Yale Institute of International Studies

The Yale Institute of International Studies was a research institute that was part of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. It was founded in 1935 and was led by directors Nicholas J. Spykman and later Frederick S. Dunn, under whom there was also an associate director, William T. R. Fox. The institute was influential in the development of international relations theory; in particular, it was considered a bastion of international relations realism. The institute came to an end in 1951 due to a conflict with the university administration. Dunn and five of his colleagues left Yale and formed a successor organization, the Center of International Studies, at Princeton University that same year.

The Yale Institute of International Studies was founded in 1935 by several faculty members at Yale. Its first director was Nicholas J. Spykman, who organized the new entity, and the other founding members were Arnold Wolfers and Frederick S. Dunn. Dunn later wrote that the timing was not accidental, as the rise of Fascism in Europe during the early 1930s was clearly threatening the security of the United States. The new institute had the support of the President of Yale, Charles Seymour, and was initially funded by a five-year, $100,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Under Spykman, the institute explored all the avenues in which research could help formulate the country's foreign policy. The goal was to investigate the historical, theoretical, and applied aspects of the international relations field. This last was especially important; unlike some other academic efforts in this area, the institute explicitly attempted to both study and influence the decisions of the present. As one of Spykman's mission statements at the time said:

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