Failed foreign policy at SIPA
By Derek Leebaert • March 26, 2024
By Derek Leebaert • March 26, 2024
Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs has just appointed
Ambassador Victoria Nuland, a long-serving U.S. diplomat and the
current Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, to be its
Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor for the Practice of
International Diplomacy, effective in July. She’ll also direct SIPA’s
International Fellows Program.
Schools of
public policy routinely bestow plum teaching positions for a year or
two, sometimes more, on high-profile officials who are leaving
government and seeking a safe harbor. At Harvard’s Kennedy School of
Government, for instance, such positions went to former diplomat Nicholas Burns,
business consultant and Goodman professor of the practice of diplomacy,
following the Obama administration, and author and former Obama
appointee Samantha Power as the Lindh professor of the practice of global leadership, before she also returned to Washington.
It’s
a pattern that needs to be reexamined for two reasons: the questionable
quality of instruction, and the dubious track records of many such
“formers,” as they’re known colloquially in Washington, whom leading
universities rebrand as professors.
Having taught in Georgetown University’s government department for 10 years, I’ve tracked this problem closely.
First,
teaching skills are often viewed as arbitrary when it comes to filling
these positions. Such grace-and-favor faculty roles are unheard of in
physics departments or at medical schools. In the study of global
affairs, however, they have proliferated.
There’s
no need to close the door on such faculty positions for the “formers.”
Some prove to be excellent. They can offer analytical rigor, unique
experiences, and a command of the relevant literature. That was true of Roger Hilsman,
President John F. Kennedy’s former assistant secretary of state, when I
studied at SIPA in the mid-1970s. Still, “formers” were rare at that
juncture.
These appointments have now expanded
with the growth of public policy schools, as well as with the
excitement that has come to surround “national security” since the 9/11
atrocity and the frantic American response. Today, odds are high that
students will spend a semester or two literally hearing war stories from
this cohort, while class time is largely spent discussing that
morning’s news. Prestige often trumps what there might be of teaching
skills.
Second, U.S. foreign policy has failed
and floundered for a generation regardless of party. Take, for
instance, the lost wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the inane decisions
that have led to the latest debacles in Eastern Europe and the Middle
East. Not all “formers” are directly responsible, but many played a
central role in orchestrating these catastrophes, especially if they
have held the slots that make headlines. Moreover, some are more
culpable than others, which isn’t a matter of opinion. Therefore, the
risk of a “former” being a poor teacher is compounded by the likelihood
that this eminent figure has failed terribly on matters about which he
or she is supposed to be an expert.
For example, Nuland, a newly minted professor, is responsible for some of the most egregious blunders
of the last 20-plus years. After all, she helped Vice President Dick
Cheney choreograph the Iraq War as his deputy national security adviser,
and, just last September, she was unrelenting in her certitude that
Palestinians could be excluded from an Israeli-Saudi normalization deal.
It’s bizarre to be taught by people who’ve erred so often, and so
grievously.
Such former policymakers
reflect more than a series of “honest mistakes.” With startling
confidence, many indeed believe that they are “managing” crises when
they discuss getting various millions of people in Asia or Africa to
share the wisdom of American ways. Disaster so often follows. “I thought
it would be tough,” former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice remarked
about the Iraq War during 2008, her last year in office. “I didn’t think
it would be this tough”—to then return to Stanford
as a political science professor. Surely, Columbia’s Vagelos College of
Physicians and Surgeons wouldn’t allow a celebrity doctor with a
history of chronic malpractice to join its faculty. (At least, not intentionally.)
The
custom of these appointments is utterly bipartisan, with some of the
latest arrivals on campus being from Democratic administrations.
Famously, SIPA gave former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton her own teaching role last year, to mixed reviews. “It wasn’t really a class,” one student, Cate Twining-Ward, wrote in HuffPost. “It was a production.” She was only able to ask Clinton a single question the entire semester.
But universities even gave the George W. Bush administration—which launched
the entire feckless, 20-year “Global War on Terror”—the opportunity to
produce its own crop of professors. In some instances, these “formers”
exhibited alarming conduct while working in government, acting with a disregard for international law and, concerning torture, with a flawed morality.
To
recall those Iraq War years, Bush’s CIA director, George Tenet, left
government to become the distinguished professor in the practice of
diplomacy at Georgetown University. Tenet used his time to write a memoir, At the Center of the Storm. According
to students who took his class, he expressed shock at the lack of
thought behind that catastrophic war, as if, say, he had been running
Amtrak at the time, rather than being involved in the administration’s
politico-military decisions.
Nothing unusual. One of Tenet’s colleagues in manufacturing the war,
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, was mired in
controversy at the Pentagon before leaving to land as a visiting
professor at Georgetown, with a parallel appointment as “adjunct
visiting scholar” at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Feith used his office atop Georgetown’s Intercultural Center to write his own memoir, War and Decision,
in which he condemns subordinates who were concerned about the risks of
war. In seminars that I attended, he explained that he had assiduously
guarded the Geneva Conventions. It was his misguided colleagues—not he,
as the Pentagon’s third highest official—who were responsible for dispatching prisoners to CIA waterboarding.
It
should be understood that Washington officials are not experts in
“strategy,” let alone “grand strategy.” Our political system seldom has
room for such comprehensive understanding. Instead, what passes for
carefully crafted policy is in fact a twisting sequence of impromptu
decisions hammered out under the stresses of sudden foreign urgencies.
In
the study of global affairs, these appointments are one more marker of
how a huge, prestige-buttressed “foreign policy establishment” is by and
large winging it. Yet Columbia can introduce a much-needed seriousness
of purpose to the study of foreign policy. Should the University not
halt such appointments, it can at the least handle them with more care.
Perhaps a review committee composed of scholars from callings other than
public affairs—medicine or engineering or physics—can offer an
objective assessment of a “former”’s likely value in the classroom.
Hopefully,
Nuland will be an inspiring teacher who is able to speak of her
mistakes. But who knows? Her students this fall will benefit most if
they prepare some very tough questions.
Ultimately,
however, the responsibility for such high-profile appointments should
lie with the University’s president, advised by such a committee.
Celebrity professors of politics, foreign affairs, and national security
require closer scrutiny—by students and administrators alike.
What
in fact has a “former” accomplished when in office? Which advocacy
groups has he or she represented when previously out of government? Has
“consulting” involved weapons manufacturers? Will his or her teaching
extend beyond war stories? These are fair questions because the
University is unlikely to be hiring a scholar. The “formers” are assumed
to be great for schools of public policy and international affairs.
Their presence makes news. Students who aspire to decision-making roles
in the State Department, the Pentagon, or the National Security Council
hope to learn from “a leader.” Donors are impressed. But these benefits
come with a cost, of which all involved should be aware.
Derek
Leebaert is a 1975 graduate of Columbia’s School of International and
Public Affairs, a former professor at Georgetown University, and winner
of the biennial Harry S. Truman Book Award for Grand Improvisation. He’s
a founding editor of International Security, and his latest book,
Unlikely Heroes, is a Wall Street Journal “Best Book for 2023.”
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