Fletcher Faculty Bring Learning, Life Experience to the Classroom

Instructors at The Fletcher School, the graduate school of global affairs at Tufts University, bring the world into the classroom, empowering their students to evaluate it, impact it, and improve it. The Fletcher School’s online Master of Global Business Administration (GBA) program is taught by world-renowned professors and field experts, including Dr. Monica Toft, the academic dean and professor of international politics and the director of the Center for Strategic Studies at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.  

Toft, who earned her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago and is both a Carnegie and Fulbright Scholar, knew the importance of public service at an early age. She brings that commitment into her classroom, empowering future business leaders to make a positive global impact.

“Informing public discourse and public policy are really important….  I think that’s what the Fletcher School stands for. I think when you have a Fletcher degree…, leaders and policy-makers and potential employers trust that you are a well-informed, analytical, thoughtful, and intelligent person.” 

Together, through collaboration and classwork, research and exploration, GBA faculty and students explore the ideas that will shape the future of international policy. To learn more about how Dr. Toft’s experience transforms the GBA learning experience, continue reading our conversation below.

You began your career as a Russian linguist in the US Army. How did that experience influence your subsequent academic career and what core lessons did you derive from studying Soviet Russia that continue to inform your thinking today?

I started my career in the US Army. I went in, in part, because I believe in community service, public service. My father had served in the Army. So it wasn’t foreign to me—this idea of enlisting. I grew up understanding that you are part of a broader community and that public service is really important. 

This was the height of the Cold War, where it wasn’t clear that peace was always going to be the situation with the Soviet Union. You had the bipolar structure, with Ronald Reagan coming in and challenging the Soviet Union. He was forceful in telling the Soviet Union that you will not prevail and that we’re here. It was an amazing opportunity. 

My job was as a Russian linguist, so I was sitting and listening to Soviet troops, Russian-speaking Soviet troops, on the other side of the divide. It was an active mission, listening to them doing exercises. There was no evacuation plan for us. If they came, if there was a crisis, we were there. Basically, we were the Western hostages to ensure that the United States stayed committed to the alliance. 

It was fantastic. I loved being part of my platoon and my squad. We had a particular mission that we had to do. It was live and it was exciting. And there was that whole public service piece—I really felt as if I was contributing to making the United States, the Western world, safer by being there. For a kid who went in the army at 17, it was pretty intense and a wonderful job to be part of at that point in time.

Your most recent book, Dying by the Sword, was named one of the top reads by Foreign Affairs in 2023. How does it correlate with The Fletcher School’s GBA program?

First, it’s truly a Fletcher product; it could not have been written without my students. And then also thinking about teaching some of the stuff in the classroom and then pushing back and me pushing back. So, I see it as really a Fletcher product and the GBA students are Fletcherites.

Second, it truly is first-rate scholarship, which is important because, with the contestation of science and the academy, there are a lot of people who are down on expertise. I think we have to push back by continuing to produce books like this, which can help to inform debate, as well as policymaking and decision-making, including for businesses. 

I would hope that businesses read this book and understand that the military-industrial complex is a problem. It’s not completely a problem—it generates a lot of innovation—but it is taking away a lot from the building of the American economy, and I would argue it’s leading to a lot of harm in other places in the world. As academics, we have to be producing these kinds of books, pressing that information out there despite the fact that many think that expertise and scientific knowledge and universities are luxuries, or not to be believed. 

The third thing is that informing policy debate absolutely is critical. This book is influencing and helping people to understand why this American impulse of using force first is problematic. Most people don’t realize the extent of it, but the pure numbers that are presented in this book, people are like, oh my god, I had no idea. 

Informing public discourse and public policy are really important. I think that’s what the Fletcher School stands for. I think when you have a Fletcher degree and people know about the Fletcher School, which has worldwide renown, leaders and policy-makers and potential employers trust that you are a well-informed, analytical, thoughtful, and intelligent person. So I think that that book is emblematic of that and represents that —the best of what the Fletcher School does.

The Fletcher GBA Faculty: Accomplished Academics, Global Business Professionals

The Fletcher School online Master of Global Business Administration faculty features authors, chief economists, Fortune 500 advisors, law firm partners, and high-level professionals from many other fields. You’ll learn from leaders whose insights are rooted in real-world experience and cutting-edge research and theory.

GBA professors include a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (John Allen Burgess), a Brookings Institution fellow and author of five books (Daniel W. Drezner), a former chief economist in the Office of International Affairs at the Department of the Treasury (Michael W. Klein), chair of the India Fund and the Asia Tigers Fund (Jeswald Salacuse), a consultant to the World Bank (Joel P. Trachtman), and Dr. Toft, a Carnegie and Fulbright Scholar and former director of the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs at Harvard University. 

These varied perspectives serve an equally diverse student body of professionals drawn from business, government, nongovernmental organizations, and the military. Together this uniquely diverse community of learners investigates global business from multiple angles, exploring the political, economic, geographic, and cultural factors that radically alter business conditions from one country to another. A capstone lab ensures that students engage in plenty of hands-on learning while addressing real-world challenges.

Contact an enrollment advisor today to learn more about the program or to receive assistance starting your online application.