If you are visiting our website, you are probably interested in global affairs. You are curious to learn more about other countries, cultures and languages and are concerned about the common challenges we face—from conflict to climate change, from mass migration to democratic decay. You want to make a positive difference.
At the Hamilton Lugar School, our core principle is that to change the world, we must first seek to understand it.
We take a distinctive approach to global and international affairs. First, we are one of the world’s leading hubs for applied area studies, seeking to understand people by studying their languages, their cultures and histories, and the states and societies they inhabit. We teach more than 80 languages—more than any university in the world—and our faculty and staff bring expertise on every continent and region. We believe that to be effective change makers, we need to engage diverse global perspectives, focusing on real people in real places.
Second, we have thriving programs on international affairs that prepare students for practical impact. Our faculty includes leading scholars of international law and institutions, defense and cybersecurity, human rights and development, U.S. foreign policy, and much more. We work across disciplinary boundaries, because understanding and addressing the world’s most pressing challenges requires embracing complexity.
Third, we put our learning into practice. We aim to foster civil discourse and inform sound policies rooted in deep understanding of the societies and people involved. Our school’s namesakes, Representative Lee Hamilton and Senator Richard Lugar, embody these commitments. They epitomize the pursuit of principled and well-informed foreign policies on a nonpartisan basis. This is what our founding dean, Ambassador Lee Feinstein, has dubbed the “Indiana Way.” It reflects a conviction that the United States and our global partners are more prosperous and secure when we engage constructively with one another.
The Hamilton Lugar School prepares students to advance that vision. Students choose from a wide array of course offerings, workshops, simulations, and high-profile public events. They engage with visitors from Nobel Peace Prize winners to U.S. Secretaries of State and Defense, from international business leaders to community advocates.
Students also enjoy the benefits of our state-of-the-art building at the heart of IU’s beautiful campus, where people from more than 135 countries gather to live together and study in a vibrant, friendly, and cosmopolitan college town.
Our graduates go on to careers as diplomats, leaders in government and business, lawyers, activists, teachers, and scholars. What unites them, beyond their foundational experience at the Hamilton Lugar School, is a shared commitment to pursuing the global common good.
Please browse our website, and reach out to us if you’d like to learn more. Our faculty, staff, students, and alumni will be glad to discuss how you can use a Hamilton Lugar education to empower yourself to make a difference on the issues that matter most to you.
We hope to welcome you into our community soon!
HAMILTON LUGAR SCHOOLBLOOMINGTON
355 North Eagleson Avenue