Security Studies Program at MIT

Leadership in the Field

The United States faces difficult security challenges in the wake of the Cold War and the aftermath of 9/11. The nation will benefit greatly from those who conduct rigorous, non-partisan analysis aimed at improving U.S. national security policy, train future leaders in security studies, and contribute to public understanding of vital national security issues.

All three of those missions are central to the work of the MIT Security Studies Program (SSP)—an interdisciplinary research group and graduate-level program based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies, one of the country's leading research centers in international affairs.

Independent scholarship. For three decades, SSP's scholar-experts have produced a broad body of independent research on security issues, primarily in political science but also in disciplines at the intersection of politics and technology. As a result, policymakers, legislators, industry leaders and the news media have sought—and continue to seek—our analysis and advice.

With eight MIT faculty members and senior researchers, 15 affiliated fellows, 3 visiting officers from the U.S. military, and some 30 graduate students, SSP is one of the largest and most influential academic programs in security studies in the United States.

SSP's faculty and affiliates are uniquely well placed to address current trends in global politics, given their expertise in the following areas:

restructuring U.S. national security policies;
examining the linkages between budgets and policy, with an eye toward determining how changes in budgeting could make the United States safer;
understanding and limiting the threat of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons;
examining the relationships among the major Asian powers—particularly China and Japan—as well as their relationships with the United States;
designing strategies to deal with weak and failed states and the volatile politics often associated with them;
understanding the changing security landscape in Europe.

Training Future Leaders. The education of graduate students (PhDs and SMs) and post-doctoral fellows is another key component of SSP, and we offer the most comprehensive graduate-level courses in security studies. Our classes cover a range of topics, from American foreign policy and the causes and prevention of war to defense politics and the international relations of East Asia.

Most of our current graduate students are doctoral candidates in political science; a small number are master's candidates. Our graduates go on to careers as specialists in international security, teaching in universities and working in public service, public interest and advocacy groups as well as in international organizations, charitable foundations and industry. SSP has produced some 130 PhDs and SM's. More than a few of these graduates have served in high-level government positions or have advised senior policymakers.

Educating the Public. SSP is dedicated to educating the wider public. When they can, SSP faculty members give briefings and testimony in Washington, serve on boards, deliver lectures at other universities, appear on television and radio and in documentary films. They field regular interview requests from the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Public Radio and other leading media outlets. SSP authors write books and articles on defense and security issues that are considered must-reads at the highest levels of the defense and security communities.

We also offer professional education to individuals outside of academe—public health executives who wish to learn about strategies to combat potential bioterror attacks, for example, or government officials who need to consider the security implications of a would-be avian flu pandemic. At the same time, SSP welcomes others in the international affairs community to our seminar series, workshops and conferences, and many of these experts collaborate with us in our research.

Goals for the Future

SSP is determined to keep its focus on real-world issues. This comes in recognition of the urgent need for more, rather than less, independent examination of and education on the critical security challenges facing this country and the world in the new century, and is a reflection of SSP's ongoing commitment to that mission.

In the near term SSP has three priorities. The first is to add to our senior staff. Our faculty specializes in providing significant, individually tailored advice to the superlative graduate students whom we attract, so that they can realize their full potential.

Second, the United States is entering a period of profound debate and discussion about the nature of its grand strategy, and the kinds and quantity of resources that will be allocated to security, broadly defined. The research staff plans to pull together the diversity of our subject matter into focused, accessible, synthetic reviews of the options open to the U.S., and the costs of those options.

Third, the communication of SSP research products is more important and more difficult than ever, because leaders and the public are bombarded with expert commentary. SSP is developing new formats to communicate our work to broader audiences, and new partnerships with former students and other high quality organizations to better communicate our work to the public, and to policy makers.