The Teaching of International Relations

Political Studies 3(1), 1954, pp. 75-7. (A reply to an earlier article published in the journal.)

There are those, Professor Wheare among them, from whom an invitation is, for me, a command. The opportunity he gives me for elucidating, so far as may be, at certain points, the tabloid wording of my UNESCO report is one which it would therefore be difficult to decline. Besides, there are incidentally some things that I would rather like to say!

On the definition of international relations Professor Wheare and I seem to be partly in accord and partly not. That it has a unitary subject-matter, complicated, varied, interesting, and important enough to be studied on its own – on this we are agreed. For him, however, if I mistake not, the selfsame individual might by one and the same token be a teacher both of international relations and of history – the former by virtue of his subject-matter, the latter by virtue of his approach. Nor is the historian’s, for Professor Wheare, the only distinctive ‘approach’ to the subject. So that, if the historian is to style himself, alternatively, a professor of international relations, why not, similarly, one might ask, the social psychologist, the statistician, and the rest? We are all professors of international relations, now! Or are we? I do not wish to quibble: but surely the question is not whether we shall view with relative disesteem a given approach to the study of a given subject-matter; but rather whether we shall treat as if essentially interchangeable some sorts of teaching which are not. I at all events do find it pertinent to differentiate between international relations and international history, in much the same way as between economics and economic history, or between criminology and the history of crime.

The main thing, however, is that, while tending to include among students of international relations the exponents of various specialized methods of approach, Professor Wheare is confessedly alive to the value of the synoptic vision of the subject as a whole. By contrast with the statistician and the historian, the purveyor of this synoptic vision is less, he hints, a specialist than a general practitioner. And he points to Sir Alfred Zimmern, whose lectures himself when young did eagerly frequent. Not everyone, he remarks, can be a Zimmern. True. Nor a Maitland, either. Yet the study and teaching of constitutional history are attempted even now. And Professor Wheare himself does not doubt that the general practitioner, whether potentially a Zimmern or not, can be and should be produced.

The question is, Is he wanted? In the recognition of new subjects, no less than in the attachment of labels whether old or new the universities still enjoy, very rightly, a certam liberty to do as they choose. Why, in a given institution, should not a chair titularly of classics be entrusted to one whose single topic was Jane Austen? Why for that matter should not a vacancy as gamesmaster be filled with one whose only proficiency was in chess? When, therefore, I am in effect invited to concede, regarding International Relations, that, distinct discipline’ though I deem it, the holding of professorships in this subject by the ‘mere’ historian, or the ‘mere’ economist, is not improper, it behoves me to select my words with care.

I might, it is true, take evasive action with the protest that the ‘mere’ economist, or ‘mere’ historian, is to me but a mental construct, since no such type, in fleshly form, has ever been met by me. But l know, I think, what Professor Wheare means, and must not shirk the issue. If by his, I hope strictly hypothetical, ‘mere’ historian, he would have me understand someone wholly innocent of economics, or by his ‘mere’ economist a person ignorant altogether of law, then, in that case, I would say, it all depends on what the term ‘international relations’ has locally been taken to mean. But, assuming that, by international relations, in the given milieu, there has hitherto been understood the non-lop-sided study of international relations, then the ‘mere’ this or that, if having mirabile dictu been given such a chair, would presumably make it his concern to rid himself, as soon as might be, of the ‘mere‘. For, between the extremes, of the ‘mere’ what have you on the one hand and the exhibitionist polymath on the other, there is the ‘de-specialized specialist’ – to use a Zimmern expression – who, relatively expert in some single restricted domain, has also an adult familiarity with a wider range of issues. He is not unlike the man who joins a good command of his mother tongue with a reading awareness of languages other than his own.

For there are, I fancy, two further distinctions to which I might attach more importance than Professor Wheare. They are (a) that between International Relations, as a discipline in itself, and various other ‘international’ studies; and (b) that between International Relations and the various other subjects, whether ‘international’ or not, whose presence should commend itself, as ‘underpinners’, in the programme of the specializer in International Relations as such. International history, international law, international economics. are obvious international studies, demanding each its own specialized approach; comparative government. political and economic geography, political ideas, are also among the more important of the underpinners. Meanwhile the focal subject of International Relations proper includes in particular its philosophical, its psychological, its sociological, its strategic and geographical aspects – all of them parts, essentially, of the subject itself, and unlikely, by a Zimmern, to be left unexplored. For without them the presentation of International Relations must itself be lop-sided, and the ‘feel’ of the general practitioner for what everything is all about could never be very effectively fostered in the young.

Still – what sort of chair can ‘properly’ be held by what sort of person is a delicate theme, in any treatment of which there is risk of getting misconstrued. Is it so much a question of propriety as of propitiousness’? And of this what shall be the test? Suppose we assume that here, too, the customer is always right, who exactly in this case is the customer? Is it the university, from whose funds the professor is paid? Is it the taxpayer, from whose pocket…? Or the electorate? Or is it perhaps the student. whose needs the chair may presumably have been meant to serve? Professor Wheare does not directly suggest that every approach, however intrinsically legitimate, to international relations is of equal relevance to the student’s need, or that the teaching he himself received from Sir Alfred might equally have been given him by a statistician, say, or a ‘mere’ expert in economics or law. Can it then for him be a matter of indifference whether others, the youth of tomorrow, are to have set before them the synoptic vision, or ‘merely’ the limited approach? To be interested for one’s own part in some aspect only of a subject-matter may be proper enough, and proper enough for the aspect to be taught. It may likewise be proper enough, if sanctioned by local usage, to put the label ‘international relations’ on the teaching of this or that. But what is not per se improper is not for that reason necessarily to be recommended, and the question is not so much whether statistics. or history, or economics is itself an excellent thing but whether the synoptic vision can, with complacency, be spared. Professor Wheare, I surmise, is not unthankful that, in his undergraduate days, it was not. Call two forms of teaching by the same name if you care to, but does it thenceforth cease to matter which you get?

Then, too, the point about departmental organization. Given that International Relations is seen as proper to be studied on its own, does this amount to saying that it should have a department to itself? Not, certainly, in an administrative set-up where separate subjects do not, in general, have departments to themselves. But, where they do, why not? It is on this point that Professor Wheare, in a manner which had puzzled me a bit, brings in the question of the team method. It is on the team method of teaching that I have come, tentatively, to set so much store. And it is with this matter of teaching that the UNESCO report is concerned. What Professor Wheare, however, discusses is teamwork in the matter of ‘study’: and he sees, I would gather, no reason why, when the problem requires it, a study-team should not include workers from two departments or more. Neither, need I say it, do I. For I would doubt if departmental organization need affect, or be affected either one way or another by, the requirements of co-operative research. And even supposing I assume that, in talking here of study, it is team teaching that Professor Wheare has actually in mind – and this in an establishment where, for balance and completeness, the teaching team in International Relations must look to some help from outside: would this necessarily not be forthcoming? Need interdepartmental divisions be so ‘watertight’ as that? Only I must say I would think it better that those teaching International Relations should have this as their staple concern, and belong as well in form as in daily practice within the department whose specific business it is.

Since he thus does not, in fact, discuss teaching, Professor Wheare naturally does not expressly consider what teaching – either in general or, in particular, of international relations – is for. Nor does he, between the lines, disclose any presuppositions on the point, unless perhaps by his non-alignment on what the booklet rather tends to assume – namely, that the purpose, presumably, in instituting posts in International Relations is not to. reinforce existing teaching strength in other excellent subjects but rather to enable more undergraduates in more universities to get at least some semblance of that holistic vision of the subject-matter of international relations which in his own day he himself so understandably enjoyed. That the international relations specialist (or perhaps general practitioner) could and should be produced Professor Wheare does not allow himself to doubt: but he says nothing further on the point. Yet the matter is one on which in its conclusions the UNESCO booklet laid a certain stress. If by a Zimmern what we mean is one who sees the need that Zimmern saw, who feels the call he felt, and, given the chance, would choose the course he followed – are there no potential Zimmerns, as so defined, among the abler young graduates of today? If some should not even try to be Zimmerns, some should. And their colleagues should, I submit, be glad to see them try.