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Alumni
SSP Alumni Reception 2008
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ABOUT US Launched in 2007, the SSP Alumni initiative looks to build a vibrant alumni organization to serve our past and present students. Over the past year, initiative efforts included an expanded series of Early Warning newsletters, a drive to increase alumni presence at the weekly Wednesday Seminar Series, and the second annual SSP Alumni Reunion on March 14, 2008 in Washington, D.C. In addition, in keeping with the spirit of the reunion, winter 2007 also saw the first of SSP's Alumni Profiles, a new series of interviews with former SSP members highlighting their work and accomplishments since leaving E38. One of our goals is to link up current students with alumni and help current students obtain internships in their desired areas of research. The growing initiative thereby promises to strengthen the sense of community between successive generations of SSP alums and current SSP members, and broaden the SSP family. Thus, regardless of where you reside, you can keep abreast of developments back in Cambridge and know that you are always welcome to stroll the corridors of SSP! With the launch of the new initiative, we formed two new endowments designed to foster SSP development: the SSP Founders' Fund to recognize the efforts of Jack Ruina, William Kaufmann, and George Rathjens in SSP's formative years, and the SSP Directors' Fund to acknowledge the contributions of subsequent SSP leaders such as Harvey Sapolsky. For more information on our program and activities or be added to our mailing list, contact us. Please check this page regularly for news and updates! |
MIT SSP Alumni Reception 2008
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| (Left to right: Laura Holgate, Olya Oliker, Barry Posen, Kathleen HIcks) |
On March 14 the Security Studies Program held its second annual alumni reception in Washington, D.C., at the National Press Club. Barry Posen, the SSP Director, provided an update on the Program and thanked all those who have contributed to the SSP Founders' Fund and the SSP Directors' Fund. He also asked the assembled alumni to join him in thanking Magdalena Rieb for her service as program coordinator; she is moving on and moving up at MIT. Professor Posen spoke briefly on the theme of "Integration" as the watchword of SSP: integration of teaching, scholarship, and policy analysis; integration of civilian and military professionals in the study and practice of national security policy; and integration across disciplines and expertise to develop coherent understandings of complex national security problems. SSP also hopes to help our alumni reach out to each other as an integrated network, and to integrate our alumni with the current SSP family of faculty, researchers, and graduate students.
More photos from the alumni reception: |
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Alumnus Spotlight, Daryl G. Press, continued
1. Your economic globalization project, and specifically your 2002 Security Studies article with Eugene Gholz, posits that globalization actually makes western economies less vulnerable to distant economic disruptions, not more vulnerable as is often supposed. What brings you to this conclusion?
Eugene and I argue that although globalization has created a dense economic web between countries, the web reduces countries' vulnerability to overseas shocks. The whole point of a web is that the structure can survive even if a few individual strands are severed. This is particularly true of the global economic web, because profit-seeking actors respond eagerly to disruptions by searching for “next best” alternative. To put it differently: economic globalization has led to the global proliferation of economic alternatives: alternative suppliers of the goods we consume, alternative consumers for the products we manufacture, alternative locations for us to invest, and alternative sources of capital for our firms. The United States is growing increasingly dependent on access to the global economy as a whole, but less dependent on any specific economic relationships within the global economy.
2. Your PhD dissertation and your 2005 book find that at the beginning of World War II and during the cold war, decision makers assessing an adversary's credibility attached more importance to information about that adversary's national interests and relative military power than to the other country's reputation as unflinching in facing a crisis. How might that finding apply to today's policy debates about leaving Iraq?
A military withdrawal from Iraq would not be particularly damaging to U.S. credibility. When leaders face a key decision, they evaluate their adversaries' and allies' credibility by weighing the interests at stake for each party, and the capabilities each side brings to the table. Leaders usually make a simple and wise calculation: they assume that countries will defend their interests if they have the power to do so.
What this means is that if we withdraw from Iraq, we must explain very clearly what our key interests are in the region, and that we have more than enough military capability to defend those interests. America's two key interests in the Gulf are ensuring the free flow of oil and preventing the conquest of any of the region's major producers. Our naval and air forces are more than sufficient for those objectives. It would be foolhardy for any enemy to conclude that because we are bad at counter-insurgency and nation building, we are unable to protect important energy interests in the Gulf. I am confident that the United States can articulate this message in a very persuasive fashion, even if we leave Iraq .
3. As is often the case for SSP alums, when you finished your dissertation you had an important choice to make between a position in the policy world and an academic career. What inclined you toward the academic option? Do you have any advice to share with current SSP students as they weigh their career choices?
To be honest, I don't have much advice to help people choose between a career in policy or academia. The factors that would make someone choose one over the other are so varied and idiosyncratic. Both career paths can be very rewarding. What I would say for someone who wants an academic career is this: you don't need to land your dream job initially to have a great career. In an ideal world your first job will be in a leading department and you'll have outstanding colleagues. But all you really need in a first job is a place that will protect your time (i.e., it has a reasonable teaching load) so that you can produce as much high-quality research as possible in six years. The work you do in those early years as an assistant professor will be crucial for setting your career trajectory, and you can do that work anywhere that gives you time to focus on your research.
4. You have been teaching and conducting research at the university level since 1999. In retrospect, which SSP experiences do you think were helpful in preparing you for your current work?
My experiences at SSP have shaped every aspect of my career. The ethos at SSP – that we should all study important real-world problems – has shaped my research interests since graduate school. The training I received in graduate school in conventional and nuclear force analysis made it possible for me to study some of the questions that grabbed my attention. And my years at SSP left me with an invaluable network of friends; I rely on them frequently. There is no substitute for having people whom I've known for decades, and who will unflinchingly point out the errors in my work so I can address them before they see the light of day. SSP gave me the opportunity to build professional relationships with people who are now in varied positions across academia and the policy world – and it has been invaluable to me.
(Click here for a printable version of this interview in pdf format.)
Awards and Promotions
Alan Kuperman has been awarded tenure at the University of Texas, Austin's Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, effective September 2008.
Catherine McArdle Kelleher has received the 2007 Joseph Kruzel Memorial Award for Public Service. This award is given to a scholar who has been active in national security affairs both as an academic and as a public servant.
Vanda Felbab-Brown is the recipient of the APSA's 2007 Harold D. Laswell Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of public policy. The title of her dissertation is "Shooting Up: The Impact of Illicit Substances on Military Conflict."
Boaz Atzili has won the APSA's 2007 Kenneth N. Waltz Dissertation Prize for the best dissertation in the field of international security. The title of his dissertation is "Border Fixity: When Good Fences Make Bad Neighbors."
Alumni Publications
Austin Long, "The Anbar Awakening," Survival, Vol. 50, No. 2, (April-May 2008) pp. 67-94.
Jeremy Pressman, Warring Friends: Alliance Restraint in International Politics, Cornell University Press, 2008.
David Mendeloff, "'Pernicious History' as a Cause of National Misperceptions: Russia and the 1999 Kosovo War." Cooperation and Conflict 43, no. 1 (March 2008): 31-56.
Fred Kaplan, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power, (Wiley, January 2008).
Alumni news and activities
Daryl Press and Christopher Twomey were both speakers at a February 29-March 1, 2008 event titled "US-Japan Relations and a Changing World." The event was organized by the MIT Center for International Studies. See the CIS web site for details.
William Durch was on BBC World on August 15, 2007 to talk about the attack on African Union peacekeepers in Darfur and the impact it might have on UNAMID (on October 1, 2007). Additional media appearances and recent publications are listed at the Stimson Center's web site.
Laura Holgate was recently elected President of the Women In International Security Executive Board (as of September 2007). (Click here for press release.)
Jeremy Pressman was one of several speakers on New Hampshire Public Radio Friday, September 7, 2007. The topic of the show was "Assessing the Surge."
