The Martha Road School of International Affairs

The following are the remarks written for the Wilson Center in Washington where I was recently named The Joseph B. Gildenhorn Distinguished Fellow. Last week, representatives of the Department of Government Efficiency entered the center and all but closed it down. The speech, I believe, still deserves to be read. It’s about the school—not Princeton, not Columbia—which truly taught me international affairs.

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One of the great orators of this century, President Barack Obama, will be known for many memorable quotes from during his presidency, some of which might resonate today. “My fellow Americans,” he declared. “We are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.” And, “I’m the president of the United States, not the emperor of the United States.”

But there’s one quote you won’t find on BrainyQuote.com, and it’s my favorite. On foreign policy, the president opined, “dropping bombs on someone to prove that you’re willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force.”

The 44^th president, who grew up in a nice and tolerant neighborhood in Hawaii, did not grow up in my neighborhood in Northern New Jersey. President Obama did not grow up on Martha Road.

Martha was home to solidly working-class and mostly Sicilian families—it’s where they shot parts of the Sopranos, until the Sicilians told them to get out—and one Jewish family, mine. The local kids, many of whom in high school became my dear friends, were at first keen on calling me a Christ killer and emblazoning me with a black eye or two on a regular basis.

Very early on I understood that the only way to survive Martha Road was to pick out the biggest bully and very publicly bloody his nose. The fact that he and his friends would come back and bloody my nose was immaterial. I had to prove to everyone that I was willing and able to fight, even if my victory proved to be Pyrrhic.

On Martha Road, bloodying a bully’s nose just to show I could was not the dumbest reason for doing it, but the smartest reason. The existential reason.

Sadly, perhaps, I learned more about international affairs and foreign policy-making on Martha Road than I did during the far too many years I spent at some of the world’s preeminent universities. On such campuses, the study of foreign policy falls between two extremes.