SIWPS is the Institutional Affiliate for the International Security Policy (ISP) concentration in SIPA’s Master’s degree program in International Affairs. Concentrators participate in institute seminars and other activities under the supervision of SIWPS Director Richard Betts.

The ISP concentration is designed for students interested in defense policy, military strategy, arms control, conflict resolution and peacekeeping, coercion, and alternatives to the use of force. Coursework provides a conceptual foundation for understanding international conflict and the political, economic, and military components of policies and capabilities for coping with the possibility of war, as well as expertise for analyzing specific functional and regional security issues.

The course of study prepares students for employment in government (for example, the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, the CIA and FBI, Congressional Research Service, Congressional Budget Office, legislative staffs, or their foreign counterparts), consulting firms, public interest organizations, non-profit research institutes, journalism and other areas.

To ensure that the ISP concentration offers specialized courses on subjects not normally covered in the regular departments of the arts and sciences – for example, “Intelligence and Foreign Policy,” “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” “Analytical Techniques in Military Science,” “UN Peacekeeping,” “Conventional Force Planning and U.S. Defense Policy,” “Terrorism,” “Limited War and Low Intensity Conflict,” “Military History,” “European Security,” “Economics and Politics of Defense Programs,” or “Security Issues in South Asia” – SIPA provides instruction by adjuncts who combine strong academic credentials and publication records with substantial experience in public policy. These adjuncts are also associates of the Institute. In recent years they have included Mark M. Lowenthal (Assistant Director of Central Intelligence), Stuart Johnson (National Defense University), Dov S. Zakheim (Under Secretary of Defense), Joseph Collins (Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense), Cynthia Roberts, Donald Zagoria and Sumit Ganguly (Hunter College), Michael O’Hanlon (Brookings Institution), J. Bowyer Bell (journalist and consultant), and Mark Shulman (attorney, formerly Department of History, Yale University), among others.