The International Relations (IR) program is a hallmark of Tufts undergraduate curriculum. Inherently interdisciplinary, the program draws faculty and courses from the social sciences, humanities, arts, and natural sciences, requiring students to engage world problems from multiple perspectives. IR majors study regional history, economics, politics, and culture, global health, nutrition, and the environment, the causes and consequences of war and the conditions of peace, the spread of ideas through global practices and behaviors including human rights and migration, and how individuals perceive themselves in their relationships to the world through prisms such as gender, class, religions, race, and ethnicity. Many students will take classes at Tufts graduate school of international relations, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, which is the oldest and one of the most distinguished schools of international relations in the United States.The causes and consequences of war and the conditions for peace lie at the heart of the interdisciplinary study of international relations. The International Security concentration examines the use, thereat and control of force in international politics, as well as the strategies available to international actors as they seek to promote their autonomy, security and other interests. It necessarily encompasses the ethical, cultural, philosophical, historical and economic implications of the use of force, as well as the trade-offs that states make between short-term and long-term security imperatives.
