Like many organizations, the American Political Science Association has taken the dawn of the new millennium as an opportunity to reevaluate its institutional mission. At APSA's 2000 annual meeting, the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) presented to the APSA Council its final report on “the overall condition of the Association relative to its mission and to the key challenges and opportunities in the external environment” (among other things). Interestingly, the SPC acknowledges that when first asked to “view the future of the APSA through the prism of its organizational mission and objectives,” it was “surprised to learn that the Association had no explicit mission statement beyond its purpose, in the original words of its Constitution, ‘to encourage the study of Political Science’ ” (<www.apsanet.org/new/planning/finalreport.cfm>). Accordingly, the Committee decided to craft an APSA mission statement suitable for the twenty-first century.