Clements Center Concludes 2024 London May Term: The U.S., U.K., and Global Order 

This year marked our ninth annual London May Term “The U.S., U.K., and Global Order” program. Nineteen undergraduate students from UT-Austin traveled to the United Kingdom, France and Belgium to study the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom with the world-renowned War Studies Department at King’s College London. 

Throughout the month, students attended lectures including “The Foundations of British Foreign Policy: The Emergence and Dilemmas of a Superpower”, “Non-Western Perspectives on Global Order”, with Dr. Maeve Ryan, “Britain and America’s Geopolitical Awakening: The Age of Theodore Roosevelt” with Dr. Charlie Laderman, “The U.S. Way of Intelligence” with Prof David Gioe, “Small States navigating the challenges of the International Order” with Dr. Hillary Briffa and many more. In addition to their coursework, students had the opportunity to visit several exciting landmarks, including St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Churchill War Rooms. 

The May Term also included several overnight trips, including a long weekend in Normandy and Brussels, and an overnight trip in Cambridge. The students visited Omaha Beach to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day and learn about this pivotal moment in history firsthand, accompanied by Clements Center Executive Director, Admiral Joseph Maguire and Distinguished National Security Fellow General Robert Neller. They visited the drop zones of the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions near Sainte Mère-Église, Pointe Du Hoc, Arromanches and the Pegasus Bridge. In Brussels, the students toured NATO Headquarters and visited with several notable U.S. officials. The cohort traveled to Cambridge, where they had the opportunity to tour King’s College at the University of Cambridge and enjoyed punting on the River Cam. The cohort also took a day trip to Dover, where they toured the castle and tunnels, visited the Battle of Britain Memorial and Museum, and learned about Operation Dynamo, the rescue of allied troops out of Dunkirk implemented by the Royal Navy. The group also spent an afternoon at Bletchley Park, the home of Britain’s World War II codebreakers, where they learned about intelligence gathering, decoding and translating. 

Click here to see more photos from this year’s May Term.