IGP Welcomes 2025-26 Student Scholars
On September 10, the Institute of Global Politics (IGP) hosted a luncheon to formally welcome the third cohort of IGP Student Scholars, composed of 48 students across Columbia’s undergraduate schools, Law School, and School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).
IGP Cofounders Keren Yarhi-Milo, dean of SIPA, and Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, chair of the IGP Faculty Advisory Board, welcomed the student scholars and engaged in a Q&A session about navigating today’s political climate, insight into high-stakes decision making, and career advice.
Yarhi-Milo described the program as a second home for Columbia students to engage with global challenges and different perspectives. Reflecting on her own experience as an undergraduate at Columbia, she shared her vision for a program that sits at the intersection of academic scholarship and policy, where students are “exposed to the complex questions of the day” and equipped with the tools to wrestle with them.
Secretary Clinton echoed Yarhi-Milo’s sentiments, highlighting the need for increased collaboration between academics and policymakers. Referencing her time in government, she emphasized the value of academic insight in high-stakes decision making: “When speaking with [Keren], I may not have known the names of the [psychological] biases, but I saw them in real time inside the situation room.” She stressed that effective decision-makers must push through discomfort and binary thinking, noting that nuanced solutions require embracing uncertainty and ideological complexity.
Secretary Clinton and Yarhi-Milo each took questions from students about myriad issues, ranging from their experiences in academic and political leadership to the risk of democratic backsliding in the US and abroad.
Yarhi-Milo urged students to view the backslide of democracy through a comparative lens, citing the work of former IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellows and Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa, as well as SIPA Assistant Professor Camille Francois, who have extensively studied the role of digital technologies on democratic erosion and together lead IGP’s Technology & Democracy Initiative. Secretary Clinton urged students to turn knowledge into action, stressing that mastering the academic literature helps ground policy debates. “If you're going to defend democracy, you have to be able to articulate what is going wrong and do it in a way that convinces others,” she said.
Speaking to today’s challenges, Secretary Clinton warned that “we are living in a time of constant assault on identity, truth, [and] community,” positioning IGP and the Student Scholars program as a bridge across a widening ideological divide.
The bios of the 2025-6 cohort of Student Scholars can be found here.