Major Gift to Fund New Institute
By Patrick Gilman

In a statement yesterday, Dean Jessica Einhorn announced that SAIS has received one of the largest donations in the school’s history, $4.2 million from entertainment mogul Daniel Lawrence Whitney. The gift will endow a new program for Mid-American Studies, which will be housed within the American Foreign Policy program.

The creation of this institute will be the first step in making what Einhorn called “true American culture” a mandatory part of the international curriculum students study at SAIS.

“In order to succeed as foreign policy practitioners in this country,” Einhorn said, “our graduates need to be as fluent in NASCAR as they are in negotiation theory, as familiar with the works of Chuck Norris as they are with those of Clausewitz, and as at home in South Carolina as they are in Singapore.”

The impetus behind the institute was a recent study released in Foreign Policy magazine that revealed SAIS students to be woefully ignorant in all things Americana. The study, which polled MA candidates in top-notch IR schools, revealed that SAIS students can, on average, name more types of French cheese than they can US state capitals.

The study provoked anger from several professors at the school, and led to worried whispering among the Deans in the hallways at Nitze. Rumors had it that a group of some of the school’s biggest names, headed by American Foreign Policy professor Michael Mandelbaum and Strategic Studies professor Eliot Cohen, were prepared to bolt en masse for Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service – “where the students aren’t a bunch of simpering ninnies,” as Cohen is said to have put it – unless something was done, quickly, to close the knowledge gap.

“How can we claim to produce the next generation of American foreign policy leaders in if our students know less about this country than my eight-year-old?” asked Mandelbaum, who as head of the American Foreign Program will lead the new institute.

“Our students are many things,” Mandelbaum reportedly told a colleague. “They’re smart and worldly, certainly, but apparently they’re also effete, liberal, prissy twits who are desperately out of touch with the average Americans who they will someday serve.”

Lucky for SAIS, then, that Whitney – a long-time friend of the school who was accepted to the Conflict Management program before striking gold with his onstage persona, “Larry the Cable Guy” – stepped in to make his generous donation.

In a letter accompanying Dean Einhorn’s release, he wrote, “It’s an unfortunate situation when our best and brightest future politicians and leaders can’t even locate West Virginia on a map. I hope that the Larry the Cable Guy Center for Mid-American Studies will be a start towards making sure the next generation of SAIS graduates is as knowledgeable about their own country as they are about the rest of the world.”

Reading the letter, one student remarked, “Wait – there’s a WEST Virginia?”

International students were underwhelmed by the news. One Italian student, who asked to remain anonymous, said, “I spent a year in Bologna and I concentrate in European Studies specifically so I can spend my two years pretending I’m not actually at an American school. It is bad enough they make me live in this swampy hellhole of a city. Now they want me to study their crappy culture, too?”

However, Mark Brininstool, a first-year International Development concentrator originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, was among a few students ecstatic about the center’s creation.

“It’s about freakin’ time,” he said. “I been telling people all year that they need to start gettin’ to know they’re in America. This ain’t Russia or Iraq. This is America. And if they don’t like it, they can get out.”

When asked what he thought the as-yet undetermined curriculum should include, Brininstool said he’d already suggested to the deans that the school require all students to go on a “staff ride” similar to that currently offered Strategic Studies students.

“I’d have ‘em head start with the three R’s: [NASCAR] Racin’, [professional] Rasslin’, and Rodeo. You get them uppity New York kids out there doin’ that stuff, maybe give ‘em an earful of Kenny Chesney, and shee-yit – I bet you’d turn this place right around.”

“And Bloodsport,” he added. “You know, the one where Jean-Claude Van Damme totally beats the crap out of Forrest Whittaker and that tiny Chinese dude in the Kumite? Yeah, I’d have ‘em watch Bloodsport like ninety times. And maybe go to some tittie bars.”

Somewhat nonsensically, he added, “Hell, I’m just like the rest of ‘em. I’m all for Africa, Asia, whatever. I’m IDEV, ain’t I? I mean, them Asian chicks are hot. But I’m an American, and immigrants are taking our jobs.”

Patrick Gilman wants you to know that it took a lot of courage to not use a pseudonym for this article.  Congratulatory pats on the back can be delivered to Patrick in person at the back left-hand table in the cafeteria between 11am and 3pm Mondays and Thursdays.