Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is a graduate school specialising in international relations. It is based in Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C. but also has smaller programmes in Bologna, Italy and Hopkins-Nanjing Center in China. The School defines its mission as being "to train the next generation of leaders in the global arena."[1]
History
SAIS has taken a key role in shaping the post war world and indeed the institution was explicitly established for that purpose. SAIS's website explains that, "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."[2]
The founders
Christian A. Herter, who would later become Security of State, was a Congressman who had been critical of Roosevelt's New Deal during the 1930s. Paul Nitze was a Wall Street banker who would become an important Cold War figure. A year after founding SAIS Nitze became vice chairman of the US Strategic Bombing Survey and played an important role in the decision to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1950 Nitze became head of Policy Planning in the State Department and was the principal author of a highly influential secret National Security Council document NSC-68 which pressed for increased arms spending by exaggerating the military threat of the Soviet Union.[3] Both Nitze and Herter were connected to the Pratt family and Standard Oil. Both married granddaughters of the oil magnate Charles Pratt - in other words their father-in-laws were brothers.
Notes
- ↑ SAIS, History and Overview, (accessed 27 June 2008)
- ↑ SAIS, History and Overview, (accessed 27 June 2008)
- ↑ Fred Kaplan, 'Paul Nitze: The man who brought us the Cold War', 21 October 2004
