January 7, 2008
In this issue
- Introducing the new Mershon Memo format
- Coming up at the Mershon Center
- Mershon Center grant deadline extended
- Mershon Center launches web pages for recordings, photos
- Mershon Center creates archives in Knowledge Bank
- Featured organization: Yale International Security Studies
The Mershon Center for International Security Studies is pleased to introduce a new format for its weekly electronic version of Mershon Memo. This newsletter is in HTML format, which means that it is designed in a website program (in this case Macromedia Dreamweaver) rather than Microsoft Word.
Although the newsletter may display differently in different browsers and e-mail applications, it should be crisper, clearer and easier to read. Links should open directly to pages on the Mershon Center website or other pages on the Internet.
Best of all, the newsletter can be posted on the Mershon Center website under Publications. To read this newsletter online, please visit http://mershoncenter.osu.edu/publications/emailnewsletter/MershonMemo1-7-08.html
If you have any questions, please contact Cathy Becker, Public Relations Coordinator, at becker.271@osu.edu or 292-7529.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Odd Arne Westad
"The Global Cold War"
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security
Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Odd Arne Westad is Professor of
International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science
(LSE) and one of the world's leading experts on the history of the Cold
War. His main fields of interests are the international history of the
Cold War and contemporary East Asian history. Westad co-directs the LSE Cold
War Studies Centre with Professor Michael Cox (Professor of International
Relations). He is an editor of the journal Cold War History and the editor (with Professor Melvyn Leffler of the University
of Virginia) of the forthcoming
three-volume Cambridge History of the
Cold War. Read more and
RSVP
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Zachary
Zwald
"Solving an Imaginary Problem: Why 'Should'
Determines 'Can' on U.S. National Missile
Defense"
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security
Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Zachary Zwald is a 2007-08
Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Mershon
Center for
International Security Studies. He is working on turning his doctoral
dissertation, titled Solving an Imaginary Problem: Why 'Should'
Determines 'Can' on U.S. National Missile Defense,
into a book. Zwald argues that policymakers' beliefs regarding
prudent state behavior in a nuclear environment determine their understanding
of what missile defense technology can do. He is currently pursuing the
implications of this research by extending the concept of irreducible
uncertainty and belief structures regarding nuclear weapons to issues beyond
the U.S.
national missile defense system. Read more and
RSVP
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Peter Liberman
"Just Deserts in Iraq: Vengeance for 9/11 and American Public
Support for the Iraq
War"
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security
Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Peter Liberman has taught at Queens College
and the Graduate
Center of the City
University of New York since 1998. He is the author of Does Conquest
Pay? The Exploitation of Occupied Industrial Societies (Princeton, 1996), as well as journal articles on political psychology,
alliance politics, the causes of war, trade conflict, and nuclear
proliferation, secrecy, and strategy. Liberman is currently working on a book
manuscript on the moral psychology of punitive war, segments of which appear
in two recently published articles. He serves on the editorial board of Security Studies and the Among
Nations anthology texts (Foreign Affairs/Pearson).
Liberman has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, and a B.A. from Reed
College. Read more
and RSVP
Monday, January 28, 2008
Leonard Smith
"Who Gets to be a People?: Reconfiguring the Ottoman
Empire in the King-Crane Commission Report of 1919"
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Leonard Smith (Ph.D.
Columbia, 1990) is Frederick B. Artz Professor of History at Oberlin College. His most recent book is The Embattled
Self: French Soldiers' Testimony of the Great War (Cornell, 2007). He is also the author of France and the Great War, 1914-1918;Between Mutiny
and Obedience: The Case of the French Fifth Infantry Division During World
War I; and co-editor of France at War:
Vichy and the Historians. Smith will speak about the
the King-Crane Commission, the 1919 investigation conducted by the United
States into the circumstances and conditions in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and
Anatolia, in order to inform American policy with regard to the partitioning
of the former Ottoman Empire. Read more and
RSVP
Each year the Mershon Center for International Security Studies holds a competition for Ohio State faculty and students to apply for research grant funds. Grants may be used for a variety of research purposes including travel, seminars, conferences, interviews, experiments, workshops and more.
Applications must be for projects that relate to one or more of the Mershon Center's three areas of focus: the use of force and diplomacy; the ideas, identities and decisional processes that affect security; and the institutions that manage violent conflict.
Junior faculty members and graduate students are especially encouaged to apply. For more information, including application forms and instructions, please see the Grants section of the Mershon Center website.
Because the center has not received enough applications from Ohio State faculty and students, the usual deadline in early January has been extended. The new deadline is January 28, 2008.
The Mershon Center for International Security Studies is pleased to announce that recordings and photos from past events are now available on the Mershon Center website.
In the News section are two new areas: Event Recordings and Event Photos. Recordings are organized by academic year and listed in reverse order of event. The speaker's name and talk title are listed, along with formats for viewing and listening.
Recordings for the past two years are in video streaming format and require Real Player to see. If you don't have Real Player, you can download it free. Earlier recordings are audio only and are currently being processed by Classroom Digital Media Services. They will be available in the next few weeks.
Event photos are posted on the photo sharing site Picasa, which is part of the Google family of programs. Simply visit the Event Photos page under News on the Mershon Center website to link to the Mershon Center archive.
Photos are organized into albums by academic year and quarter. You can view photos, read captions to find out when they were taken, and even download a copy for yourself. New photos will be uploaded to the site as they become available.
If you have any questions, please contact Cathy Becker, Mershon Center Public Relations Coordinator, at becker.271@osu.edu or 292-7529.
Innovations have not stopped with the Mershon Center's own website. The center has also created archives of all past events, research, publications, and other activities on the Ohio State Library's Knowledge Bank
To access the archives, simply visit the Knowledge Bank home page and scroll through the list of communities to find the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. Click on the link to access the Mershon Center's Knowledge Bank home page.
From there you can find all Mershon Center archives from Fall 2005 on. You can click through the archives until you find the item you want, or browse by title, author or subject within any section of the archives. Archives earlier than 2005 are being entered and will be available in the next few weeks.
The archives are organized into the following sections:
- Events, broken down into conferences and speakers, then listed by academic year.
- News, including basic information about the center and press releases.
- People, broken down into biographies of faculty, post-docs and visitors, and staff.
- Publications, including newsletters, annual reports and miscellaneous brochures and posters.
- Research, or descriptions of faculty research projects listed by academic year. Projects that went on for multiple years are cross-listed.
By checking the Mershon Center archives on the Knowledge Bank, you can not only see recordings of past events, but get copies of website announcements, photos, and other materials that accompanied the event. You can also access many other types of archives.
We hope you find the Mershon Center archives on the Knowledge Bank useful. If you have any questions, please contact Cathy Becker, Public Relations Coordinator, at becker.271@osu.edu, or 292-7529.
Directed by Paul Kennedy, International Security Studies at Yale University aims to "promote the study and practice of Grand Strategy in international, diplomatic, and strategic history." While it does not grant degrees, it supports coursework and offers fellowship and research funding opportunities from the undergraduate to post-doctoral levels.
The Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy offers a graduate seminar, supports a series of courses across departments, and organizes lectures designed to teach the principles of Grand Strategy to undergraduate and graduate students who have been admitted to the program. It also organizes public lectures and events for the greater Yale community.
ISS maintains an occasional paper series, an Ivy Scholars program for high school students, and is in the process of publishing the collected papers of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a joint project with the City College of New York.
For more information, please see http://research.yale.edu/iss
About Mershon Memo
Mershon Memo is a weekly e-mail newsletter distributed by the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. You have received this newsletter because you have been identified as a party to whom these mailings may be of interest. If you would like to unsubscribe, please e-mail becker.271@osu.edu.
