Political Science?

reedps
Thu, 10 Apr 2014 15:32:24 +0000

As a current Reed Political Science major, I disagree with your characterization of the department.
The past two years have been rough for IR at Reed, because our IR professor was off at the Pentagon helping them improve their response plan for nuclear threats. He will, however, be back starting this fall. Alex Montgomery is a rockstar. We have one IR professor, we have one Comparative Politics professor, we have one American Politics professor, we have one Environmental Policy professor, but that’s a function of being a small school. If you’re positive you want to study IR and you have no interest in nuclear weapons and the like, then Reed might not be a good choice (as that is Alex’s area of expertise). If you are interested in IR, you might also be interested in the classes offered by our Comparativist (who mostly focuses on Latin America, but does work with other areas as well). I would also note that a lot of people head off to college with complete certainty that they will study IR, and soon find that they are more interested in another facet of Political Science.
What subjects within IR interest you? What do you plan to do post-undergrad? The latter is a particularly important question to consider for Reed.