We asked Jim Goldgeier to say a bit more about the new International Policy Summer Institute; a collaborative initiative from Duke, Berkeley, and GWU to bridge the gap between policy makers and political scientists, something that is dear to our hearts here at the Monkey Cage. Below is Jim’s description and his invitation to participate (see also Stephen Walt’s comments here).
Back in 1993, Alexander George published Bridging the Gap. Consistent with his extraordinary work over the previous decades, Alex argued that academics, with their deep empirical expertise and theoretical insights, could make distinctive contributions to policy development by developing “contingent generalizations”–insights tied to specific conditions under which they would hold true. It’s easier said than done, of course, and there are numerous hurdles to reaching policymakers, not least of which is the inaccessibility of much academic work. Academics are trained (and rewarded) for publishing in peer-reviewed journals, not for getting their work read by administration officials, Congressional staffers, and intelligence analysts. But a number of scholars would like to do both.
In that spirit, Steve Weber, Bruce Jentleson, Naaz Barma, Ely Ratner, Brent Durbin and I are developing a new International Policy Summer Institute (IPSI), thanks to funding from the Carnegie Corporation and staff support from the Elliott School’s Institute for Global and International Studies. I appreciate the Monkey Cage’s invitation to let folks know about this new initiative for faculty and post-docs, which will take place for the first time June 13-17, 2011 in Washington, D.C. It’s part of the larger Bridging the Gap project, a Duke-UC Berkeley-GWU initiative. The call for applications is here; applications are due January 15.
The program is designed to be small to facilitate in-depth learning–we plan to bring in approximately 12 people, who will be divided into even smaller groups focusing on a substantive topic for the week. Some of the sessions will be interactions with potential consumers of academic research. We will bring in senior officials from the executive branch to explain how to get academic work in front of policymakers like themselves; we will visit Capitol Hill to speak to congressional staffers about how they decide whom to ask to provide testimony; and we’ll talk to members of the intelligence community, who often rely particularly on area expertise. Other sessions will be with publishers: how does one place pieces on the op-ed page or in top policy journals such as Foreign Affairs and the National Interest? We’ll do some media training for radio and t.v. since these are still important ways to disseminate research findings. We’ll talk about new media, especially blog postings, and we’ll discuss the pros and cons of developing affiliations with think tanks. We’ll also discuss the challenges of doing this kind of work while maintaining one’s academic standing, especially for junior faculty members whose main goal is getting tenure in their departments.
Since abstract talk about bridging the gap quickly runs out of steam, we will work on real projects to put the learning to use right away. Participants will write op-eds and briefings during the week. It will be fast-paced, active and participatory.
Like our three-day workshop designed for graduate students (the Annual New Era Conference), a major objective is to build a network of scholars interested in reaching a broader audience. It’s a great way to develop friendships with like-minded individuals who can read each other’s work and support efforts to produce interesting scholarship. We’ve found as the Bridging the Gap project has evolved that there are a lot of scholars out there, especially younger folks, who want to do more than engage in academic debates. The trick is figuring out how to be relevant by being scholarly. As the Monkey Cage demonstrates every day, academics often have a lot more to say than pundits, but it can be frustrating trying to get one’s ideas noticed. We are committed to helping each other do so.