The Wachman Center

FPRI’s Wachman Center is dedicated to improving international and civic literacy.

Greater international awareness is essential if we are to compete in the global economy, promote responsible citizenship, or just become better human beings.
—Marvin Wachman

In 1990, the Foreign Policy Research Institute established the Marvin Wachman Fund for International Education, named for Marvin Wachman (1917–2007), who served as FPRI’s president from 1983–89 and who inaugurated the Institute’s program of international education. In January 2008, the Fund was renamed the Wachman Center in consideration of the expanded breadth of its programs since its inception and the importance it has come to have in FPRI’s activities. The Wachman Center has four core areas of concentration:

Teaching the Teachers

The Wachman Center specializes in “teaching the teachers” by (1) advancing teachers’ knowledge of world affairs; (2) aiding them in incorporating this knowledge in the classroom; and (3) encouraging a dialogue among pre-college educators, university scholars, students, and parents. We are thus able to give teachers up-to-date information not covered by textbooks, in a format designed for easy use in the classroom. We offer historical context to current events, and scholarship at the cutting edge. Moreover, the Wachman Center regularly reaches teachers across the nation through FootNotes, a bulletin for educators that is mailed, faxed, emailed, and webposted.

In 1996, the Wachman Fund inaugurated the History Institute, a series of weekend history institutes, co-chaired by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Walter A. McDougall and David Eisenhower. Each History Institute attracts high school teachers and junior college faculty from all over the country to hear seminars led by the nation’s leading scholars.

For more information, or to become a school member, please e-mail mwf@fpri.org.

Affiliated Scholars