National Academies Press: OpenBook

Frameworks for Higher Education in Homeland Security (2005)

Chapter: 4: Parallels Between Homeland Security and Area Studies, International Relations, and Science Policy

« Previous: 3: What is the Role of the Higher Education Community in Homeland Security?
Suggested Citation:"4: Parallels Between Homeland Security and Area Studies, International Relations, and Science Policy." National Research Council. 2005. Frameworks for Higher Education in Homeland Security. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11141.
×
Page 9
Suggested Citation:"4: Parallels Between Homeland Security and Area Studies, International Relations, and Science Policy." National Research Council. 2005. Frameworks for Higher Education in Homeland Security. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11141.
×
Page 10
Suggested Citation:"4: Parallels Between Homeland Security and Area Studies, International Relations, and Science Policy." National Research Council. 2005. Frameworks for Higher Education in Homeland Security. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11141.
×
Page 11
Suggested Citation:"4: Parallels Between Homeland Security and Area Studies, International Relations, and Science Policy." National Research Council. 2005. Frameworks for Higher Education in Homeland Security. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11141.
×
Page 12
Suggested Citation:"4: Parallels Between Homeland Security and Area Studies, International Relations, and Science Policy." National Research Council. 2005. Frameworks for Higher Education in Homeland Security. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11141.
×
Page 13
Suggested Citation:"4: Parallels Between Homeland Security and Area Studies, International Relations, and Science Policy." National Research Council. 2005. Frameworks for Higher Education in Homeland Security. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11141.
×
Page 14

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

Parallels Between Homeland Security and Area Studies, International Relations, and Science Policy To provide further insight into possible roles for homeland security education, it is possible to draw lessons from the past. Just as educational programs in homeland security emerged in response to the events of Sep- tember 11, educational programs in area studies flourished in response to the Cold War. Official authorization and funding were first provided by the National Defense Education Act of 1958 and continue under Title VI of the U.S. Code to this day. (A precursor effort to area studies programs, the U.S. Army Specialized Training Program, was initiated during World War II but discontinued after the war's end.) International studies began even earlier, before World War II.1 In both area studies and homeland security studies, the national edu- cational response was to a perceived threat and a corresponding national need. In both cases, the subject matter of the new coursework drew from multiple disciplines. Also, in both cases, there was at least one identifiable federal agency whose recruiting needs would be well served by students graduating from the new programs. For area studies, the perceived fed- eral customers were the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Depart- ment of Defense (DOD), and the Department of State.2 For the scientific programs launched around the same time (post-Sputnik), the National 1 On the history of international studies as a discipline, see Robert A. McCaughey, 1984, International Studies and Academic Enterprise: A Chapter in the Enclosure of American Learning, New York: Columbia University Press. 2 Ibid. 9

10 FRAMEWORKS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION IN HOMELAND SECURITY Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was the main benefi- ciary.3 For current homeland security programs, the perceived federal customer is primarily the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This perception persists despite homeland security-related career opportuni- ties in the Departments of Energy, Agriculture, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Treasury, Defense, Justice, and Commerce; as well as opportunities in the Postal Service and the Internal Revenue Service; and despite numerous nonfederal opportu- nities in port/airport security, urban planning, city/regional governance, public health, and virtually all forms of engineering. Evidence supporting the public perception of DHS as the primary customer can be seen in educational programs that specifically claim that they will train students to become "homeland security specialists"4 and in university websites that reference solely the Department of Homeland Security in their introductory material5 or provide direct links only to DHS, among all the federal agencies.6 At this point, the course offerings and programs in homeland security are still in their infancy, and it may yet be possible to apply some caution- ary lessons learned from the nation's experience with area studies. The primary concern voiced in the breakout session on area studies was that it is a mistake to link an educational program too strongly to a single federal agency. The danger to programs appears to be that public or political percep- tions of the agency can transfer easily to the educational program in ques- tion, regardless of their factual basis. Examples in support of this view can be found in news commentaries, discussion boards, and written docu- ments on area studies programs. For example, the Chronicle of Education Colloquy Debate, "Tarnished as a Spy?,"7 considers whether area studies scholars should boycott the National Security Education Program, which provides fellowships to students in area studies. The rationale in favor of the boycott is that the program is "tainted" by its funding source. Another example of the perceived conflation of agency objectives and an educa- tional program is the open letter distributed by Michigan State University to its undergraduates considering enrolling in the National Security Edu- 3AAAS, 2004, "Trends in Non-defense R&D by Function, FY 1953-2005," February, http: //www.aaas.org/spp/rd/histda05.pdf. 4http://www.directoryofschools.com/Homeland-Security.htm. 5 http://ptesrv.apl.jhu.edu/04_5_catalog/homeland.html. 6http://homelandsecurity.osu.edu. 7"Tarnished as a Spy?," The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 8, 2002. Colloquy Dis- cussion: http://chronicle.com/colloquy/2002/spy/.

11 PARALLELS cational Program (area studies fellowships). The letter states: "In areas where mistrust of the U.S. Government exists, there are concerns that scholars and students who accept the funds may be perceived as either current or future employees of U.S. Government security and intelligence agencies (i.e., CIA, NSC, Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA], etc.)."8 The actual extent to which area studies students are seen by their host countries today as anything other than area studies students is unknown, and "mistrust of the U.S. government" can readily be transferred to any American abroad, regardless of academic specialty. Yet, as shown by the quotation above, at least one university has the perception that in the case of area studies, the funding source is publicly identifiable with the stu- dent and with the academic program. Anecdotal evidence from at least one federal agency represented at the workshop was that the aura of "CIA, NSC, DIA" involvement in area studies limits enrollment by skewing the demographics of program applicants. The biasing of the applicant pool occurs in accordance with the uneven partitioning of political views ac- cording to gender, ethnicity, income, and other demographic factors. At home, educational programs in area studies are also subject to evaluation on a political basis--specifically, whether they are overly sym- pathetic, or obstinately unresponsive, to the needs of their "affiliated" government agency. This debate on the "usefulness" of the area studies curriculum to political goals has emerged in congressional testimony on Title VI.9 The consequence for the university is that the debate both puts federal funding for area studies programs at risk and calls into question the field's inherent academic legitimacy. Area studies is perhaps the only discipline to have Congress attempt to impose a mandatory external advi- sory committee upon it (HR 3077, in 2003). More broadly, there is a long history of concern within academia about possible alliances between researchers and U.S. military and intelli- gence agencies, with documented negative effects. For example, some Latin Americanists from the United States have confronted lingering sus- picions on the part of host countries due to Project Camelot, a U.S. Army- funded social research enterprise into the problem of counterinsurgency in Latin America in the 1960s.10 ,11 Controversies within cultural anthro- 8http://studyabroad.msu.edu/scholarships/nsep.html. 9Testimonies of David Ward before the House Subcommittee on Labor, HHS and Educa- tion Appropriations, April 23, 2003, and Terry Hartle and Stanley Kurz before the House Subcommittee on Select Education, June 19, 2003. 10Irving Louis Horowitz, ed., 1967, The Rise and Fall of Project Camelot: Studies in the Rela- tionship Between Social Science and Practical Politics, Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press. 11 Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, ed., 1991, Ethics and the Profession of Anthropology, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

12 FRAMEWORKS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION IN HOMELAND SECURITY pology over the professional ethics of intelligence gathering (World War I) and conducting counterinsurgency research (Thailand, against the back- drop of the Vietnam War) have threatened academic careers and created rifts within the discipline about government contract support of ethno- graphic research.12,13 Further examination of the literature by the committee showed, and participants in the area studies breakout session pointed out, that there is a cautionary lesson to be learned from the area studies experience. Many of the programs supporting area studies and its students are, in them- selves, well constructed and well liked by participants. An example is the National Security Education Program, which gives scholarship funding in exchange for career service at one of the federal security-related agen- cies. The problem is not the program itself, but the cultivation of a few such programs to the point that they dominate the field's source of stu- dents and funding. The Department of Homeland Security will need to secure public support for education in homeland security without allying itself so closely to homeland security programs that the agency and the educational objectives become intertwined in the public perception. For this reason, it would be helpful for the mandate for such educational pro- grams to be as broad as possible. From a practical standpoint, this means that financial support for such programs should come from an array of sectors (private as well as public; perhaps even international) and an array of providers within each sector. Should DHS choose to provide financial support for new academic pro- grams, its initiatives can be guided by principles articulated in the Na- tional Academies report Evaluating Federal Research Programs: 1. selection of performers by competitive merit review set against clearly stated program objectives and selection criteria; 2. systematized external assessments of project, performer, and pro- gram performance; and 3. systematic opportunities for recompetition for multiple-year a w a r d s . 14 These principles have been found to provide for the most effective 12 Ibid. 13Eric Wakin, 1992, Anthropology Goes to War: Professional Ethics and Counterinsurgency in Thailand, University of Wisconsin: Center for Southeast Asian Studies. 14COSEPUP (Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy), 1999, Evaluating Fed- eral Research Programs: Research and the Government Performance and Results Act, Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

13 PARALLELS use of the nation's investments in knowledge-creating undertakings, to ensure the continuing vitality of awardee performance, and to allow for the regularized introduction of new innovative programs and p e r f o r m e r s . 15 Just as funding paradigms may affect educational paradigms, so too may communication paradigms. To obtain the broadest public support, the communicated expectations of the academic programs should be that they prepare future employees for a wide range of employment, across all sectors, in a broad array of locations and job titles. Considering the breadth of the definition of homeland security given earlier, this should not prove difficult. As discussed above, homeland security shares similarities with area studies in its close relationship to a national security need. However in the half-century intervening between the establishment of area studies and the dawn of homeland security studies, the educational landscape has changed. New opportunities have arisen. For example, there is now the opportunity to educate workers and the public in preventing threats, not just responding to them. Workshop participants with backgrounds in hazards assessment indicated that this is possible because there is greater understanding of many natural and (to a lesser extent) human-initiated phenomena, leading to better predictive models and potentially better decision making now than in the past. Furthermore, universities have made great progress in establishing mechanisms for interdisciplinary work (centers, interdisciplinary degree programs, joint faculty appoint- ments, etc.).16 Many of these were not in place when area studies was established as a field of inquiry. Finally, to come full circle, some of the educational forays made by then-new interdisciplinary "fields" such as area studies, national security studies, and even bioengineering can now provide content to the evolving educational studies in homeland security. 15Ibid. 16DBASSE (Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education), 2003, Evaluating and Improving Undergraduate Teaching in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, Washing- ton, D.C.: The National Academies Press.

Next: 5: Current and Proposed Educational Programs in Homeland Security »
Frameworks for Higher Education in Homeland Security Get This Book
×
Buy Paperback | $29.00 Buy Ebook | $23.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

This report explores whether there are core pedagogical and skill-based homeland security program needs; examines current and proposed education programs focusing on various aspects of homeland security; comments on the possible parallels between homeland security, area studies, international relations, and science policy, as developed or emerging academic thrusts; and suggests potential curricula needs, particularly those that involve interdisciplinary aspects. The report concentrates almost exclusively on coursework-related offerings, primarily at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!