more than one hundred FLAS fellowships annually to our students. These awards and the many other fellowships available help to ensure our students can focus on scholarship and classroom experience instead of the anxiety of accumulating debt.