The Political Science Department was formally established in 1955, within what was then the Department of Economics and Social Science, as part of a broad effort to develop research and training at MIT in the social sciences. The nucleus of a Political Science faculty had already been formed within the Center for International Studies, a pioneering, interdisciplinary research center working on American foreign policy and security issues, economic and political development in the Third World, Communist societies, and international communication. By 1958, a Ph.D. in political science had been authorized. Political Science became an independent department in 1965, offering an undergraduate major and a Master's degree, as well as the Ph.D.

For more information, go to http://web.mit.edu/polisci/ .

Recent Submissions

  • 12.086 / 12.586 Modeling Environmental Complexity, Fall 2008 

    Rothman, Daniel (2008-12)
    This course provides an introduction to the study of environmental phenomena that exhibit both organized structure and wide variability—i.e., complexity. Through focused study of a variety of physical, biological, ...
  • 6.831 User Interface Design and Implementation, Fall 2004 

    Miller, Robert (2004-12)
    6.831 introduces the principles of user interface development, focusing on three key areas: Design: How to design good user interfaces, starting with human capabilities (including the human information processor model, ...
  • 12.010 Computational Methods of Scientific Programming, Fall 2008 

    Herring, Thomas; Hill, Chris (2008-12)
    This course introduces programming languages and techniques used by physical scientists: FORTRAN, C, C++, MATLAB, and Mathematica. Emphasis is placed on program design, algorithm development and verification, and comparative ...

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