Foreign Policy and a Liberal Arts Education
Written by Emily Runge
On Monday, February 17th, Mitchell Muncy from the Alexander Hamilton Society gave a lecture entitled “The Inhumanity of American Foreign Policy.” In this lecture, Mr. Muncy critiqued the approach of International Relation programs and the lack of focus on the humanities throughout the nation’s educational institutions.
Mitchell Muncy, a graduate of Princeton University and University of Dallas, is the executive director and founder of the Alexander Hamilton Society, which is an organization dedicated to promoting education on foreign affairs in order to create a coherent and principled public opinion on foreign policy.
Throughout his lecture, Muncy illustrated how the principal problem with modern international relation studies is the lack of the humanities and too heavy reliance on the empirical sciences. The use of empirical sciences has become popular in policymaking due to its universality, exact language, predictive qualities, practicality, and supposed ability to control outcomes.
While these qualities make a scientific approach attractive to policymakers, it often falls short because of its inability to manage conflicts once they happen. In addition, it is an ineffective model for dealing with the conflicts it does manage to predict.
In the realm of morality—evaluating motives and determining purpose—the humanities surpass the scientific method. For instance, look at nuclear weapons: science can build the bomb, but it cannot tell us if, when, or how we should use it.
In such a world of uncertainty, prudence must guide our foreign policy. The study of the humanities develops our ability to make value judgments. As Muncy explained, the humanities are crucially important to study, not because they supersede what came before, but rather because they build on past traditions, knowledge, and experience.
The education Hillsdale offers uniquely prepares students because it requires students to take a wide variety of courses, all of which help us clearly look at the world. Muncy declared that prudence, virtue, self-restraint, and knowledge of justice—things that are highly valued in a liberal arts education—are essential to developing a good foreign policy.
Through this lecture, Muncy presented an approach to education that, if embraced nationally, could lead to a coherent and humane foreign policy. In many ways, Muncy pointed to Hillsdale College as an example of this kind of education. No matter the major or field of study, a Hillsdale College education prepares its students to enter the world with clear minds and strong values, and that is exactly the kind of education necessary to form opinions in important areas such as foreign policy.
Emily Runge is a sophomore at Hillsdale College who is majoring in Politics and minoring in History. She is a George Washington Fellow, a member of Pi Beta Phi women’s fraternity, a member of the Hillsdale College Honors Program, and a volunteer at Will Carleton Academy.