Columbia University is a global institution where students from around the world and faculty from all disciplines address the rapid political, economic, social, and intellectual transformations of our time. Through its International Fellows Program (IFP), Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) has for half a century offered students a unique course of graduate study that combines a heightened understanding of international change with practical preparation to deal with the new world it is creating.
The International Fellows Program is a two-semester seminar open to students of all graduate degree programs at Columbia University. The diverse perspectives and professional backgrounds that fellows bring to the program enrich their year-long common enterprise.
All fellows receive a stipend and study a curriculum with two goals – to examine the origins of the current international order, in which the United States has for decades played the leading role, and to look ahead to the new world that will eventually take its place, dominated by a larger number of actors, new problems, and approaches to problem solving that have yet to be defined. Weekly meetings of the International Fellows Program are supplemented by study trips to Washington, D.C. and the United Nations, where fellows have extraordinary access to senior policymakers, diplomats, legislators, journalists, and leaders of non governmental organizations.
Director
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Stephen Sestanovich is the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor at SIPA, with professional interests that include American foreign policy, post-Soviet affairs, and strategic planning. Ambassador Sestanovich’s diverse career includes service both in and out of government. He has held senior positions in the U.S. Department of State and the National Security Council, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Read his full biography. |
Provost
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John H. Coatsworth is Provost of Columbia and one of the nation’s leading scholars on Latin America. Provost Coatsworth previously served as the Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs at Harvard University and was founding director of Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. He also chaired the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies. Provost Coatsworth also served on the faculty at the University of Chicago and has held numerous visiting professorships.Read his full biography. |




