About Fletcher

General information about the School.

Cameron Hall of Flags
About Fletcher

Overheard in the Hall of Flags…

Daniel Birdsall

A recommendation I often give prospective students during their visits to Fletcher is to take some time just to hang out in the Hall of Flags between visiting classes, chatting with students over coffee, meeting with faculty members, and talking to us. Regular blog readers will know I’m big on the idea of “fit” between school and student, and fit can sometimes be a function of intangible qualities of a place that might not come through as much in more formal or structured meetings. Sometimes a place can just feel more right to you than another. I imagine the Hall of Flags to be a good barometer of the general feeling and energy level of Fletcher at any given time, and my hope is always that a casual stretch of downtime there will show prospective students that Fletcher is where they want to be.

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About Fletcher

Disorientation Week brings balance to the force

Daniel Birdsall

As we all know, everything in the world has its opposite: every Superman has his Bizarro, Mr. Glass his David Dunn, Pepsi its Crystal Pepsi. Fletcher is no different, and it’s around this time each year that rumblings of Disorientation Week (“Dis-O,” in the parlance of our times) start hitting the internal streams. Dis-O acts as a graduating-student counterweight to the beginning of students’ time at Fletcher, Flexo to orientation week’s Bender. Taking place after finals but before commencement, Dis-O is a communal release valve for graduating students to spend a bit of time together doing anything other than reading, writing papers, and meeting with study groups.

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Juan Manuel Santos at Fletcher
About Fletcher

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos returns to Fletcher

Daniel Birdsall

Fletcher is one of the few places where being able to drop in casually on a conversation with a Nobel Peace Prize laureate seems like a fairly normal Monday afternoon activity. Still, it felt like a special treat yesterday to catch the visit to Fletcher by former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. Santos was Colombia’s President from 2010 to 2018, and is best known globally for his stewardship of peace negotiations with the FARC rebels that led to the end of the country’s 52-year conflict (and which earned him the 2016 Nobel). The event was also a special homecoming: President Santos is a long time member of the Fletcher community, having spent time here as a Fulbright visiting fellow in 1981.

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Dean Rachel Kyte
About Fletcher

Fletcher welcomes new Dean Rachel Kyte

Daniel Birdsall

It’s only Wednesday, but it’s already been an exciting week at Fletcher! This past Monday saw a beautiful confluence of events: the 160+ visitors here for admitted student Open House were treated to the news of the appointment of Rachel Kyte as the next Dean of The Fletcher School. Below is the announcement to the Tufts community from President Anthony Monaco and Provost Deborah Kochevar. You can also read the press release and view and introductory video on the Fletcher website. A hearty welcome to Dean Kyte!

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About Fletcher

Spring social list fun

Daniel Birdsall

It’s time for our semesterly check-in on the Social List, that teeming, largely-unfiltered, ongoing omnibus conversation the Fletcher student community has with itself over email. This is a good time of year to appreciate the Social List in its full glory: there are still a variety events taking place over the next few weeks before the run-up to finals and commencement, but there’s also already a smattering of end-of-year transactions (lots of graduation robes and household items for sale), as well as occasional evidence of a number of students getting a bit punchy as the academic year hits its home stretch.

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Fletcher Perspectives gallery
About Fletcher

The value of a little Perspective

Daniel Birdsall

Something I’ve always loved about Fletcher’s physical space is how it lends itself to interesting little corners and curios. Our building is a bit weird, in that’s it’s actually three buildings, but also one building. Fletcher rooms are all located in the Goddard, Cabot, or Mugar buildings, some of which years ago were discrete structures, but which are now connected into a single agglomeration, more artfully in some places than in others. I’m grateful to have an office with a window, for example, but rather than looking outside I get to peer down a floor to the reading room in Ginn Library, surely freaking out the occasional student who looks up to see me spacing out and emptily staring down at them. Other windows in the school give a view between floors of the adjacent building, or into the middle of a stairwell, and there are at least a few study spaces tucked underneath staircases. The effect in some places is a bit Hogwarts-ish, making it no surprise that the stately main reading room in the library is known informally as the Harry Potter Room.

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About Fletcher

The origins of “public diplomacy”

Daniel Birdsall

If you’ve poked around our website enough, or otherwise have more than a passing familiarity with Fletcher, you’ve likely come across the term “public diplomacy” at some point. While it mostly makes intuitive sense to me, I’ve rarely stopped to think specifically what we’re talking about when we refer to public diplomacy. An interesting piece of web content recently trickled down to me by way of one of Fletcher’s longest-tenured faculty members, as well as our Dean of Admissions, which I thought worth sharing.

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Career Trip schedule
About Fletcher

Washington, DC Career Trip

Daniel Birdsall

There’s currently a vacation-week feel to Fletcher, with empty classrooms and strangely quiet hallways. An extension of Presidents’ Day to a week-long holiday, perhaps? Good guess, but wrong. The lull is due to the annual Washington, DC career trip administered by the Office of Career Services (OCS). OCS has something going on at pretty much all times throughout the year, but even by their busy standards it’s fair to say that the DC Career Trip is their equivalent of the Super Bowl.

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faculty book covers
About FletcherOur AlumniOur Faculty

Talking books with Fletcher book talks

Daniel Birdsall

As a house of learned doctors, Fletcher regularly gets to celebrate the release of major books by our faculty. There’s Prof. Chris Miller’s Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia, Prof. Alex de Waal’s Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine, and Prof. Sulmaan Khan’s Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping, to name a few of the more recent publications. It’s common for faculty to give “book talks” on campus in support of their latest work, and they’re among the most popular events during the academic year. Late March will see Prof. Kelly Sims Gallagher discuss her just-published Titans of the Climate: Explaining Policy Process in the United States and China.

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Fletcher home page
About Fletcher

Fletcher gets a digital facelift

Daniel Birdsall

If you’re a regular visitor to our website, you’ll notice something different today, namely EVERYTHING. We’re live with our new site! My guess is that many readers have some experience with large-scale web migrations, and so appreciate the immensity of this type of project. I knew in the abstract that a full site rebuild was a big undertaking, but even in my tangentially-involved capacity I’ve been regularly awed at the scope of this effort. It’s a process that’s covered nearly two years from the earliest planning stages, and we’re grateful for the tireless efforts of many of our Fletcher and Tufts colleagues, particularly our friends at Fletcher’s Communications, Public Relations, and Marketing office who have managed every step of the migration (and politely listened to endless “suggestions” from our team).

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