A New Geopolitics Push? How International B-Schools Are Responding To Global Chaos

STUDENT DEMAND ON THE RISE

Students seem to have gotten the message.

At ESSEC, more than 300 MIM students are enrolled in tracks with strong geopolitical components including international negotiation, defense, European affairs, and China’s political economy.

“Our students recognize that understanding geopolitical dynamics is no longer optional, it’s critical to leadership in an interconnected, unstable world,” Colson says.

The most popular undergraduate dual degree at IE Business School is the BBA combined with a Bachelor in International Relations. That demand is strong enough that IE is now launching a second dual degree, BBA plus Political Science. Strategic foresight – the ability to analyze, understand, and predict forces of disruption – is one of three core pillars in the IE Brown Executive MBA and offered as a concentration in both IE’s International MBA and Master in Management.

“We’re seeing significant and growing interest from students across all levels in geopolitics, foresight, and related areas,” says Dean Lee Newman.

As an IE Global Executive MBA put it: “From geopolitics and the unraveling of the global order, to AI-driven disruption and the future of ethics, democracy, and capitalism, we asked questions that don’t have easy answers. But the times demand that we ask them anyway.”

This year alone, Switzerland’s IMD has developed 10 customized geopolitical programs for senior executive teams. It also launched “Geopolitics Series: Navigating America’s New Direction,” to help executives interpret and respond to rapid shifts in U.S. domestic and foreign policy. The school has integrated geopolitics and security risk across its degree portfolio including its MBA, selected as Poets&Quants’ 2024 Program of the Year.

Research at IMD in Switzerland shows that 75% of corporate filings to the U.S. SEC in 2023 cited geopolitical risk as a factor in decision-making while trade barriers have doubled since 2020. “Protectionism is now the American default, not a Trump-era detour,” according to an analysis by Richard Baldwin, professor of international economics.

“The next generation of business leaders will inherit a fundamentally different global operating environment than their predecessors – one where geopolitical considerations are permanently embedded in every strategic decision,” says Misiek Piskorski, Dean of Executive Education and Professor of Digital Strategy, Analytics and Innovation at IMD.

“Unlike leaders who built careers during the era of seamless globalization, future executives will need to navigate a world of competing blocs, weaponized interdependence, and economic nationalism as the default rather than the exception.”

IS THIS EUROPE’S MOMENT?

At HEC’s Paris MBA commencement in June, France’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot stood before a sea of black gowns and blue sashes to passionately defend values U.S. universities once took for granted.

“We stand for free and open science. We stand for academic freedom,” said Barrott, who is an HEC Paris professor of finance on leave to serve as minister. He is also an HEC alumnus, earning a masters and his PhD there.

“For there are places around the world, where a university is no longer a sanctuary, but an area of political control, where students protests can mean arrests, where classrooms may be watched, where a tweet can send a professor to jail, where books are removed from the shelves, where databases are erased, where research topics are forbidden, and where funding is used as political leverage.”

It’s notable that he said this at a French university, not an American one. The Trump administration’s sustained assault on US higher education undercut one of America’s most effective tools of soft power: its universities’ global reputation for academic freedom, openness, and free speech which for decades has attracted the best and the brightest students and faculty from around the world. That in turn, helped shape global business, science, and policy in ways that reinforced American influence.
Trump’s attacks are eroding that reputation with top research talent looking to relocate and international students rethinking their US applications.

Is it Europe’s time to claim the mantle?

In May, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron launched Choose Europe for Science, pledging €500 million through 2027 to position Europe as a global sanctuary for open research. France, Spain, Germany, and Austria have announced their own national versions of the initiative.

Manuel Muñiz, provost of Spain’s IE University, says that while it is premature to predict an irreversible decline in the US’ academic leadership, it could mark the rise of a multipolar academic world.

“Global academic leadership is not a perpetual privilege. Other regions – including Europe, parts of Asia, and emerging economies – are investing substantially in their higher education systems and research capabilities,” Muñiz says.

“Europe can, and indeed must, serve as a sanctuary for open, pluralistic, and globally engaged intellectual inquiry.”

Jagolinzer of Cambridge Judge agrees. He recently testified before the EU Parliament, describing the Trump administration’s tactics as “military-grade hybrid.”

“It will take at least a decade to recover because I sense they are just getting started,” Jagolinzer says.

“I’ve publicly stated that I sense this is intentional blunt-force trauma. My sense is that there is an insatiable appetite for pure capitulation.”

‘THE TRUMP GAME CHANGER’

Back at HEC Paris, students there have engaged with geopolitics long before Trump, says Jeremy Ghez, professor of economics and decision sciences and co-director of the school’s Center for Geopolitics. It integrates geopolitics through electives, systemic risk analysis, and a core Executive MBA course called Business Environment. The school just hosted its 10th summer school in Geopolitics, Globalization and Business Strategy and continues to position students at the center of global uncertainty.

A large piece of that engagement is that HEC’s student body is highly international. Close to 95% of its 2025 class were international, representing 49 different countries.

But Ghez says the engagement has shifted.

“I think the Trump game changer is that people just are increasingly and rightfully skeptical of the rule book,” he says. “If the rule book is not as solid as it used to be – or is still being written to some extent – then you’re going to have to show imagination. Open mindedness used to be the biggest cliché that you could ever mention. Now they’re starting to see the strategic importance of it.”

He believes political choices made in Washington are opening doors elsewhere, including at European universities.

“There is a kind of competition going on to the extent that political choices by this White House means opportunities for European institutions that they’re looking to grab,” he says. “Without a doubt.”

DON’T MISS: 9 INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS SCHOOLS WHERE YOU CAN STUDY GEOPOLITICS

 

© Copyright 2025 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.