IDDS-sponsored Programs to Broaden Educational Opportunities for College and Graduate Students

Building on our military and arms control reference works, and on the studies and proposals that underpin the Global Action and UrgentCall.org projects, in 2005 IDDS will publish the first edition of a new annual survey, ArmsWatch 2005: Global Trends, Prospects, and Policy Options in War and Peace, Arms and Disarmament. This brief survey (about 80 pages) will sketch out global trends in armaments and warfare; describe likely future developments, given current policies; and discuss alternative policy options that would be more likely to reduce the risks of war and the costs of preparing for war. ArmsWatch is intended for use by college teachers and students, journalists, congressional aides, activists, and concerned citizens, as well as professional military and arms control analysts.

With ArmsWatch as our centerpiece, IDDS staff members have begun focusing our public education activities on projects to help engage and educate college students on a much bigger scale than has been the case in the past. One such project is a structured Internship Program, offered for 8-12 weeks in the summer, fall, and spring. In this program students (college, graduate, and post-doc) have an opportunity to conduct research and writing for the Arms Control Reporter or ArmsWatch; and they take part in a weekly seminar that explores basic questions relating to the causes of war and conditions for peace. Our current resources permit IDDS to accept 10-15 students for the summer term (working full time), and 5-10 for the spring and fall terms (working 10 hours/week in most cases). The Internship Program offers an introduction to military, arms control, and disarmament policy-oriented research and analysis that is not available at most colleges; and a significant proportion of IDDS interns (and entry-level staff members) go on to careers in this field, in government, academia, or public-interest groups.

In 2006 IDDS will launch a major new program, the College Outreach Project. The goal of this program is to encourage college teaching of courses, or units, which introduce students to security issues, including weapons of mass destruction, proliferation and nonproliferation efforts, arms control, arms production, military spending, and national security policy. The project will have several components:
• Written material, available through the internet, including a compilation of sample syllabi, book and article lists, documentaries, films, and other resources; introductory material that discussed possible goals, issues, and potential pitfalls in teaching this subject; and suggestions for ways to use ArmsWatch as a course or unit textbook.
• Work with other college teachers to expand existing summer programs to train college teachers from various fields — including English, humanities, arts, and natural sciences as well as social sciences —- to teach a unit on this subject.
• A program of direct outreach conducted by retired or semi-retired experts in this field (for example, MIT physicist and security expert Kosta Tsipis), who travel and meet with college deans, department heads, and individual faculty members, exploring opportunities for increased teaching on the topic.
Over the next decade, the IDDS goal will be to foster the teaching of at least one course on the military aspects of security in every degree-granting, four-year undergraduate program in the United States, that is, some 3000 college programs.

A third program, designed for college graduates, graduate students, and post-docs, is the Philip Morrison Disarmament Fellowship . We are currently raising funds to endow this Fellowship, putting half of all contributions each year into the Endowment Fund, and the other half into current Fellowship activities. College graduates, graduate students, and post-docs will appy for a Fellowship than will run from three months to a year (depending on donations and the size of the Endowment). They will apply to work on a specific research and writing project at IDDS, which falls within our area of competence and interest, and which will advance their ability to pursue a career relating to disarmament in academia, government, or the public-interest sector.

These IDDS educational programs all reflect the belief that in order to move the United States, and parts of the world influence by the United States, toward constructive, peace-building policies and actions, we must train a new generation of leaders in matters relating to the military side of security: armaments and disarmament, arms production and trade, international arms control and disarmament negotiating fora, and options for confidence-building, arms-reducing defense policies.