Robert Keohane Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
Page 6 of 6
One final question. How would you advise students who are interested in either international politics or international relations theory to prepare for the future?
They should get a combination of two kinds of knowledge, and they seem antithetical,
and in the academy they're sometimes at war with each other, but the students
should not let that struggle hinder them. They should get interpretative
knowledge. They should take courses on world politics, on history, on literature,
which allow them to have an interpretive sense of the human condition in
ways that are not encompassed by analytical techniques. So they're not the
prisoners of some narrow technology.
They also ought to get technological competence in economics, in math, in statistics, so they can do analysis. When the topic is such that you can address it in a quantitative, hard scientific way, they should be able to do it. But they should also have the context, because nothing is more dangerous than addressing a problem in a hard science way without an understanding of the context of the concepts that are involved. It's bound to be misleading and even dangerous.
Bob, on that note, thank you very much for taking the time to join us today.
Well, thank you, Harry. I enjoyed it very much.
And thank you very much for joining us for this Conversation with History.
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