SAIS Reports
April - May 2008

Hopmann Named Director of Conflict Management Program

On July 1, P. Terrence (Terry) Hopmann will join the SAIS faculty as professor of international relations and director of the Conflict Management Program.

Hopmann comes to SAIS after spending more than 20 years at Brown University, most recently as professor of political science and chair of the Political Science Department. He also was director of Brown’s Global Security Program of the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute of International Studies, the Center for Foreign Policy Development and the International Relations Program. Starting in 2002, Hopmann began teaching courses at SAIS on international conflict prevention as a part-time professorial lecturer.

He previously taught at the University of Minnesota and was director of its Harold Scott Quigley Center for International Studies. He served as vice president of the International Studies Association and editor of the International Studies Quarterly, Fulbright Fellow and senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Author of four books as well as numerous book chapters and articles, Hopmann received his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.

What attracted you to this position at SAIS?

I was attracted by the strong program in international negotiation and conflict management, which has been the primary area of my research and teaching for the better part of 40 years. I have worked closely with the program’s founding director, I. William Zartman, for roughly 30 years, so the opportunity to take over upon his retirement is in many ways the ideal opportunity for me.

What areas of expertise do you bring to SAIS?

My main area of research and teaching is international negotiation, as well as the prevention, management and resolution of international conflicts. I have largely applied these interests to issues involving European security, broadly defined in terms of approach and geographical region extending across the entire continent, from Vladivostok to Reykjavik. This includes negotiations on issues of arms control and disarmament and on the prevention and resolution of conflicts in this region, especially in the period after the end of the Cold War.

What are some important trends in your field?

The area of negotiation and conflict management has been affected by the "constructivist turn" in international relations theory, not as a substitute for but as a complement to earlier realist and liberal theories. In research on negotiations, this has led to more emphasis on the role of ideas, norms and values in the process in addition to traditional concerns with power and material interests. Applied to my work on European security, this has meant a greater emphasis on the development and diffusion of norms of cooperation across the region as one method to manage conflicts.

What are some of your current areas of research and/or projects?

My research focuses mostly on the work of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and related European institutions in developing norms and processes for the prevention, management and resolution of conflicts across the regions, especially in the Balkans, Caucasus and Central Asia. The OSCE has played an important role in conflict prevention and resolution in the many ethno-national conflicts that arose following the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, as well as in developing norms of good governance, rule of law and respect for human rights and the rights of minorities throughout the European region and extending into North America.

What are your goals for the upcoming academic year?

For the next year at least, my primary goals involve making as smooth a transition as possible from the excellent leadership provided for more than 20 years by Bill Zartman to the program as its founding and heretofore only director. Therefore, I do not anticipate any dramatic changes at the outset, but rather a focus on continuity. Over the longer term, I hope to focus on building ties between Conflict Management and other SAIS programs, especially those in International Relations and regional studies. Conflict management as a field develops in the context of the larger field of IR theory at the general level, and at the specific level it gets applied in diverse geographic, cultural and political settings that introduce a great deal of variability into the application of general principles to specific contexts. I thus hope to encourage students to see conflict management as part of the larger world of international relations and the smaller world of specific regional circumstances that stand in tension but must be balanced in the conflict management process.

What do you consider to be your "hometown," and what do you enjoy doing outside of your scholarly pursuits?

I was raised in Saint Louis, went to school on both coasts, ended up in my first teaching job back in the Midwest in Minneapolis and then in Providence, R.I. However, for the past decade our primary home has been in the Washington area, where my wife works for the National Institutes of Health, and I look forward to making it my hometown. I also consider Minneapolis to be home—my younger son and his family live there.

I love to travel, and I enjoy kayaking local rivers and the Chesapeake region, biking, tennis and photography.

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