International Affairs (MA)

The Cities and Social Justice concentration focuses on how global factors interact with local environments, actors, and institutions to produce new urban forms, problems, and opportunities. The interdisciplinary courses provide students with the analytic and practical skills necessary to understand and productively engage with urban processes in a globalizing world.

Students can focus on a diversity of topics and issues affecting urban centers, including urban development and infrastructure, urban poverty and inequality, urban governance, citizenship and human rights, media and culture, environment, and sustainability. Students gain practical skills in geographic information systems, architecture and design, urban economics and finance, impact analysis, and critical analysis.

The faculty is comprised of scholars with backgrounds in economics, political science, anthropology, history, urban planning, and architecture. In addition, students have access to a broad range of opportunities for research and practice through organizations in New York City and through International Field Programs in cities around the world.

Foundation Course

Urban Century – Michael Cohen and Margarita Gutman

Eligible Electives

Explore the Course Catalog for current course descriptions and faculty.

African Cities
Climate Change
Community Development Finance Lab II
Communities in Urban Development
Havana Studio: Historic Presentation and Urban Strategy
Housing in Global Perspective
Immigrant Gateway City
Infrastructure for the New Social Compact
Political Economy of the City
Politics of Infrastructure
Slums and Urban Development
Smart Cities and Urban Values
Urban Poverty and Inequality
Urbanization and Economic Growth

The Conflict and Security concentration explores the rapidly changing terrains of war and peace. In recent years the old problems of international relations — focused on conflicts between sovereign states and big power diplomacy — have given way to a new and much more complex contemporary reality dominated by “non-traditional” conflicts. This concentration focuses in particular on the new relationships being forged between conflict and security and issues such as socioeconomic development, humanitarianism, and statebuilding.

Students in the concentration learn to navigate the field of conflict and security as an area of theory, practice, and scholarly research. Courses equip students with a range of practical and analytical skills relating to peacebuilding, humanitarian intervention, genocide, civil war, post-conflict justice and reconciliation, and other topics — alongside a range of critical perspectives on security.

The concentration also provides a broad range of opportunities for research and practice. Through courses and practice opportunities students connect with an array of organizations in New York City working on peace, conflict, and security, particularly the UN. Related issues are also explored through International Field Program sites.

Foundation Course

Critical Security Studies – Peter Hoffman and Everita Silina

Eligible Electives

Explore the Course Catalog for current course descriptions and faculty.

Conflict, Morality, and Norms
Conflict, Peacebuilding, and Development
Contemporary Conflicts and Global Responses
Ethnic Conflict and Genocide
The Evolution of Warfare
Gender, Civilians, Combatants
Hollywood and the World
Humanitarian Intervention
Indigenous Politics and Environmental Justice
International LGBT Rights
Media and Politics of Propaganda
Mobility and Forced Migration
Non-Western Approaches to World Politics
Peacebuilding
Planning and Counter-Planning
The Poetics of Witnessing
Politics of Humanitarianism
Postcolonial and Feminist Theories in International Relations
Surveillance, Privacy, and Human Rights The United Nations and World Order

The Development and Global Justice concentration is designed for students interested in pursuing professional careers or further academic research related to global poverty, inequality, and development. The concentration’s interdisciplinary curriculum challenges students to think critically and deeply about why some people and countries prosper while others remain marginalized. It focuses on the theoretical concepts and analytical tools that equip students to engage with the complex challenges of global poverty, inequality, and development.

The curriculum reflects a commitment to development as a process that is fundamentally about improving human well-being and securing greater social justice. The Development and Global Justice concentration has a particular strength in faculty research and teaching in human rights and the capabilities approach to development.

The Development and Global Justice concentration offers a flexible course of study, with elective courses on a wide range of topics offered in the Graduate Programs in International Affairs, as well as in the Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment and in The New School for Social Research. Many students take advantage of opportunities for internships at one of the many New York-based organizations working at the forefront of development issues. International Field Program sites offer field-based research and practice.

Foundation Course

Political Economics of Development – Sakiko Fukuda-Parr

Eligible Electives

Explore the Course Catalog for current course descriptions and faculty.

African Cities
Business and Human Rights
Children, Rights, Poverty, Equality
Communities in Urban Development
Conflict, Peacebuilding, and Development
Contending Economic Analyses and Economic Development
Financial Markets and Development
Food, Global Trade, and Development
Futures of Work
Gender Equality
Global Health Crises and Human Rights
Global Health, Poverty & Development 
Global Inequalities and Climate Change
Globalized Labor
Human Rights and Poverty: Case Studies
Political Economics of Development
Private-Public Partnerships for Development
Private Sector International Development
Slums and Urban Development
Social Policy and Inclusive Development
Statebuilding and Peacebuilding
Trade Agreements and Health Equity
Urbanization and Economic Growth

The growing cross-border problems and interactions that challenge national frontiers have contributed to the rise of new governance mechanisms at the global, regional, and sub-national levels. This rise has been accompanied by an increasing emphasis on human rights as a set of norms that bind and capture our common humanity.

The Governance and Rights concentration focuses on the principles, institutions, actors, and discourses that animate these new governance mechanisms. It prepares students to critically engage with these evolving trends in how societies are organized and (re)ordered alongside new norms, within new structures and networks. Faculty place special emphasis on the nature of power and agency and the legitimacy of governance structures at the local, national, and transnational levels.

Governance and Rights courses equip students with practical and analytical skills relating to topics including human rights, displacement and migration, international organizations, and statebuilding. Students in the concentration are also eligible to take courses at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law on topics such as international law, human rights, and public health law. Students have access to a broad range of opportunities for research and practice, both through the array of organizations in New York City working on governance and rights issues and through International Field Program sites around the world.

Foundation Course

Global Governance – Peter Hoffman and Everita Silina

Eligible Electives

Explore the Course Catalog for current course descriptions and faculty.

Advocacy and Global Governance  
Borders, Migrants, States  
Business and Human Rights                              
Children, Rights, Poverty, Equality
Conflict, Morality, and Norms       
Contemporary Conflicts and Global Responses
Cuba: Critical Concepts 
Displacement, Asylum, Migration               
Forced Migration: Concepts and Policy
Gender and Development
Global Health, Poverty, and Development
Global Soccer, Global Politics
Global Supply Chains and Corporate Environmental Sustainability
Global Youth Media
Globalized Labor
Human Rights and Media
Human Rights and Poverty: Case Studies
Human Rights Research and Advocacy
Humanitarian Intervention
Indigenous Politics and Environmental Justice
Media and Politics of Propaganda
Migration of Memory
Non-Western Approaches to World Politics
Politics of Expertise
Politics of Humanitarianism
Politics of Infrastructure
Postcolonial and Feminist Theories in International Relations
Private-Public Partnerships for Development
Program Design, Monitoring, and Evaluation for Peacebuilding
Surveillance, Privacy, and Human Rights
Social Policy and Inclusive Development
Statebuilding and Peacebuilding
Sustainable Peace and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Technopolitics
The United Nations and World Order
Trade Agreements and Health Equity

Cardozo Courses

Administrative Law 
Arab-Israeli Conflict 
Children and the Law
Comparative Law
Constitution and U.S. Foreign Affairs
Employment Law
European Legal Systems and the Holocaust
Disability Law and Its Implications
Immigration Law
Internal Dispute Resolution
International Human Rights 
International Law
Jurisprudence
Labor Law 
Public Health Law and Policy
Rights of Prisoners and Detainees 

The Media and Culture concentration explores theory and practice at the intersection of politics, economics, press and entertainment, public and state policy, and international and domestic cultural conditions. The concentration focuses on the relationship between media and democracy around the world, with equal consideration of the roles of public and private institutions and their positive and negative influences on the media in both democratic and non-democratic societies.

The Media and Culture Concentration equips students with a range of analytical and practical skills through courses on media and democracy, propaganda, and human rights as well as documentary film production, video production and advocacy for NGOs, social media, and photography. Students can also take courses in the university’s School of Media Studies.

The concentration provides a broad range of opportunities for research and practice, both through the extraordinary range of non-profit and intergovernmental organizations and major media institutions located in New York City, and through media-focused International Field Program sites.

Foundation Course

Media, Culture, and Global Politics – Sean Jacobs and Nina Khrushcheva

Eligible Electives

Explore the Course Catalog for current course descriptions and faculty.

Contemporary Photography in the Developing World
Food History and Globalization
Global Soccer, Global Politics
Global Youth Media
Hollywood and the World
Human Rights and Media
Media and Politics of Propaganda
Media and Political Imagination
Media Landscapes: The Middle East
Media Social Movements and Political Ideas
Migration of Memory
News Media and Culture: Purveyors of International Affairs
Post-Truth and Politics
Producing Short Form Docs
The Media and the Middle East
The Poetics of Witnessing
Telling Immigrant Stories: Producing Multimedia Journalism About a Changing New York