Chartered as a liberal arts college in 1962, The American University of Paris is today an urban, independent, international university located at the confluence of France, Europe, and the world. We aim to provide the finest American undergraduate and graduate programs to students from all national, linguistic, and educational backgrounds, and to take our place as a renowned global center for innovative interdisciplinary research.

To that end our curriculum is discipline-based, comparative, and cross-cultural. Both student learning and faculty research are driven by a desire for excellence, are shaped by our singular geography and demographic diversity, and directed towards critical twenty-first-century issues. AUP offers an innovative pedagogical model integrating classroom learning and hands-on experience that prepares students to master and to make, to reflect and to apply, to analyze and to act.

Our mission is to educate our graduates to communicate well in a world of many languages, to think critically about history, culture, the arts, science, politics, business, communication, and society, to develop creative interdisciplinary approaches to important contemporary challenges, to be both technologically and culturally literate in a world of swift-paced change, to understand the ethical imperatives of living in such a world, and to take their places as responsible actors in communities, civil societies, and countries around the globe.

Core Values

The American University of Paris is committed to the highest standards of academic rigor and integrity, and to academic freedom.

Ours is an academic culture of engagement, global citizenship, and community that fosters in students and faculty alike a critical sense of commitment to and responsibility for a world of interdependence.

In The American University of Paris' multilingual, multicultural learning environment, students develop a capacity for ethical and political judgment that is alert to cultural diversity. In the living laboratory that is Paris, in the exceptional space of the AUP classroom, students and faculty of 100 different nationalities meet to articulate civic values and negotiate difference, as together they question, reflect upon, and work toward creative solutions to real-world problems.

The American University of Paris brings out the best in all members of the community, inspiring us to excellence and equipping us to live actively and compassionately to create a just world.

Strategic Institutional Goals  »