As an IR student, (keeping in mind all the naivete that title comes with), I tend to agree with Mr. Nye. Most of the classes I have and will take are history classes focusing on the Cold War, which I understand, but at times seems pointless next to what I read on this blog on a daily basis. Now, I don't go to Georgetown, so Mr. Desai's statement:

In our classes, we give students assignments designed to bridge what they learn in the classroom to the real world. There is certainly a connection, and our job is to teach our students to see it. We hope such a pedagogy is in the spirit of what Nye calls for, but we find his piece frustrating as he implies that such endeavors are fruitless because contemporary political science has nothing to say to the broader audience. This is just not true.

may be true at that institution and not mine, but so far the "IR major" courses with the most real-world application at my school have been the economics courses, precisely because they deal with real-world institutions.

The IR courses, meanwhile, encourage us to interpret present events based on past ones using a plethora of theoretical terminology and so-called "models of analysis" that no one outside of the major would understand, and in fact few inside the major probably truly do. Moreover, the best career options emphasized by our advisors are always think tank, NGO, MNC, or grad school, but never anything in government.

But most importantly, my program has so far failed to provide any kind of comprehensive idea of what "International Relations" is besides a one-line definition given at the beginning of my very first intro class, which was something like "the study of how countries interact with one another." In this light, IR at my school seems to be just a specialized branch of history that analyzes after the fact rather than having any bearing on future events.

In a final example, I look at the most successful Professor in our program, who recently released the successful book "Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism." While the conclusions in the book are interesting and seem downright prophetic in the wake of the economic crisis, what strikes me as odd is the way it and its author (when I've heard him speak) talks about the future, which is more or less as a reactionary calling for a return to pre-60s economics and culture.

The point is, the teaching of the discipline I've experienced so far seems to be entirely past-based, with no emphasis on real future solutions. Instead, the assignments are all along the lines of either "apply this particular IR theory to current events" or "find a comparable situation from the past and see how they dealt with it then." In neither of these assignments, and in no discussions, have I been asked to analyze a real-world situation and come up with what I think would be the most appropriate course of action to take based on what I've learned of past events. Instead, we are spoon fed theories and history, and told to apply specific models to specific scenarios and draw safe, analytical (but not political) conclusions about what's happening and why.

So someone convince me I'm wrong, but so far what I'm learning just doesn't seem like it's going to be all that useful when it comes to actually, you know, having any kind of influence on real-world policy.

Excellent title to your post.

As a complete outsider I had assumed that a large part of it – not going into Government service – was due to it not being a worthwhile option in recent times. The past administration seems to have eschewed ‘scientific method’/’logical argument based on facts’ in favour of ideology/dogma/faith which might leave academics wondering if this was a good use of their time and energy. If things change and sound reasoned argument does not leave you feeling like an evolutionary biologist debating with a creationist then it may become a more popular career option.

Gabe
Firstly are we talking about undergraduates? How should the curriculum change? Things move so fast I would have thought that the best thing a student could learn was the history of IR so they could learn from past mistakes and failures. We do seem to have a habit of trying things, finding they don’t work and then finding they have been tried several times before without working – I am sure that is a definition of something. A good grounding of the history with some attempts to look at recent events, what was – and is being – tried and how precedent suggest it may pan out seems about as good a grounding as you can get.

neither Congress nor academia have figured it out. (I say Congress, because State carries its own 800-lb gorilla of bureaucratic inertia around which makes academic participation all the more difficult. And Congress really, really needs all the help it can get.) Obviously, research and analysis conducted by academics has implications on policy, and policy makers, without the empirical benefits of either, forgo the political cover it might provide as well.

As for those who tilt one way or the other due to career concerns, á la George Tennant, do we really want advice from these people anyways? (Ok, ok, I get it. Research needs to be judged on its scope and methodology, regardless. Still. . . .)

I support Mr. Nye in this. Frankly, the thought of US foreign policy formation conducted through a public debate that is actually about domestic political jockeying, or driven quietly by the wishes of corporate donors frightens me. I think it should frighten everyone.

Excuse the sexy headline, but really we have just been witness to academics being part of the administration (Rice and Wolfowitz). I was not impressed by the results. Woodrow Wilson made it to the presidency, wrote a lot of lofty rhetoric and then doomed the Versaille Treaty with his disdain for Congress. Becoming part of the policy team means towing the loyalty line if you want to shape policy. That is antithetical to social science. Many policy makers want predictive capacity, like a science would be able to produce (Economics, the dismal science with all the policy heft, is not even very good at that). Really I think that the best bet is to influence policy through the books that we write and through the students we educate.
Even military professionals in policy circles can be ignored (Powell, Shinseki, etc). Being in policy positions is not a metric of success for academics, IMHO. Obama has been influenced by several prominent IR academics, and his cabinet selections reflect that. He often makes statements that reference IR material (I heard something that sounded alot like Wendt's Anarchy is What States Make of It come out of his mouth).

Holding office is different from being influential.