International Relations: Lesson I

As I restarted my academic career in a brand new "reality" of motherhood, running a business, and my slow journalism, I found myself walking like a middle aged veteran into a classroom at the University of Warsaw. "Is she a Bad Teacher?", "Or a professor's assistant-lover?", "M'am, are you lost?", "Maybe she is a Russian spy" - these were some of the background questions I heard from the students from all around the world. The bolder statements were local, of course.

So here I was, back at university and youth problems, back so thrilled to fully return in the world of theory, diplomacy, and geopolitics. My very first class in International Relations (IR), taught by a circa 80 year old globetropper professor who despite his intermediate level of English was able to read pitch perfectly every single name from a 121 titles list. Students from China, Hong Kong, Kazahstan, Pakistan, Palestine, Azerbeijan, Turkey were absolutely amazed. Then, with grace and intellectual warmth, introduced us to a field that spans war and peace, power and cooperation, chaos and order.

In return for his grandiose opening, I felt compelled to introduce myself—not just as a student, but as someone who had once belonged to this world, and left it.

"I dropped out of my beloved IR studies at the University of Sapienza in Rome in 2019," I told him, "due to a double crisis: the pandemic, and pregnancy." Now, several years, two baby boys, and a thousand cups of coffee later, I’m a young mom returning to the classroom with a few more real-world insights and a lot more resilience.

"Stosunki" I added with a smile, "are therefore very familiar to me". [The Polish word for "relations", and while it captures the spirit of "international relations", it also happens to be slang for "sexual intercourse"]. He smiled back, and we both knew it's a beginning of a wild ride.

A Fun Fact

In 2023, on the 22nd of November, the IR department at the University of Warsaw celebrated its own symbolic independence day. After decades of being nestled within the larger field of Political Science, International Relations finally became a fully independent academic discipline at the university.

Quoting a wry line from a British academic article that floated around the celebration: "I, are am a prisoner of Political Science." A grammar mistake? Perhaps. A political statement? Most definitely. For many IR scholars, being subsumed under Political Science always felt like a constraint - IR and ir [two different things] had matured into its own beast, deserving its own home, theories, and methodologies.

So, What is International Relations?

International Relations is not just Trump tweeting about everything around the clock. Or the President of Poland misquoting a once-noble saying to Vice President Kamala Harris, saying: "A friend in need, is a friend in dick" ["indeed" might have been a more polite while addressing a feminist].

It is the study of cooperation and finding your own self in it. It's an open-ended study based on trust and tolerance. Emerged from the I WW analysis, it unfolded into today’s growing nationalism, for which I loved a definition given by a professor – exaggeration of feeling unique/uniqueness. Sounds like narcissism, right? That is surprisingly a big crisis we are simultaneously facing in today’s world.
I am so eager to find a link between the two!

In our first lesson, the professor introduced us to main subjects and theories - Realism, Liberalism, Constructivism. And promised that you will declare which one of them are you, by the end of the course. I wish it was accurate for me, as I am coming with a Big Optimistic Theory.

Why does the biggest democracy in the world behave the way they do? Why does China experiences such a historical irony in its liberal governance? That will be in the next chapter.

It was a thrilling return. For someone who’s negotiated the geopolitics of nap time, sibling diplomacy, and long nights editing articles for a slow journalism platform - this class felt like both a challenge and a homecoming. I also feel a bit of place, but that's for another time.

A Personal Reflection

Returning to IR after years away feels a bit like diplomacy itself. After years of interving diplomats, ministers, most influential leaders in diplomacy, think tank founders and war heroes, it is hard for me to stay humble. But that's what knowledge should be about. It is supposed to make you feel more humble.

So I will juggle this famous quote:

“The more I know, the more I realize I know nothing.”

― Socrates

…somewhere in between:

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.”

— Winston Churchill

I come not as I once was a wide-eyed student in Rome but as a woman who has lived through upheaval, migration, motherhood, and reinvention in pretty privileged circumstances. Not like my fellow students from Palestine or Ukraine.

What’s Next?

This is Lesson I. The next stop is… "don't stop".