The Future Belongs to Globalists

The Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies (as we were then known) was founded in 1955 to educate globalists. It was a different era of history, but that remains at the core of our mission today. We educate professionals to have successful and meaningful careers. That means that we need to be continuously looking at the skills and competence that prospective students want, as well as those sought by employers. No more than ever, we are also motivated by what the world needs of our graduates. The world needs graduates. 

This issue of Communiqué, like just about every issue, provides ample evidence that our alumni grapple with the world’s most pressing problems, from a variety of vantage points. Our graduates understand that the urgent problems of this world, as well as their solutions, transcend national borders - and those problems are not generally zero-sum. They demonstrate that bridges of communication, negotiation, and linguistic proficiency are more productive approaches to tackling those problems than isolation and the building of walls.

Our alumni get things done by means of collaboration across divides, including those of language, culture, power, and privilege. Finally, our students bring an intellectual curiosity with them to the Institute; when they leave, they bring to their work a capability and a responsibility to gather data both quantitative and qualitative, to analyze it, to interpret it, to understand, to learn.

Whether they are civil servants safeguarding nuclear proliferation; interpreters in international diplomacy or courthouses or hospitals; entrepreneurs promoting a greener and more prosperous global economy; trade experts in the public and private sectors; localizers imbuing firms with processes and systems suited to the global marketplace; or language teachers facilitating communication and understanding - our students and alumni are globalists. The world needs them. And our future depends on them.