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Seven Decades of Educating Global Leaders

SAIS has always looked to the future.

When the school was founded in 1943, World War II raged in Europe and Asia. But a group of visionaries —led by statesmen Christian A. Herter and Paul H. Nitze—foresaw the need for a graduate school that would prepare young men and women to assume responsibilities in the postwar world.

In today's post-9/11 era, the challenges are enormous and unprecedented. Yet SAIS's mission is more relevant than ever: to train the next generation of leaders in the global arena.

A division of The Johns Hopkins University since 1950, SAIS is truly an international institution, with campuses in Washington, D.C., Bologna, Italy, and Nanjing, China, that draw students from throughout the world. Unique among its peers, SAIS provides the opportunity for students to take advantage of all three campuses during their graduate experience—designing a degree program based on individual academic and professional interests.

SAIS offers the building blocks of leadership in all professional fields: core functional disciplines, such as strategic studies and international development; strong emphasis on international economics; robust regional programs; and essential foreign language training.

A SAIS Education

Based in Washington, D.C., the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University is one of the nation's leading graduate schools devoted to the study of international relations. SAIS's problem-solving approach toward the conduct of foreign policy has benefited approximately 15,000 alumni around the world. The school's graduates work in numerous public, private, multisector and nonprofit agencies and organizations in more than 140 countries.

SAIS's founders established three primary goals:

  • To provide a professional education that simultaneously adheres to the highest standards of scholarship and takes a practical approach to training students for international leadership.
  • To conduct scholarly research related to the concerns of public and private institutions of the United States and governments of other countries and disseminate that research to a broad audience concerned with foreign relations.
  • To offer mid-career educational opportunities for those already working in international affairs.