Map - Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs)

The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (Maxwell School) is the professional public policy school of Syracuse University, a private research university in Syracuse, New York. The school is organized in 11 academic departments and 13 affiliated research centers and offers coursework in the fields of public administration, international relations, foreign policy, political Science, science and technology policy, social sciences, and economics through its undergraduate (BA) degrees, graduate Master of Public Affairs (MPA), Master of Arts (MA), and PhD degrees.

The school has been recognized as one of the world's best graduate schools of public affairs. It awards the oldest public administration degree in the United States.

The school is named for George Holmes Maxwell, a Syracuse alumnus and Boston patent attorney who in 1924 donated $500,000 to the university to establish a school which would aim "to cull from every source those principles, facts, and elements which, combined, make up our rights and duties and our value and distinctiveness as United States citizens". Maxwell's initial interest was in training all undergraduates for their roles as informed citizens in the American democracy; University officials convinced him the school should also provide professional training for future government officials and other public servants.

The Maxwell School was dedicated on October 3, 1924, and was the first program to offer a graduate professional degree in public administration. That Master of Public Administration program is the oldest continuously operating, university-based MPA in the United States.

In 1937, the school took its full name and moved into Maxwell Hall, a purpose-built building on the west end of Syracuse University's main campus. In that year, Syracuse University's graduate programs and undergraduate instruction in the social sciences were moved into Maxwell, giving the school the unusual hybrid structure that remains today.

In 1968, Maxwell professor Dwight Waldo presided over the Minnowbrook I conference, which established the foundations for New Public Administration. Subsequent Minnowbrook II and III conferences were held in 1988 and 2008 at the eponymous Blue Mountain Lake retreat.

The school's rapid growth necessitated the 1990 "Campaign for Maxwell", which raised capital to fund a new building to accommodate the expansion. The Holden Observatory, built in 1887, was moved to create space for a new 5-story building. The result of the campaign was the Bohlin Cywinski Jackson-designed Eggers Hall, which opened in 1994. Eggers Hall adjoins Maxwell Hall at the corner, together forming an "L" shaped complex that houses the present-day Maxwell School.

In 2013, the Maxwell School and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington, D.C., entered into a collaborative agreement that included headquartering all Maxwell operations at CSIS.