The History and Public Policy Program (HAPP) is a leader in making key foreign policy records accessible and fostering informed scholarship, analysis, and discussion on international affairs, past and present.

HAPP's mission is to make public the primary source record of 20th and 21st century international history from repositories around the world, to facilitate scholarship based on those records, and to use these materials to provide context for classroom, public, and policy debates on global affairs.

The History and Public Policy Program upholds the Wilson Center's mission to "[strengthen] the fruitful relation between the world of learning and the world of public affairs" by supporting fellows and producing scholarship and programmatic activities related to the history of the Cold War, nuclear proliferation, the Middle East, Chinese foreign policy, Taiwan, North Korea, and other subjects in contemporary international history.