There are the telltale signs: men with squiggly earpieces emerge from SUVs with dark-tinted windows and government license plates, and heading stoically through the corridors of the Rayburn House Office Building. This is the unmistakable advance of the executive branch, with its flashiest U.S. Defense and State Department officials, and their convergence on their legislative counterpart to appear humbly before watchdog-minded committee chairs.

Last fall, we had the opportunity to return to the classroom as students. We were invited by the American Political Science Association to take a course titled Congress and the Making of Foreign Policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C. The course, which was taught by professor Charles Stevenson, met twice weekly during September and October, prior to the start of APSA's Congressional Fellowship Program in November. The course was designed to give APSA Congressional Fellows and SAIS students an overview of the role that Congress plays in the foreign policymaking process. Since both of us teach a course on Congress, much of the course was an excellent refresher for us. But it also differed in important ways from the courses we teach at our respective schools. It is these differences that deepened our understanding of Congress and the foreign policymaking process and provided an important introduction to our work as APSA fellows on Capitol Hill.

The international cooperation initiative established by the Eisenhower administration (1956–1961), the People to People program, aimed to support American community leaders from different fields—such as the arts, education, sports, religion, health, and the military—in international exchanges to enhance understanding and good will on the part of citizens around the world.

Many members of the American Political Science Association are probably not aware of the work of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Founded in 1919 as a coalition of the professional societies that represents the diverse disciplines in the academic humanities, the ACLS now engages in a wide range of activities—offering generous grants and fellowships to scholars in humanistic disciplines; advocating for the strengthening of faculties in the disciplines; working with both government and private foundations to provide access to great works in the humanities, resources for departments, colleges, and universities; and facilitating efforts to define and preserve standards for peer review and quality research.

The total number of APSA members living outside the United States reached record numbers this fall—both as a total number and a proportion of APSA membership. As of November 2008, there were 2,289 international members, up from 2,030 in 2007, 1,977 in 2006, and 1,875 in 2005. This number also represents over 15% of our current total membership.