ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses who and what is international relations (IR) for. Its vantage is the early and largely unknown institutional history of the segregated academy and discipline in the United States, concentrating on the period between 1900 and 1940 and based primarily on unpublished papers of individuals and institutions. The chapter focuses on the next few, seemingly better known, decades, when a new Cold War cohort began the process of forgetting the same institutional history and substituting a set of myths about the past. It considers some implications for two kinds of related histories: of the discipline in the United Kingdom and elsewhere and of the until-now-unknown history of the discipline's pioneering women. The chapter also suggests why such histories might matter to those overwhelmingly white men and smaller number of white women who identify as professors of IR today.
