When Professors Go to War
Gates, to his credit, is much more interested than Rumsfeld was in mobilizing the human sciences in the “war on terror.”
Quote:
... But the tragedy of his initiative is that the very thing that makes it so appealing—at last, the Pentagon is seeking expert input from the academy—could also doom it to failure.
If American policymakers get the answers to these questions wrong, the people in the region will surely suffer, and more Americans will die unnecessarily—be it in more Middle Eastern wars, in future 9/11s, or both.
“So what?” you might ask. Isn’t that their problem? Graham Spanier, the president of Pennsylvania State University and a Minerva booster,
recently told the New York Times that scholars who oppose Pentagon funding simply “shouldn’t apply.” This glib sentiment has an obvious appeal, but U.S. policymakers would be well advised to think hard before taking Spanier’s advice.
Much more at Foreign Policy...
First MINERVA Awards Announcement
Here it is on DefenseLink. Titles of the topics that won do not seem too impressive to me at least.
--The Evolving Relationship Between Technology and National Security in China: Innovation, Defense Transformation, and China’s Place in the Global Technology Order
--Finding Allies for the War of Words: Mapping the Diffusion and Influence of Counter-Radical Muslim Discourse
--Iraq’s Wars with the US from the Iraqi Perspective: State Security, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Civil-Military Relations, Ethnic Conflict and Political Communication in Baathist Iraq
--Terrorism Governance and Development
--Emotion and Intergroup Relations
--Climate Change, State Stability, and Political Risk in Africa
--ECIR - Explorations in Cyber International Relations