Having written on national security for more than 20 years, I frequently get asked by students who are interested in such issues where they should attend graduate school. There are the well known schools, Harvard, Yale, Oxford (where I attended), etc. But one of the first I recommend is the Institute of World Politics, which offers accredited masters degrees in Washington, D.C.
I have friends that teach there (including Big Peace contributors). But the reason I recommend it is because the faculty is made up of scholars with real world experience in the military and U.S. government. If you want to study intelligence and counterintelligence, for example, why study under someone who has merely written on the subject? Why not someone who was senior director of intelligence programs for the National Security Council? Want to learn about counterinsurgency? Don’t settle for a guy in an Ivory Tower with a PhD. Why not someone who also teaches at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College? Or a retired Brigadier General? IWP calls their professors “scholar-practitioners.” It’s also not unusual for a former secretary of defense or head of the CIA to drop by for a guest lecture.
The other reason I recommend IWP is because their emphasis is on training people to think strategically. And they are bold about their patriotism. They do not embrace moral equivalence, which is so prevalent on today’s college campuses. As they describe their approach:
“It is a cornerstone of our curriculum that one cannot effectively defend a country and civilization that one neither fully understands nor appreciates. In a nation where all who are responsible for the defense of our country must take an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, patriotism is an absolute requirement for the profession. The question, then, is whether that patriotism is to be primitive and tenuous or well informed and morally ordered.”
The students at IWP include young military officers looking to advance their education, and bright young recent undergraduates interested in serving their country by serving in the intelligence community, working for the Pentagon, or helping with border security. IWP has been around for twenty years, and it’s headed by Dr. John Lenczowski, who among other things headed up the Soviet Affairs section in the Reagan White House. John is an old friend who has a teacher’s heart.
They are holding an open house on January 14th in Washington, D.C. for those who are interested. You can sign up here.
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