About Us
International Affairs was established in 2008 as the institutional home for Brown's internationalization initiative. In its February 2008 review of the Plan for Academic Enrichment (Phase Two — 2008), the Corporation established five goals to guide internationalization:
- Make the Brown curriculum a model for global undergraduate education, expanding the depth and breadth of international experiences for students and bringing more international scholars and programs to Providence.
- Encourage and support more advanced research in the sciences, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities that depend on — and contribute to — the international investigation of important questions and problems.
- Build more significantly on the strengths of existing centers and programs, such as the Watson Institute, and other ongoing initiatives to develop world-class centers devoted to important global issues. Undertake needed structural, curricular, and governance changes to improve these programs.
- Support a small number of carefully selected new initiatives in order to carve out a special role for Brown in the ongoing process of teaching and research on global issues.
- Use Brown’s convening power, focused on the rising generation of the world’s leading scholars, writers, scientists and politicians, to make Brown the place for sustained dialogue among the world’s leading thinkers.
- As the world of higher education becomes ever more international, it would be a great loss were it also to become more uniform. The strength of America’s university system is its diversity — so also for the world. Brown will have a unique role to play. Just as the ‘new curriculum’ successfully distinguished Brown among its national peer institutions more than 35 years ago, for this century, we must now work to develop our own innovative contribution to global education