In early November of 2022 I had a conversation with Professor Michael Kimmage, a historian and chair of the History Department at Catholic University, who came to Miami University to deliver a speech on “The Four Origins of War in Ukraine.” Kimmage’s lecture on the multifaceted elements surrounding Russia’s invasion was an exceptional analysis, but behind his examination of a global phenomenon is a life of the liberal arts and a pathway between academia and policy. 

Rather than bore Kimmage with repetitive questions from his lecture the evening before, or interview him about the release of his upcoming book, I seized the opportunity of having a distinguished academic and an alumnus of the seventh floor of the State Department in a chair across from me. I needed him to dispel my wariness of pursuing a liberal arts education, and tell me how to exceed the boundaries of traditional expectations. 

In brief, his answers instantly affirmed the extensive, and sometimes aimless feeling coursework I’ve endured as a liberal arts student: reading, writing, foreign languages, and the formulation of intellectual agility are baseline skills of a career in the social sciences. 

A competence that has been stressed to me in discussion with professionals in almost every field is writing. Kimmage re-enforced this persistent dialogue:

“I did not encounter one high-level person in government who was not an absolutely first rate writer,” Kimmage expressed. “You could not enter those higher levels of government without having totally top-flight writing skills.”

Although the rise of AI services such as ChatGPT and Grammarly has made writing easily perfectable for academic use, seamless professional writing is an essential skill in the upper levels of public policy. Miami University’s College of Arts and Sciences requires at least two upper level writing courses, an important — and perhaps underestimated — part of a Miami degree. To be this capable writer is vital. The power of rhetoric, however, brings the intellectual to an entirely new level, Kimmage explained to me.

“The ancient origins of the liberal arts–the word rhetoric–is about persuasion. Politics is impossible without persuasion, and foreign affairs is impossible without persuasion. You want to study the arts of rhetoric to become an effective persuasive speaker and writer.”

This means that the writing has to, first, have purpose, and second, be filled with eloquently written, hidden tactics of persuasion to achieve this purpose. Being able to write a concise email is good, but having the talent of rhetoric is even better. 

A skepticism I’ve always held to both academics and policymakers alike is the lack of connection to real populations: to the ethnic, political, religious group that is being analyzed, targeted or studied. Oftentimes in courses, I feel ignorant, borderline disrespectful when examining an issue from my classroom in Harrison Hall. I began to question my Global Politics and Diplomacy major because it looked at groups of people as interest groups and characters in a political game. 

This gap in analysis and actuality has always seemed to me to be the fault of a political science education. Kimmage revealed that this gap is filled by the learning of foreign languages. 

“Foreign languages are helpful, not only the discipline of learning them, but as a means to the kind of empathy that you need to be a foreign policy practitioner,” Kimmage asserted. “You need to put yourself in the shoes, both of other leaders, and other populations, and I think without foreign languages that can just be more difficult.” 

Our four years of intensive language training still has a purpose even if we don’t end up using it in our career.

In the same breath, I believed that memorizing every philosopher and knowing the intricacies of political theories were vital to my career. Debates over Fukyama’s book on the supposed triumph of liberal democracy, and opinions on Huntington’s predictions on civilizations were fundamentals in my international relations education.

“I don’t think theories of international relations are especially pivotal. It’s certainly good to know what liberal internationalism is. It’s good to know what realism is. It’s good to know the other sort of theoretical schemes of thinking about international relations are … but to me that’s not very important preparation for work in policy,” Kimmage explained. It seems that the act of studying the theories are beneficial; being able to comprehend the teachings of Kant and Hobbes help the understanding of rhetoric, but in the real world, they aren’t necessarily crucial. Rather, the mastery of “intellectual agility” as Kimmage puts it, is the “name of the game.”

And this is why I founded the Miami Political Review: to give students a place where reading and writing skills mean something, where theories can be matched to policy, where students can pursue the intellectual agility that Professor Kimmage deems necessary in Washington–and in life. Miami University has a strong curriculum promoting these values and equipping students with necessary skills, and now there is an outlet for students to pursue these curiosities on policy, politics and culture.

Welcome to the Miami Political Review, where politics meets perspective.