About Fletcher

General information about the School.

Fletcher Forum logo
About Fletcher

Catching up with The Fletcher Forum

Daniel Birdsall

My hope is that many blog readers already have some familiarity with The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, our student-managed foreign policy journal. It’s been around since 1975, after all, and has really upped its digital presence in recent years, in addition to its biannual print editions. The Forum is a go-to resource for analytical essays, interviews, and podcasts from leading scholars and practitioners, covering a wide variety of international affairs topics around the world.

Read More
About FletcherOur Staff

Career planning and the Master of International Business (MIB) program

Daniel Birdsall

Longtime readers will know Lucas from past blog contributions. Over the past few years, Lucas has become our primary in-house application process and information systems expert (and we continue to turn to him to teach us things we may have forgotten, whether he likes it or not). He’s also taken on a new role working with our international business degree program. Lucas will drop in on the blog periodically to highlight the various goings-on within the program, as well as with the Institute for Business in the Global Context (IBGC), the Fletcher research center that houses it.

Read More
About Fletcher

SIMULEX 2018

Daniel Birdsall

One of the highlights of the academic year is taking place this weekend at Fletcher. SIMULEX, the annual crisis management exercise hosted by the International Security Studies Program (ISSP), will take over the building on Friday and Saturday. While my mental image of SIMULEX sometimes resembles a game of Nukem!, or involves tense standoffs and commands of “turn your key, sir,” in reality it’s a major learning and professional networking opportunity for the Fletcher community, and not limited only to students formally focusing on security studies.

Read More
About Fletcher

Decolonizing International Relations

Daniel Birdsall

It’s been a busy week at Fletcher, which means a busy week for this blog, as well. There are so many events that take place throughout the year here that it’s impossible to highlight them all on this platform, but one happening today particularly caught my attention. The inaugural “Decolonizing International Relations” conference is currently in progress, and it’s an impressive event. Organized by the student-run Fletcher Students of Color and Allies (FSCA), the conference will apply critical theory to a variety of subject areas, highlight non-Western contributions and perspectives in academia and the field, and explore the role of power and access in the study and practice of international relations.

Read More
About Fletcher

Experiential learning at Fletcher

Daniel Birdsall

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: graduate school is about much more than taking a handful of classes over a couple years. Fletcher students are of course deep thinkers, but they’re also active doers. It’s been gratifying, then, to see an uptick over the past few years in programming and available funding to help support the various professional and scholarly pursuits of our students.

Read More
About Fletcher

The beautiful chaos of the Social List

Daniel Birdsall

The Fletcher student Social List has received periodic blog attention over the years, but it’s worth re-introducing for newer readers. Jessica has previously called it the “virtual glue for the community,” a description upon which I really can’t improve, although I’d elaborate that the functional ingredients of that glue are Social List as soapbox, marketplace (of ideas, goods, and services), bulletin board, classifieds, catchment for arbitrary musings, and general collective id of the Fletcher student body. A bustling e-list available to any member of the Fletcher community, the Social List can arrive as a constant ping of individual items on your device (and I do mean constant) or, for those bent on trying to impose order upon raw, teeming chaos, in daily digest form.

Read More
Fletcher student groups fair
About FletcherOur Students

Fletcher student organizations on display

Daniel Birdsall

With all the conversations I have with prospective students about the admissions process and academic requirements at Fletcher, I often try to remind people that grad school isn’t just about taking a bunch of classes. One of the key components of the vibrancy of our community is the variety of active student organizations, which make up what I think of as Fletcher’s civil society. These groups include student-run academic and professional journals, regional or issue-specific organizations, and affinity or activity-based groups. Whether your thing is food policy or fermentation, climbing or countering violent extremism, you’ll find something that speaks to you among the seventy currently active student organizations at Fletcher. A lot of friendships develop through the work of student organizations, and I’ve heard plenty of Fletcher students and alumni point to their involvement in them as among the most important aspects of their time here.

Read More
About Fletcher

The new old cannon

Daniel Birdsall

Tufts familiars may know about the tradition of painting the cannon. For the uninitiated, Tufts has an old-timey cannon (a replica of one from the USS Constitution) on campus, which is constantly getting repainted by various campus players ranging from official student groups to wildcatting pranksters. The cannon has announced campus events, wished people happy birthdays, commemorated important dates and anniversaries, and helped spread activist and protest messages.

Read More