Focusing on the United States and Canada, research and teaching at the JFKI combine culture, history, and literature with political science, sociology, and economics.

In order to do justice to its interdisciplinary claim, the institute soon moved to its current building in Lansstraße in Berlin Dahlem, where a school had previously been located.The short distances between the departments were intended to stimulate exchange between the chairs.

At the time of the ceremony, almost all of the institute's chairs were occupied: Charles Nichols took over literary studies, Ernst Fraenkel politics, Ursula Brumm culture, Gerald Stourzh history and Karl Lenz geography.

As the teaching of English in the Federal Republic of Germany at this time was almost exclusively focused on Great Britain, the third goal was primarily dedicated to student teachers.

With the founding of the institute shortly after the Berlin Wall was built, the young Federal Republic wanted above all to do justice to the important status of the occupying power.

As part of the student movement of 1968, which was particularly strongly represented at Freie Universität and showed solidarity with the anti-Vietnam protests in the US, demonstrations were also repeatedly held at the institute.

After the new Berlin Higher Education Act of 1969 gave students and employees the same number of votes on the Institute Council as professors, the mood became increasingly polarized.

The following year, it won one of the coveted places in the German government's Excellence Initiative with its interdisciplinary graduate school project, which was in line with the institute's basic principles.

Modules such as the institute's traditional lecture series, which is organized each semester by two professors from different disciplines, aim to hone interdisciplinary skills.

Graduates of the JFKI work as journalists, publicists and writers; they curate exhibitions in museums and promote scientific and political exchange with North America in foundations; they take up positions in public relations or in the management of transatlantic companies.

The Graduate School of North American Studies at the JFKI was awarded with funding during the German excellence initiative for its Ph.D. program themed "The Challenges of Freedom".