Final Thoughts on Interning in DC

About the author: Nitish Vaidyanathan ’21 is an FSI Global Policy Intern at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington, D.C.

So I’ve now wrapped up my internship, and my all-too-brief stay in DC. I’m incredibly grateful to the wonderful team at TIMEP not only for having me but for the extraordinary work that they do. Also super grateful to FSI for supporting me in this journey. Some final thoughts:

Firstly, a final update on the PMFs project. After we visualized the data that I scraped, we were able to get some really interesting results that showed how the positions of the PMFs moved according to the results of the political bargaining between the US, Iran, and Iraq. Basically what happened was that the US would prevent the militias from entering a major city like Mosul, the militias would reorient to outlying cities and play supporting roles, and then Iran would try and get the militias to take a strategic objective. We’re still figuring out the right way to present our research, but we hope to see it published soon. The road to getting these results was long and meandering, but it was really fascinating the whole way. This was the most ‘experimental’ research that I’ve done, so I really appreciate the folks at TIMEP teaching me how to reorient research based off of setbacks. That’s definitely a skill that’ll come in handy as I continue to research in IR. All in all, I’m incredibly grateful to TIMEP for teaching me so much about the Middle East, research, and advocacy. I felt part of the team on day one, and I was able to appreciate the impact that my work had. I couldn’t recommend the experience highly enough.

I’m also going to miss DC quite a bit. While Stanford’s campus is amazing, there’s something special about living what’s basically the center of the political world. On the day of Mueller’s testimony, I walked by a bunch of bars giving the play by play. I was able to attend multiple events at other research institutions, meeting ambassadors and parliamentarians. And on a completely unrelated note, I was even able to dabble in Parkour. There was a Parkour gym in DC a little down the redline, and I figured that I had no better opportunity to live out my childhood fantasies. A video of me performing a basic sequence is attached below.

Thanks to TIMEP and FSI, I had a fantastic summer in which I was able to challenge myself and grow in unexpected ways. As I return to school and move further into my career, I’ll be able to rely on skills I developed at TIMEP to further work on these fascinating issues. Thanks for following along.