Over a century ago, in the year following the First World War, the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University was founded to respond to the global challenges of a new world order. 

We are in a similar moment of transition in global affairs today. Norms around global cooperation are being rapidly reimagined, negotiated, and transformed — accelerated by the actions of President Donald Trump in the early weeks of his second presidency. These actions have reshaped how the world perceives the United States and its role in international affairs. 

While this moment is troubling, it also presents an opportunity: to rethink how knowledge is shared, debated, and translated into solutions for people and the planet.

We put together this collection of essays to reflect on the one-year anniversary of the Trump administration’s 2025 stop work order for the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. Like many large institutions, USAID had real flaws. But its work in global engagement and humanitarianism had become a vital part of U.S. soft power, generating goodwill and doing real good around the world.*

Few thought USAID should be dismantled. Certainly not in the way that it was.

Still, the culture of aid was overly optimistic and somewhat naive. Aid has always been linked to geopolitical interests, used as leverage to achieve state ends.

This collection of essays reimagines a different form of international engagement. Our authors consider what the world might look like with new approaches to humanitarian aid in the short, medium, or long term. Together, these pieces tell a story of how development could function in a new world order, built from the ground up.  

It is fitting that our first print issue of Science Politics take on this subject. Thinking about how the public can engage productively in global affairs is at the center of what we do — particularly through the lens of science and technology, which touch and transform every aspect of our lives: how we work, govern, connect, and care for one another.

At the very moment science is shaping our future more profoundly than ever, the structures that sustain and communicate it are under strain. Putting forth new ways of thinking about some of the world’s greatest scientific challenges — from health and food to energy, technology, environment, and space — is an urgent endeavor.

The essays in this volume are organized around three themes. First, we explore the rupture of US international aid: what caused it, how it happened, and what it looked like. Second, we consider the consequences of the swift withdrawal of aid around the world: what occurred in the immediate aftermath, and what effects linger on. Finally, our expert contributors reimagine the future of development: Do we rebuild or reinvent? How do we harness the power of what’s been left behind while focusing on what’s possible for a more prosperous future? 

Development after USAID cannot be built on nostalgia for what was lost. It will be shaped by courage to put political will and scientific imagination in service of a more just world.