As he begins his 35^th year with the College, we asked P. Edward Haley, the W. M. Keck Foundation Professor of International Strategic Studies, to share his thoughts about teaching at CMC, particularly the challenges of teaching international relations during a time when such skills are perhaps never more valued. Professor Haley has received a spring 2004 appointment as a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., where he will complete his newest book, Strategies of Dominance, an analysis of American strategy and diplomacy since the end of the Cold War.

I arrived in Claremont during the Vietnam War. In fact, the war was the main reason I turned down a job at a think tank, the Westinghouse Advance Studies Group in Cambridge, to come to CMC, taking a 33 percent pay cut in the process.

There was no anti-war movement when I was an undergraduate. No day-long teach-ins or all-night political organizing. And no counterculture or women's liberation movement.

Were these young people from the same planet?

During my first semester and every semester until President Nixon stopped the draft, some of the best male students in my classes asked me how to avoid military service. I had served two years as an officer, but it was a chronological accident that I missed Vietnam. Had I been ordered there, I certainly would have gone. That others would try to duck their obligation was strange and unsettling, but I liked these young men and spent hours with them talking about the future.

That was the first thing I learned about teaching international relations at CMC: The world wasn't going to let us alone; it was going to distort our lives, turn us upside down, dangle opportunities, and take away our best people when we needed them most. Ironically, that international affairs were so prominent and the stakes so high actually helped recruit students to study the subject. Before long, it was the third-largest major at CMC. This year, about 150 students are IR majors.

Professor Haley, who holds the W.M. Keck Foundation Chair of International Strategic Studies, was honored last November at formal installation ceremonies.