In Dr. Melinda Haas's classroom, students don't just read about foreign policy decisions — they make them. Using tools like the Council on Foreign Relations' (CFR) Model Diplomacy simulations, students step into the roles of decision-makers, such as National Security Council staff or UN Security Council delegates, and work through the kind of high-stakes calls real policymakers face.
An assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), Haas has used these simulations in her own courses for years. Now she'll have deeper access to that toolkit as a CFR Education Ambassador for the 2026–27 program year.
The Education Ambassador program pairs educators with CFR's briefings, classroom resources, and network of foreign policy experts over an eight-month engagement. Haas will join roughly 80 other higher education faculty and administrators in this year's cohort, part of a broader group of high school and university educators from 42 states. The diverse network brings a shared mission to classrooms across the country: helping students engage meaningfully with the global issues that affect their lives.
"My research focuses on how democracies try to create accountability for secret activities when the tools and norms of transparency don't apply," Haas said. "That question has shaped both my research and my teaching: courses on U.S. foreign policy and the law regulating the use of force, and on espionage and surveillance in international affairs."
As an ambassador, Haas plans to expand her use of several CFR resources to help students get grounded in fast-developing stories and follow how multiple crises around the world relate to each other in real time. She shared that she’s also looking forward to comparing notes with the rest of her cohort on practical classroom strategy — particularly given SPIA’s continued growth into the undergraduate space.
"I'd like to hear how other ambassadors have used CFR's materials to introduce material to students without much background in the field as I develop new undergraduate courses," she said.
Haas said students interested in foreign policy, intelligence, or international law shouldn't assume the field is closed to them if their background doesn't look like a typical policy resume. What matters more, she said, is a skill set: critical thinking and clear communication under uncertainty.
"As a policy analyst or advisor, you're rarely handed a clean answer," Haas said. "You have to be able to lay out the evidence you have, state your assumptions plainly, explain the judgment call you're making, and communicate all of that clearly and quickly to people who need to act on it. That's a skill that the interdisciplinary study of international affairs at a place like SPIA is built to provide."