Teaching Common Sense: The Grand Strategy Program at Yale University

“The best course in America.” --David Brooks, New York Times

A look inside Yale’s elite Grand Strategy program, where future leaders are forged.

How is critical thinking taught? How will the next generation cope with an ever-changing and increasingly complex world?

These are questions that the Grand Strategy program at Yale seeks to address. The Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy seeks to revive the study and practice of grand strategy by devising methods to teach that subject at the graduate and undergraduate levels, by training future leaders to think about and implement grand strategies in imaginative and effective ways, and by organizing public events that emphasize the importance of grand strategy.

The program defines “grand strategy” as a comprehensive plan of action, based on the calculated relationship of means to large ends. Never an exact science, grand strategy requires constant reassessment and adjustment. Flexibility is key. Traditionally believed to belong to and best-developed in the politico-military and governmental realms, the concept of grand strategy applies—and ISS believes is essential—to a broad spectrum of human activities, not least those of international institutions, non-governmental organizations, and private businesses and corporations.

For fifteen years, the Grand Strategy program has been cultivating leadership skills of undergraduates and graduate students of Yale University. In Linda Kulman’s compelling book, we learn about this remarkable program from the inside, sharing the stress of the “murder boards,” the revelation of applying the classics to current geopolitical situations, and the crucial importance of fast decision-making under duress. Teaching Common Sense weaves together on-site reporting, archival research, and original survey data into an intellectual history of the Grand Strategy program.

Linda Kulman, an award-winning journalist and author, was a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report, where she covered politics, consumer culture, and religion. Her work has been anthologized in Perspectives on the Passion of the Christ: Religious Thinkers and Writers Explore the Issues Raised By the Controversial Movie and Ending Government Bailouts, and her essay “Land,” on earth’s disappearing natural resources, anchored National Geographic’s acclaimed Visions of Paradise.

Kulman, a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, has contributed to several publications, including the Huffington Post, National Geographic, and the Washington Post. She has written a number of nonfiction books, including two New York Times bestsellers, for some of the leading political and cultural figures of our time. Teaching Common Sense weaves together on-site reporting, archival research, and original survey data.

Kulman lives in Washington, D.C., with her family.