MIP Feature Friday: Ben Polsky
Ben is a student in the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy (MIP) program specializing in International Security.
FSI: Can you tell us about your specialization in the MIP program?
BP: I’m specializing in international security. I’ve been a research assistant for [former Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS] Brett McGurk, working with him on his upcoming book. One of the things that I’ve really appreciated about working with Brett is that as a practitioner himself, he is able to span the theoretical and the practical in a way that allows us to draw very concrete lessons. I’m really drawn to that approach.
Do you think that carries over to the program itself?
I think it does. We have people like Colin Kahl, who served as an advisor to President Obama and Vice President Biden, and Ambassador Michael McFaul — they inhabit that bridge between the academic and practical. Stanford seems best suited to teaching in this intersection. The MIP program itself is also more experimental than others — they take risks — so I’ve really been able to create my own lane here.
Is there a policy issue in the field of international security that you think there needs to be more focus on?
One of the things that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is the idea of alliances. When we talk about the United States’ role in the international system, something that everyone asks is, “What’s the advantage that the United States has?” Sure, we have the best military in the world, but it’s really about our network of alliances. Thinking strategically about how we can reevaluate and then how we double down on alliances that we need to compete in the 21st century is something that we do well here. Challenges to the international system require us to reconsider and rethink some of our alliance structures while also recognizing that that is the basis of US power.
Could you talk about some of the things you’ve done before entering in the program that have particularly shaped your thought process on some of these ideas?
I graduated in 2015 and turned pretty quickly to a job at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, D.C., working on issues involving India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan: a lot of trade analysis, event coordinating and policy briefing, and a lot of traveling. I was there for two years, and it was a really great first job; I feel like I learned a lot about the D.C. establishment and the path dependencies of that sort of institution. I’ve been able to carry those lessons forward, and am still really interested in the region — South Asia is one of the least economically-connected regions in the world, yet countries like India have incredibly robust technology sectors. I was a graduate research fellow at Carnegie India last summer and I was so impressed by the sophistication of the tech policy discourse.
Are there any classes that you’ve taken that have helped your understanding of these issues or have helped you build even more regional focus onto the issues that you’re interested in?
I think that one of the benefits of this degree is that in every class, you can specialize in an area — we’re not region-specific. I get to apply the lessons that we learn in every class to the region of interest we find most compelling to us.
Can you tell us about a meaningful experience you’ve had on campus?
I run a workshop with another member of my cohort, Rosanna Kim, in which we discuss new debates in United States grand strategy. We started the workshop because we recognized that we’re in an inflection point in U.S. foreign policy in which domestic and foreign policy distinction is collapsing. And there are important debates — the forever war debate, great power competition, trade disagreements on the assumption that free trade is always good. These debates are critical and the workshop presents an opportunity to look at new areas of convergence and divergence between parties and political camps. We have political science doctorate students, we have business school students, and we have a couple of undergraduates who have expressed a keen interest in the topics. We’ve also had the chance to host leading thinkers on these topics, like Ben Rhodes, Ambassador Samantha Power, and Secretary Julian Castro. It’s been one of the really fruitful parts of my time at Stanford.
When you were making the decision to enter into this program, what drew you to MIP? What made this program feel different than the others?
I probably have an atypical story about how I landed here. I was working at CBS News in New York before coming into the program. I ran into Kori Schake [of the Hoover Institution] at an event for the Council of Foreign Relations in New York. At the time, I was thinking about graduate school, and after the event, I ended up talking to Kori who suggested I apply to the MIP program. So, I applied with a week left and got in. And that’s sort of it.
Is there anything that has surprised you about the program?
School is hard. This is an amazing institution, but nothing is handed to you. You have to carve your way into anything that you really want. I don’t mean to say that I’m not privileged — I feel extraordinarily privileged to be here. I just think that if you want something, you have to fight for it, even here.
