Ambitious Wilson School students will have a chance to stab each other in the backs starting next week.
Intrigue will hang in the air of Robertson Hall, as students and faculty members eye each other with healthy suspicions.
Thursday will mark the first round of a school-wide game of Diplomacy, a strategy board game similar to Risk.
The game will continue at a slow, deliberate pace — two turns each week — and will likely last for several months.
Rather than sitting around the playing board, teams of three to five people will email their moves to the game coordinators throughout the week. A giant map will hang in the George P. Shultz '42 Dining Room marking the progression of moves.
When graduate students first brought the idea to Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter GS '80, she was very enthusiastic about it, according to Andre Bernier GS, who is organizing the game along with Carl Robichaud GS.
In addition to Slaughter, former ambassadors Robert Hutchings and Jack Matlock — both with real world diplomatic experience — will be playing.
Amon Killeen GS explained the game usually takes five hours to complete in one sitting.
Seven teams of faculty members, undergraduate and graduate students — each team representing one of the seven major forces in pre-World War I Europe — will take turns building up their armies and waging war.
Diplomacy is unlike Risk, Killeen said, in that it is not a game of chance. Instead, the heart of the game is forming allies in negotiations, and then having to back-stab them later.
The team playing England might tell the team playing France, " 'If you don't move into the English Channel, I won't move into the English Channel' . . . But then England talks to Germany, 'I'm totally moving into the English Channel,' " Killeen said.
"Don't play with friends and family if you depend on them financially," Robichaud said in a half-serious manner. "A lot of friendships have ended over this game."
Robichaud said part of the interest in starting the school-wide game came from a hope to unify the Wilson School.
"One of main goals is to encourage interaction between graduates, undergraduates and faculty," he said.
"There's a perception of an unfortunate divide between the undergrads and the graduate students . . . No animosity, just no interaction," Killeen said.
Bill Burke-White, a special assistant to Slaughter, called the game a "community building and fun event to bring together the Wilson School community."
"I'm sure [the faculty members] have a great deal of knowledge and strategic skill and international relations expertise, and the interesting question is whether that skill will translate to the [game]," Burke-White said.
Hutchings, who admitted to never playing Diplomacy before, said "It remains to be seen whether I'm any good at this game."
Hutchings did allude to winning a game in the past where he beat "the entire red team, and the blue team took over all of Europe."
Robichaud said he expects there will be a prize for the winning team.
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