Welcome to the New Academic Year at CSS

Dear Colleagues, Students, and Friends of CSS,

It’s hard to believe that the start of the academic year is already upon us: students are back, books have been ordered, syllabi have been distributed, and fellows have arrived. The Center for Strategic Studies (CSS) begins its second year with excitement and enthusiasm as we continue our mission to train the next generation of scholars and practitioners in strategy and national security policy.

Three new postdoctoral fellows—Nils Hagerdal (PhD Harvard), Sidita Kushi (PhD Northeastern), and Megan McBride (PhD Brown)—have joined CSS, while others—Rita Konaev, Burak Kadercan, and Sarah Detzner—have left to begin another phase of their careers. Professor Thomas Cavanna will continue teaching at Fletcher on US foreign policy and researching his book on US-China relations, and postdoctoral fellow Karim Elkady will continue his research on critical cases of US state-building interventions. Our postdoctoral fellows are joined by eight PhD fellows, some of whom are returning—Polina Beliakova, Zoltan Feher, Meg Guliford, David Kampf, and Xiaodon Liang—while others are new to CSS—Neha Ansari, Lydia Sizer, and Colin Steele. In addition to working on their dissertations, the fellows will be helping me and program manager Anna Ronell to advance the research and activities of the center.

Our first major research program—The Intervention Project, or TIP—is off to an excellent start. It will involve cataloguing each and every instance of the use of force by the United States since the country’s founding. We will be releasing facts, figures, and trends over the course of the year through our blog Elephants in the War Room and other avenues, as well as presenting some of the more significant theoretical and empirical findings in the spring during a major conference on intervention. In addition, over the summer my newest book, People Changing Places, was released by Routledge, and I will present some of the findings at this year’s Open House on September 17.

Perhaps one of the most exciting aspects of this year is that we now have more space to grow and develop our center. Our fellows still reside at 114 Curtis, but Anna, Thomas, and I can now be found in Cabot Hall on the sixth floor. Come visit! As with our first year, we have a full slate of events and programs. In addition to the TIP conference in the spring, we will continue our Research and Policy Seminar and our Engaging Practitioners Series. Keep an eye out for dates and the lineup of in-house and outside speakers.

As with last year’s trip to Norfolk Virginia with our colleagues in the International Security Studies Program, we are planning our military installations trip. This year we are headed West to Nellis Air Force Base and 29 Palms to see how the Air Force and the Marines operate (or at least some of them in training conditions).

We are continuing our Capstone Incubator Program, designed to help Fletcher’s Master of Law and Diplomacy (MALD) students research and write better theses, our “Pressing Questions” Competition, the winners of which have their pieces featured on our blog and have lunch with me, as well as our financial and organizational support for a number of programs, students groups, and conferences around Fletcher and Tufts.

Although there is much more I could report, this should provide you with a good sense for how we’ve grown and engaged in the past year and what to expect from us this year. We appreciate the support of the Fletcher community as we continue to analyze some of the most pressing issues facing our country and the world.

All the best to everyone in the new academic year,

Monica Duffy Toft
Professor and CSS Director