We’ve reported before in this space about the free but valuable IHS Summer Seminars.
Will Wilkinson particularly recommends the Social Change Workshop for Graduate Students. From his comments:
Let me start here… I got an email a while back from one of last summer’s faculty–it was her first time teaching at the workshop. She told me that the workshop was like she’d always hoped grad school would be, but sadly wasn’t (having gone to Harvard for grad school and Berkeley for law). And that’s really it. That’s why I love it. At the Workshop you’re surrounded by brilliant people. It’s like the united nations of smart. Chinese students from Yale, Russians from Chicago, Poles from Oxford… Africans, Mexicans, you name it, and from some of the best grad programs in the world. (Interestingly, most of the european students come from central/eastern post-communist europe, and not France, Germany, etc, although we get those too.)
Will’s entire discussion of this subject is worth reading, if you think you (or a graduate student you know) might be interested.