Security

FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.

Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions. 

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Rob Forrest is a postdoctoral fellow at CISAC. He joined CISAC in 2011. His research focuses on the role of particle accelerators in the future nuclear fuel cycle, specifically on the feasibility of Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS) in sub-critical reactor designs and the transmutation of nuclear waste. 

Rob’s interest in policy and nuclear issues began during his fellowship in the 2008 Public Policy and Nuclear Threats program at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at UC San Diego. In 2010, he also participated in the PONI Nuclear Scholars Initiative at CSIS.
Before coming to CISAC in 2011, Rob received his Ph.D. in high-energy physics from the University of California, Davis. Most of his graduate career was spent at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, IL where he preformed a search for signs of a hypothetical theory called Supersymmetry. Before beginning his graduate work, Rob spent two years at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory working with the Klystrons that supply the RF power to the accelerator. In 2001, Rob earned his B.S. in physics from the University of California, San Diego where, throughout his undergraduate career, he worked for the NASA EarthKam project.

 

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Rob Forrest is currently a member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories where his research interests include nuclear power, cybersecurity, and nonproliferation. As a member of the systems research group, he specializes in data driven methods and analysis to inform policy  for national security.

As a postdoctoral fellow at CISAC, his research focused on one of the most pressing technical issues of nuclear power: what to do with spent nuclear fuel. Specifically, he looked at the more short term issues surrounding interim storage as they affect the structure of the back end of the fuel cycle. He focuses mainly on countries with strong nuclear power growth such as South Korea and China.

Rob’s interest in policy and nuclear issues began during his fellowship in the 2008 Public Policy and Nuclear Threats program at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at UC San Diego. In 2010, he also participated in the PONI Nuclear Scholars Initiative at CSIS.

Before coming to CISAC in 2011, Rob received his Ph.D. in high-energy physics from the University of California, Davis. Most of his graduate career was spent at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, IL where he performed a search for signs of a theory called Supersymmetry. Before beginning his graduate work, Rob spent two years at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. In 2001, Rob earned his B.S. in physics from the University of California, San Diego where, throughout his undergraduate career, he worked for NASA. 

 

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Robert Forrest Postdoctoral Science Fellow, CISAC Speaker

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C220
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-6468 (650) 723-0089
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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Research Professor, Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus
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Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor emeritus (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security.

Dr. Hecker’s current research interests include nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy, and plutonium science. At the end of the Cold War, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. In June 2016, the Los Alamos Historical Society published two volumes edited by Dr. Hecker. The works, titled Doomed to Cooperate, document the history of Russian-U.S. laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation since 1992.

Dr. Hecker’s research projects at CISAC focus on cooperation with young and senior nuclear professionals in Russia and China to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism worldwide, to avoid a return to a nuclear arms race, and to promote the safe and secure global expansion of nuclear power. He also continues to assess the technical and political challenges of nuclear North Korea and the nuclear aspirations of Iran.

Dr. Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.

Among his professional distinctions, Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the 2020 Building Bridges Award from the Pacific Century Institute, the 2018 National Engineering Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies, the 2017 American Nuclear Society Eisenhower Medal, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.

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Siegfried Hecker Professor (Research), Management Science and Engineering; FSI and CISAC Senior Fellow Moderator
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Abstract: The start of the 21st century has included multiple demonstrations of national capabilities to disrupt or destroy satellites. Kinetic anti-satellite weapons, in particular, can create debris with long-term consequences for all space actors. The United States relies on satellites for a broad array of civil, scientific, and national security capabilities. There are several possible ways for the U.S. to help build a more secure environment in Earth-orbit, and manage future risks to space systems. This talk will focus on a technical option that can be pursued unilaterally by the U.S.: the use of distributed satellite architectures for certain critical sensing capabilities. This talk will provide some context for space security in 2014, describe existing frameworks for quantifying risk to satellite constellations, and present a framework for analyzing satellite architecture choices for systems like weather and strategic warning satellites.

About the Speaker: Matt Daniels is an engineer at NASA's Ames Research Center, a predoctoral fellow at CISAC, and a Ph.D. candidate in decision and risk analysis at Stanford. He joined CISAC as a predoctoral fellow in September 2012. At Stanford, Matt's research is in dynamic programming models of distributed satellite constellations. His work focuses on developing probabilistic models to assess the viability of constellations of small, networked satellites for scientific and national security missions. At NASA Ames, Matt is an engineer in the Mission Design Center and works with the Office of the Director on international technical collaborations. He has helped create NASA-DARPA partnerships on new space projects and has been a member of NASA delegations to Europe, South America, and the Middle East.

 

CISAC Central Conference Room, 2nd floor

Matthew Daniels Predoctoral Science Fellow, CISAC Speaker
Seminars
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Gil-li Vardi joined CISAC as a visiting scholar in December 2011. She completed her PhD at the London School of Economics in 2008, and spent two years as a research fellow at the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War at the University of Oxford, after which she joined Notre Dame university as a J. P. Moran Family Assistant Professor of Military History.

Her research examines the interplay between organizational culture, doctrine, and operational patterns in military organizations, and focuses on the incentives and dynamics of change in military thought and practice.

Driven by her interest in both the German and Israeli militaries and their organizational cultures, Vardi is currently revising her dissertation, "The Enigma of Wehrmacht Operational Doctrine: The Evolution of Military Thought in Germany, 1919-1941," alongside preparing a book manuscript on the sources of the Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) early strategic and operational perceptions and preferences.

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Gil-li Vardi joined CISAC as a visiting scholar in December 2011. She completed her PhD at the London School of Economics in 2008, and spent two years as a research fellow at the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War at the University of Oxford, after which she joined Notre Dame university as a J. P. Moran Family Assistant Professor of Military History.

Her research examines the interplay between organizational culture, doctrine, and operational patterns in military organizations, and focuses on the incentives and dynamics of change in military thought and practice.

Driven by her interest in both the German and Israeli militaries and their organizational cultures, Vardi is currently revising her dissertation, "The Enigma of Wehrmacht Operational Doctrine: The Evolution of Military Thought in Germany, 1919-1941," alongside preparing a book manuscript on the sources of the Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) early strategic and operational perceptions and preferences.

Gil-li Vardi Visiting Scholar, CISAC; Lecturer, Department of History, Stanford; Research Fellow, Hoover Institution Speaker
Joel Beinin Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford Commentator
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For nearly 70 years, CARE has been serving individuals and families in the world's poorest communities. Today, they work in 84 countries around the world, with projects addressing issues from education and healthcare to agriculture and climate change to education and women's empowerment. Helene Gayle, president and CEO of CARE USA, will discuss her work with CARE and her experiences in the field of international development. Dr. Gayle will discuss how access to global health is integral to CARE's effort in addressing the underlying causes of extreme global poverty.

Dr. Michele Barry, director of the Center for Innovation in Global Health, will moderate a conversation between CARE President and CEO, Dr. Helene Gayle and former Prime Minister of Norway and United Nations Special Envoy, Dr. Gro Brundtland. 

This event is sponsoredy by CARE USA, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and the Haas Center for Public Service.

A reception will follow the event. 


Dr. Gro Brundtland Bio:

Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland is the former prime minister of Norway and the current deputy chair of The Elders, a group of world leaders convened by Nelson Mandela and others to tackle the world’s toughest issues. She was recently appointed as the Mimi and Peter E. Haas Distinguished Visitor for spring 2014 at the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University. Dr. Brundtland has dedicated over 40 years to public service as a doctor, policymaker and international leader. She was the first woman and youngest person to serve as Norway’s prime minister, and has also served as the former director-general of the World Health Organization and a UN special envoy on climate change.

Her special interest is in promoting health as a basic human right, and her background as a stateswoman as well as a physician and scientist gives her a unique perspective on the impact of economic development, global interdependence, environmental issues and medicine on public health.


 Dr. Helene Gayle Bio:

Helene D. Gayle joined CARE USA as president and CEO in 2006. Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, she received her B.A. from Barnard College of Columbia University, her M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University. After completing her residency in pediatric medicine at the Children's Hospital National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., she entered the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, followed by a residency in preventive medicine, and then remained at CDC as a staff epidemiologist.

At CDC, she studied problems of malnutrition in children in the United States and abroad, evaluating and implementing child survival programs in Africa and working on HIV/AIDS research, programs and policy. Dr. Gayle also served as the AIDS coordinator and chief of the HIV/AIDS division for the U.S. Agency for International Development; director for the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention, CDC; director of CDC's Washington office; and health consultant to international agencies including the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank and UNAIDS. Prior to her current position, she was the director of the HIV, TB and reproductive health program for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.


Hewlett 201
Hewlett Teaching Center
370 Serra Mall
Stanford, CA 94305

Dr. Gro Brundtland Mimi and Peter E. Haas Distinguished Visitor Panelist Haas Center for Public Service, Stanford University
Dr. Helene Gayle President and CEO Panelist CARE USA
Michele Barry Director Moderator Center for Innovation in Global Health
Conferences
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Meeting the world’s need for food in the 21st century presents unprecedented challenges and opportunities. The global population is expected to grow toward 9 billion by 2050, and more families will live in middle-income countries and urban areas with expanding per capita consumption. At the same time, climate change and resource constraints will likely reduce crop and animal production in many locations, potentially creating greater disparities in incomes, food access, and nutrition around the world. Roz Naylor, a thought leader in global food security, will discuss the world’s future food dilemma and present a range of solutions focused on the diversification of food systems, improved input efficiencies, renewable energy use, new crop technologies, and policy adjustments. Her talk will demonstrate how food security, in its broadest form, is tied to security of many other kinds: energy, water, climate, health, the environment, and national security.

FSE director Roz Naylor’s research focuses on economic and biophysical dimensions of food security and environmental impacts of crop and animal production. Her extensive field research and published work span issues related to intensive crop production, aquaculture and livestock systems, biofuels, climate change, food price volatility, and food policy analysis. At Stanford, Naylor teaches courses on the world food economy, humanenvironment interactions, and sustainable agriculture.

Naylor's new book The Evolving Sphere of Food Security (Oxford University Press, September) brings together 19 Stanford scholars from across campus to explore the many faces and facets of global food security. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.

The annual Earth Matters lecture series is jointly sponsored by Stanford Continuing Studies and the Stanford School of Earth Sciences.

Cubberley Auditorium

The Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki
Environment and Energy Building
Stanford University
473 Via Ortega, Office 363
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-5697 (650) 725-1992
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Senior Fellow, Stanford Woods Institute and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William Wrigley Professor of Earth System Science
Senior Fellow and Founding Director, Center on Food Security and the Environment
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Rosamond Naylor is the William Wrigley Professor in Earth System Science, a Senior Fellow at Stanford Woods Institute and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the founding Director at the Center on Food Security and the Environment, and Professor of Economics (by courtesy) at Stanford University. She received her B.A. in Economics and Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado, her M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics, and her Ph.D. in applied economics from Stanford University. Her research focuses on policies and practices to improve global food security and protect the environment on land and at sea. She works with her students in many locations around the world. She has been involved in many field-level research projects around the world and has published widely on issues related to intensive crop production, aquaculture and livestock systems, biofuels, climate change, food price volatility, and food policy analysis. In addition to her many peer-reviewed papers, Naylor has published two books on her work: The Evolving Sphere of Food Security (Naylor, ed., 2014), and The Tropical Oil Crops Revolution: Food, Farmers, Fuels, and Forests (Byerlee, Falcon, and Naylor, 2017).

She is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, a Pew Marine Fellow, a Leopold Leadership Fellow, a Fellow of the Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics, a member of Sigma Xi, and the co-Chair of the Blue Food Assessment. Naylor serves as the President of the Board of Directors for Aspen Global Change Institute, is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Oceana and is a member of the Forest Advisory Panel for Cargill. At Stanford, Naylor teaches courses on the World Food Economy, Human-Environment Interactions, and Food and Security. 

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Rosamond Naylor Speaker
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The problems of terrorism and counterterrorism are closely related to other themes stressed in this volume: sovereignty; state building, nation building, and peacebuilding; norms; responsibility to prevent and protect; legitimacy of the use of force; failed, failing, and fragile states; and democratic transitions. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the threat of terrorism emanated principally from proponents of radical Islamism, as it did during the first decade. Finding an effective response remained a challenge. Although terrorism receded as a global threat, it contributed to state failure and civil war and continued to provoke military intervention from targeted states. 

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Abstract:

Political polarization has paralyzed the functioning of democracy in Thailand, Bangladesh, and Taiwan, where students have recently occupied the parliament building.  Civil liberties and political opposition are under intensified assault by an abusive prime minister in Turkey.  Indian democracy is increasingly diminished by brazen corruption and rent-seeking. Several African democracies have failed, and others are slipping.  The Arab Spring has largely imploded, and Egypt is in the grip of military authoritarian rule more repressive than anything the country has seen in decades.  After invading and swallowing a piece of Ukraine, Russia now poses a gathering threat to its democratic postcommunist neighbors.  For the eighth consecutive year, Freedom House finds that the number of countries declining in freedom have greatly exceeded the number improving.  And most of the advanced industrial democracies, including the United States, seem unable to address their long-term fiscal and other policy challenges.  Is there an emerging global crisis of democracy?  And if so, why?

Speaker Bio:

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he directs the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Diamond also serves as the Peter E. Haas Faculty Co-Director of the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as Senior Consultant (and previously was co-director) at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. During 2002-3, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has also advised and lectured to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies dealing with governance and development. His latest book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books, 2008), explores the sources of global democratic progress and stress and the prospects for future democratic expansion.

 

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Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
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Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab WorldWill China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Larry Diamond Speaker
Seminars
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About the Speaker: Hew Strachan has been Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of All Souls College since 2002, and was Director of the Oxford Programme on the Changing Character of War between 2003 and 2012. He also serves on the Strategic Advisory Panel of the Chief of the Defence Staff and on the UK Defence Academy Advisory Board, as well as being a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum, a Commonwealth War Graves Commissioner, and member of both the National Committee for the Centenary of the First World War and the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is also a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Visiting Professor at the University of Glasgow. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2003 and awarded an Hon. D. Univ. by the University of Paisley in 2005. In 2010 he chaired a task force on the implementation of the Armed Forces Covenant for the Prime Minister. In 2011 he was the inaugural Humanitas Visiting Professor in War Studies at the University of Cambridge and became a specialist adviser to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. He is a Deputy Lieutenant for Tweeddale, and a Brigadier in the Queen's Bodyguard for Scotland (Royal Company of Archers). InDecember 2012, Foreign Policy magazine included him in its list of top global thinkers for the year. He was knighted in the 2013 New Year’s Honours.

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Sir Hew Strachan Chichele Professor of History Speaker University of Oxford
Seminars
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About the Speaker: Hew Strachan has been Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of All Souls College since 2002, and was Director of the Oxford Program on the Changing Character of War between 2003 and 2012. He also serves on the Strategic Advisory Panel of the Chief of the Defence Staff and on the UK Defence Academy Advisory Board, as well as being a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum, a Commonwealth War Graves Commissioner, and member of both the National Committee for the Centenary of the First World War and the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

He is also a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Visiting Professor at the University of Glasgow. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2003 and awarded an Hon. D. Univ. by the University of Paisley in 2005. In 2010 he chaired a task force on the implementation of the Armed Forces Covenant for the Prime Minister. In 2011 he was the inaugural Humanitas Visiting Professor in War Studies at the University of Cambridge and became a specialist adviser to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. He is a Deputy Lieutenant for Tweeddale, and a Brigadier in the Queen's Bodyguard for Scotland (Royal Company of Archers).

In December 2012, Foreign Policy magazine included him in its list of top global thinkers for the year. He was knighted in the 2013 New Year’s Honors ceremony.

CISAC Conference Room

Sir Hew Strachan Chichele Professor of History of War Speaker University of Oxford
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