January 15, 2008

In this issue

1. Coming up at the Mershon Center
2. Other events
3. Mershon Center grant deadline extended
4. Featured organization: Foreign Policy in Focus

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Coming up at the Mershon Center

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

Michael Tomz is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, where he is also a Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center for International Development and an affiliate of the Social Science History Institute and the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences. Tomz is author of Reputation and International Cooperation: Sovereign Debt across Three Centuries, and Modern Political Economy and Latin America: Theory and Policy, edited with Jeffry Frieden and Manuel Pastor. In this lecture, Tomz will present material from "The Credibility of International Commitments," a multi-year project supported by an NSF CAREER grant in which he examine what makes threats and promises believable to international audiences. Read more and RSVP

Other events

Thursday, February 7, 2008
Bill Ellis
"From Satanic Cults to Latino Gangs: The Hazleton Illegal Immigration Crusade as Rumor Panic"
5:30-8 p.m., Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave
Sponsored by the Center for Folklore Studies

Bill Ellis, Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Pennsylvania State-Hazleton, is an authority on urban legend and contemporary versions of the occult. His books include Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture (Kentucky, 2003); Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media (Kentucky, 2000) and Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live (Mississippi, 2001). He has served as President of the International Society for Contemporary Legend and on the Executive Board of the American Folklore Society. All members of the Ohio State community are welcome to attend, but space for dinner is limited.  If you wish to attend, please respond to Sheila Bock (bock.42@osu.edu) by Friday, February 1.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Peter Brimelow and Richard D. Kahlenberg
"Are Unions Destroying American Education"
5:30 p.m., Faculty Club Grand Lounge, 181 S. Oval Drive
Sponsored by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and John Glenn School of Public Affairs

Do teacher unions create more harm than good in the American education system? Peter Brimelow and Richard D. Kahlenberg will explore this topic at a public debate. Brimelow is a British American financial journalist, author, and founder of VDARE.com, an anti-illegal alien website. Brimelow has been the editor of many publications, including Forbes, the Financial Post, and National Review. His books include Alien Nation: Common Sense about America's Immigration Disaster, and The Worm In The Apple: How The Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education. Kahlenberg is a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation, where he writes about education, equal opportunity, and civil rights. He is the author of Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race and Democracy; All Together Now: Creating Middle Class Schools through Public School Choice; The Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action; and Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law School. This debate is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and reservations are required. Please visit http://glennschool.osu.edu/rsvp/ISI_debate.php by February 8, 2008.

Mershon Center grant deadline extended

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.

Featured organization: Foreign Policy in Focus

Foreign Policy in Focus is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies located in Washington, D.C.

FPIF is a "think tank without walls," connecting the research of more than 600 activists, advocates, and scholars through digital publication on their website. Analysis of current issues in international affairs, as well as policy recommendations, are motivated by a commitment to peace, justice and environmental protection as well as economic, political, and social rights.

FPIF offers World Beat, a weekly e-newsletter, and maintains U.S. Policy World, an open-source Wikipedia-style website with articles on U.S. foreign policy subjects open for public participation and editing.

For more information, please see http://www.fpif.org/

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