Director's Message
Seminar XXI began its first year of operation in September 1986; and with the banquet held on September 12, 2005, at the National Press Club, the program began its twentieth year of operation.
Seminar XXI is an educational program located within MIT’s Center for International Studies. It was devised in 1984 by three far-sighted individuals — Mitzi Wertheim, currently at the Center for Naval Analysis; Suzanne Berger, professor of political science at MIT; and Captain Jake W. Stewart, US Navy (Ret.). Its mandate then — and its continuing mission — was to provide current and future leaders of the US national security and foreign policymaking communities with the broad perspectives and analytical skills required to evaluate and formulate effective policy options for the United States.
Designed as an experiment to broaden the perspectives of high-ranking military officers and to introduce new ways of understanding the world, Seminar XXI has become a valued educational program not only for the military, but also for all the important federal agencies and departments that interact with the military in the national security arena.
With the current class, Seminar XXI has had a total of 1,231 Fellows participate in the program — 662 military and 569 civilians. Of the 662 military officers, 187 or 28% were flag rank when they entered the program or attained flag rank by retirement. Seminar XXI also counts a healthy representation of civilians among its alumni who are or were ambassadors, senior executive service, and senior intelligence service.
What accounts for the success of this program? We believe that there are five key ingredients:
First, Seminar XXI offers an innovative approach to understanding foreign societies and the relations among them. It employs different paradigms (i.e., causal models) to understand the relations among politics, the economy, society, cultures, and the international environment. Seminar XXI teaches its Fellows to see problems and issues from the realist, liberal, culturalhistorical, and economic-materialist perspectives.
Second, the program is aimed at a specific subset of senior military officers, government officials, and industry executives: those currently holding high-level decision-making positions, or those whom their organizations judge likely to hold such positions within the next five to ten years. The program has been successful in this regard, counting among its number the Honorable Andrew S. Natsios, former administrator of USAID; former Deputy Secretary of Defense Rudy de Leon; former Associate Director Central Intelligence (Homeland Security), Winston Wiley; Admiral Robert F. Willard, USN, current Vice Chief of Naval Operations; General Lee Butler, USAF, former CINCSAC; General Montgomery Meigs, USA (Ret.), former Commander of the US Army, Europe; General James Cartwright, USMC, Commander, US STRATCOM; and General George Casey, USA, currently Commander Multi-National Force Iraq.
Third, Seminar XXI draws world-renowned experts from the leading universities and research institutes in the United States and abroad. These experts are chosen for their functional, country, and regional expertise, and have included world figures such as Condoleezza Rice, Bernard Lewis, Samuel Huntington, Joseph Nye, Josef Joffe, Kenneth Waltz, Ambassador Koji Watanabe, Pierre Hassner, Walid Khalidi, Victor Cha, Lilia Shevtsova, Eliot Abrams, Aleksa Djilas, Laura D’Andrea Tyson, and Shashi Tharoor (currently Under Secretary General of the United Nations).
Fourth, Seminar XXI has proved to have alumni who remain fiercely loyal to the program and who continue to be its best recruiters. It is a program that is made known mainly by word of mouth, and the positive experiences of its alumni remain its best publicity.
Fifth, Seminar XXI strives hard to remain current — to focus on those national security and foreign policy issues that currently occupy the time and energies of the country’s senior leadership — and to help these decision makers see those issues in the broad context required to deal successfully with them.
This anniversary brochure celebrates our twentieth year. The main body presents the Fellows of each of the 20 classes, along with the faculty and the topics covered during the given academic year. At the end of the brochure are separate lists of all the alumni and faculty who have participated in this program.
As the fifth and current director, it is my pleasure and honor to present this brochure to the alumni who have served so well the program and their country.
With best wishes,
Robert Art, Director, Seminar XXI
Christian A. Herter Professor of International Relations, Brandeis University
