MIT Security Studies Program

Many of America’s allies have little faith that huddling under America’s nuclear umbrella will keep them safe. “The conventional wisdom has been that the threat of nuclear retaliation by the U.S. is enough to…

“The past six years have been the warmest on the planet, and our track record on climate change mitigation is drastically short of what it needs to be,” said Robert C. Armstrong, MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI)…

In the early 1980s, Richard Samuels PhD ’80 was an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, specializing in Japanese politics and public policy. With the rapid emergence of Japan as a global…

Although women’s wartime roles and agency tend to be neglected in conventional discourses on conflict, there are times when women not only take up arms but also shape the practices and policies of insurgent…

More than 30 congressional and executive branch staffers were hosted by MIT’s Security Studies Program (SSP) for a series of panels and a keynote address focused on contemporary national security issues. …

The daughter of an American diplomat, Eleanor Freund spent most of her childhood living abroad in such places as Madagascar, Ghana, South Africa, and Austria. These experiences, she explains, led to an early…

M. Taylor Fravel, the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science, has been named director of the MIT Security Studies Program (SSP). Barry Posen, Ford International Professor of Political Science and…

Pursuing big questions is part of the MIT ethos, says Fiona Cunningham PhD ’19.   “Walking through the Infinite Corridor, you can see what people are doing in this space. There is such dedication across the…

Jeanne Guillemin, a medical anthropologist and biological warfare expert, died on Nov. 15, 2019, at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was 76. Guillemin received her bachelor’s degree in social psychology…

If we can better understand the causes and consequences of war, then we can contribute to its prevention. That is the guiding philosophy of faculty and students at the Security Studies Program (SSP), explains…

Why do some people fight and others flee when confronting violence? “This question has been bothering me for quite some time,” says Aidan Milliff, a fifth-year doctoral student who entered political science to…

For Mariya Grinberg, the start of a research project often begins with a near-tangible sense of irritation. “I’d read something, a definition or idea that doesn’t make sense, that seems logically inconsistent —…

MIT’s Security Studies Program (SSP) presented a special seminar on March 2 entitled, "Understanding the War in Ukraine." Over 100 alumni and affiliates in far-flung locations tuned in to hear the seminar during…

War games and crisis simulations are exercises where participants make decisions to simulate real-world behavior. In the field of international security, games are frequently used to study how actors make…