Since its founding in 1968 as the Adlai Stevenson Institute for International Affairs, the University of Chicago Center for International Studies (CIS) has been encouraging and supporting research and education on critical global and international issues including national security, human rights, the environment, international relations, and area studies.

Recently recognized by the Department of Education as a National Resource Center for International Studies, the Center also serves as an umbrella for an array of Area Studies Centers (including East Asian, South Asian, East European and Russian/Eurasian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern Studies), each of which offers academic programs and educational outreach to Chicago-area schools as well as colleges and universities around the Midwest. CIS assists the Area Centers in obtaining federal funding and helps coordinate their public outreach efforts.

The Center also directly sponsors several programs of research and education:

The Human Rights Program focuses on interdisciplinary research and teaching in human rights, combining core questions of human dignity with critical examination of the institutions designed to promote and protect human rights in the contemporary world. The Human Rights program sends interns around the world each summer and offers a range of courses as well as a full schedule of public events. A minor degree program has been proposed to the College.

The new Program on the Global Environment is designed to explore and integrate perspectives on critical environmental issues coming from the sciences, social sciences, and policy communities. This program includes an undergraduate major and minor in Environmental Studies as well as support for internships, conferences and other events, and research.

The popular College major in International Studies is coordinated through CIS. Recently ranked 7th in the US by Foreign Policy magazine, International Studies students can take advantage of a new EU-focused quarter at the Chicago Paris Center.

The Joint Threat Anticipation Center (JTAC), funded by the Department of Defense and co-sponsored by Argonne National Laboratories. JTAC brings experts in computation and the social sciences together with scholars whose deep understandings of critical world regions will help develop more reliable and powerful tools to anticipate threats to national security. JTAC supports basic research, modeling, and training of advanced graduate students.

CIS also coordinates and helps support three graduate workshops (the Human Rights Workshop, African Studies Workshop, Workshop on the Global Environment).

CIS also sponsors an impressive roster of public events including the annual human rights film festival, lectures, conferences, and the successful World Beyond the Headlines lecture series. The Norman Wait Harris Fund, one of the University of Chicago's oldest endowments, provides funding for many of these events through an annual grant competition.

Public outreach and teacher education is another important part of the Center’s mission. In addition to designing and conducting teacher education workshops and classroom visits, CIS staff help the Area Centers manage and coordinate their federally-mandated outreach efforts. CHIASMOS, an outreach web resource, was launched in the fall of 2006 to make available to the world audio and video recordings of events sponsored by CIS and the Area Centers.

Do you have further questions about the Center for International Studies? Please email cis@uchicago.edu.