Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) 2023

EPIIC is a carefully integrated, multidisciplinary program. Through its innovative and rigorous curricula and projects, EPIIC prepares young people for informed activity in their communities, whether locally, nationally or globally.

The Course
At EPIIC's core is the year-long, multidisciplinary course -- The Sherman Teichman Education for Public Inquiry (EPIIC) Endowed Colloquium -- on a global theme. Undergraduate and graduate students of diverse nationalities, viewpoints, experiences, and interests participate in this rigorous colloquium that stresses critical, analytical, and normative thinking. Students are encouraged to confront the ambiguity and complexity of EPIIC's annual, global theme through a multi-disciplinary examination of the issues and controversies that the topic reflects. They are taught the subject under investigation by a broad range of distinguished academics and practitioners and as active participants in defining the issues through classroom discussions, extensive readings, and independent research. There is an emphasis both on individual progress and on the collaborative effort -- in essence, on growing as an intellectual team. Students produce tangible outcomes of their studies through their individual research papers or projects, the international symposium in late February, and the Inquiry simulation for high-school students in early April, as well as other activities.

In 2011, on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of EPIIC - Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship, the core program of the Institute for Global Leadership, the alumni of EPIIC endowed the colloquium in honor of their teacher and mentor, the Institute's Founding Director, Sherman Teichman. Their funds contribute to covering the expenses for the colloquium's guest lecturers, teaching assistants, seminar mentors, an annual Outward Bound weekend, syllabus materials, subsidies for text books and other EPIIC expenses. The endowment helps ensure the high standard and quality of this preparatory course of the annual EPIIC symposium and enables all Tufts students to partake fully in its activities.

Symposium
The Norris and Margery Bendetson International EPIIC Symposium is an annual multi-day public forum featuring scores of international practitioners, activists, academics, public intellectuals, and journalists. EPIIC's symposia -- consisting of presentations, panel discussions, topical forums, informal gatherings, multimedia and dramatic presentations, and workshops -- are intellectually wide-ranging and accessible. The perspectives of the participants are intentionally diverse, often competing, anda at times adversarial, providing a continuum of viewpoints on the issues being discussed.

EPIIC Colloquium

At EPIIC's core is the year-long, multidisciplinary course on a global political theme. Undergraduate and graduate students of diverse nationalities, viewpoints, experiences, and interests, participate in this rigorous colloquium that stresses critical, analytical and normative thinking. Students are encouraged to confront the ambiguity and complexity of EPIIC's annual global theme through a multi-disciplinary examination of the issues and controversies that the topic reflects. They are taught the subject under investigation not only by a broad range of distinguished academics and practitioners, but also as active participants in defining the issues through classroom presentations and discussions, extensive readings, and independent research. There is an emphasis both on individual progress and on the collaborative effort -- in essence, an intellectual team. Students produce tangible outcomes to their studies through their individual research papers or projects, the international symposium, and the Inquiry simulation.

Lecturers and | Advisers

Alex Gladstein

Director of Institutional Affairs at the New York-based Human Right Foundation

Alex is the director of institutional affairs at the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, focusing on media and development. He has concurrently served as vice president of strategy for the Oslo Freedom Forum since its inception in 2009, and is coordinating HRF's Disrupt North Korea initiative. Alex's writing and views on dissidents and dictators have appeared in TIME, The Atlantic, BBC World, ABC, Foreign Policy, NBC, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal. Before joining HRF, he served in the office of a shadow foreign secretary in the British Parliament. Alex is a magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University where he majored in international relations and Middle Eastern studies.

Mauricio Artiñano

A Tufts University and EPIIC Class 2003-2004 alum, Mauricio Artiñano is currently a second year Masters in Public Affairs (MPA) student at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he is concentrating on Development Studies. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations at Tufts University, Mauricio worked for The Project on Justice in Times of Transition on several peacebuilding projects in Central America and Colombia. He was then appointed Minister Counsellor for the Permanent Mission of Costa Rica to the United Nations during Costa Rica’s 2008-2009 term as elected member of the UN Security Council, where he worked as a thematic expert on African issues and later as Security Council Political Coordinator.

Mark Kramer

Director of the Cold War Studies Program at Harvard University

Mark Kramer is Director of the Cold War Studies Program at Harvard University and a Senior Fellow of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He has taught at Harvard, Yale, and Brown Universities and was formerly an Academy Scholar in Harvard's Academy of International and Area Studies and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. Professor Kramer is the author of Crisis in Czechoslovakia, 1968: The Prague Spring and the Soviet Invasion; Soldier and State in Poland: Civil-Military Relations and Institutional Change After Communism; and three forthcoming books, Crisis in the Communist World, 1956: De-Stalinization, the Soviet Union, and Upheavals in Poland and Hungary; The Collapse of the Soviet Union; and Income Distribution and Social Transfer Policies in the Post-Communist Transition: Changing Patterns of Inequality (to be published in 2009). He is completing another book titled From Dominance to Hegemony to Collapse: Soviet Policy in East-Central Europe, 1945-1991, which, like his earlier books on the Soviet bloc, draws heavily on new archival sources from the former Communist world.

Callouts

ALLIES

The Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services (ALLIES) is an undergraduate organization dedicated to improving civilian-military relations.

TILIP

The Tufts Initiative for International Leadership and Perspective (TILIP) is a program that seeks to foster cross-cultural team building through intensive, intellectual inquiry and practical study.

[EXPOSURE]

[EXPOSURE] is the Institute for Global Leadership's undergraduate-led program for photojournalism, documentary studies and human rights.

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