International Relations A Growth Discipline In Brazil (Liveblogging ISA)

I attended an interesting panel this morning on the using simulations in the classroom (more on that in the next post) but heard something about the growth of International Relations (IR) programs in Brazil that I thought was very interesting.

Apparently IR is a booming industry in Brazil. In Rio alone the number of colleges and universities offering programs has grown from 1 in the 90's to 7 today. My first instinct was that this was due to Brazil's growing sense of importance on the world stage and that the increased interest in IR by its young people was a manifestation of this self-awareness.

Wrong.

According to the two Brazilian professors (from the Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio De Janeiro) who spoke, Marcelo Valenca and Manoela Souza, the main reason for the increased interest was 9/11! Marcelo spoke of standing in front of a tiny TV with, as he described it, several thousand young students watching the attack on the twin towers and then, two years later, an explosion of programs in International Relations. Both professors also explained that there was a semantics issue as well and that "International Relations" sounds better in Portuguese than some of the alternatives. Finally, and most interesting to me, was the point (made by Manoela, I think) that even though the students were drawn to IR by 9/11, they stayed because of the world of ideas that the curriculum opened up to them.