With all of the focus on APSA, there’s been little discussion of another Labor Day ritual—the Revising of the Syllabus. In truth, I should have begun this ritual a few weeks ago. Now that the panic dreams have kicked in—you know, the ones where you show up to class on the first day without a syllabus and thus lose all authority over your students for the rest of the semester…you do get those too, right?—I know I must take action.
My first task is to revise my introductory-level course on security studies and, luckily, it’s in pretty good shape, thanks to some major overhauls I did over the last two years. But although I’m only engaged in minor tinkering, I at least try to reflect upon the major assumptions that shape the syllabus. First and foremost, there is the mother of all assumptions: what is security, and what do we mean by security studies?
Ultimately, my approach is to define security studies narrowly, as the study of the use of military force in international politics. This obviously has serious implications for what I teach. In my class, I will talk to my students about power transitions, the offense-defense balance, nuclear deterrence, coercive diplomacy, civil-military relations, and conquest. I will not be teaching about incredibly important issues of human security, including the environment, economic development, disease, migration, refugees, and an infinite amount of other topics. The content and implications of my definition of security studies is something I discuss openly with my students. But despite this dialogue, I recognize I am engaging in bit of policing of the discipline, defining certain topics as security and certain ones as not. Moreover, while I do not think of myself as a Luddite—there is no discussion of the 3-1 debate, and I do use my section on terrorism to talk about securitization, for example–my narrow definition means I’m a bit of a traditionalist, the sort of dinosaur that David Baldwin said must evolve if security studies wants to survive (PDF).
So why the traditionalist definition? Three major reasons drive my decision:
- Maximize my value added. The first reason is really specific to context. My traditional approach adds variety to my department. We have great IR folks teaching our students about food security, about the United Nations and economic development, about feminist theory and IR. I don’t need to say what they are saying, as they will say it better than I can. Which brings me to my second point:
- Students interested in any aspect of security need to learn the nuts and bolts of military force. If you’re going to make an argument for intervention in, I don’t know, Syria, you need to have at least rudimentary knowledge about issues involved in projecting power, what air power can and cannot do, what it would mean to put special operations forces in to contain chemical weapon caches (and what chemical weapons are and what they are not). It amazes me that so many of our students think that the US is all powerful, that troops arrive in locations by way of apparition, that operations supply themselves, and that airpower is a magic wand that only kills the bad guys. This leads naturally to my last reason:
- I think the ability to engage in conversations about the military makes us better citizens, and it brings women into critical conversations about foreign policy. I was lucky enough to have professors at both the undergraduate and graduate level willing to teach me the foundations of military strategy, and I think it has made all of the difference in how I function, not only as an academic, but as a women interested in politics. When colleagues hear that I teach security studies at a women’s college, they often ask how I’ve modified my approach to security studies. I think the answer is that I’m even more of a traditionalist at Wellesley than I would be elsewhere. Learning about military strategy, in essence, is learning a bit of a new language. I’m not going to teach my students all of it in one semester, but I can give them a start and, maybe more importantly, I can signal to them that they need not be intimidated by or excluded from this incredibly important conversation. And then if they want to go write a feminist critique of a “traditional” subject like nuclear warfighting, that’s awesome, but they’d better know the basics of counterforce targeting first.
So some of my reasons for the approach are specific to my situation, others are based on principle. I’m not always comfortable with my definition, but as we all know very well, there are always tradeoffs in syllabus construction. I’m curious to hear what others think.
I think your approach is spot on. There is a tendency for professors to ask their students “What should we be doing in Syria?” rather than “What can we do..or What resources do we have to achieve any objective we have in Syria? ” While the first approach may stimulate more discussion/debate it doesn’t force students to consider the real world constraints that help shape policy outcomes.
Perhaps rename it Traditional Security Studies?
I like your narrow approach. I agree it is plenty for one course and that this approach in particular needs to be taught by women. I wonder if “National Security” is a better title since that’s one distinctive approach to security that does look at military force. But then you’d miss the whole discussion about what “security” means in your course and why this is only one way to look at security. The only other comment is that an emphasis on force does not preclude a discussion of human security since a lot of human security questions (like protection of civilians, compliance with humanitarian law, etc) are related to the use of force. So you could also frame it as a course in “Armed Conflict” or “Use of Force” and talk about how it is at once narrow but also cross-cutting various divides in security studies like national security/global security/human security.
Why exactly do you need to know the basics of counterforce to critique nuclear war? That seems absurd.
Charli, you’re absolutely right that there are issues of human security that involve the application of military force. We actually do cover many of these in my course–what can and should be done to protect civilians in war, the strategies of humanitarian intervention. I think what the course doesn’t do is talk about certain issues as “security issues.” So I think the environment is an extremely serious issue, but I’m uncomfortable treating it as a core security issue for various reasons.
On renaming the course, it’s a standard intro level offering in our department, so we’ve given it a standard title. Bureaucratic inertia wins here.
Luke, my sarcasm filter isn’t functioning today, so I have to ask you to clarify. I don’t see how you give students an overview of how states have thought about nuclear war and nuclear warfighting without understanding the basics of counterforce. For example, one cannot possibly grasp how the US and Soviet Union built such bloated arsenals without looking at nuclear forces through the lens of counterforce strategy.
My take, as a PhD student and lecturer of and in security studies, is that it matters quite a bit to define the course in an open dialogue with the students – and hence make it clear that the definition of security studies is a choice, not a given. And that the definition one ends with – and teaches according to – carries with it implications what regards focus areas, but also what regards theory and methodology. If ’security’ is defined narrowly (and statically) as the study of military force, there is limited room for a thorough discussion of securitization due to its underlining of the performative and dynamic quality of the labels security/ insecurity in both national and international politics. Given that there is no strong consensus on what constitutes ’security’, not to speak of ’international security studies’, it becomes the task of the lecturer to point out the ’politics’ of defining a field of study, regardless of preference for the narrow or broad approach.
Thanks, this is quite useful– I’m heading back into the classroom this fall after a several year hiatus, and its amazing how out of date the syllabus becomes when your professional reading habits shift from the scholarly to the Federal (especially when keeping one’s day job).
How would your class be different if it were National Security Studies / Policy / Strategy vice Security Studies. I very much appreciate your commitment to teaching the basics of the application of military force–this does take a good chunk of time, but it makes discussions about some of the key policy issues much richer and more grounded, whether its drones and robot warriors or human security or intervention in Syria. But National Security seems to encompass a slightly different area. What would you be doing differently for a National Security class?
Great question Peter, and thrilled to hear you are heading back to the classroom. How would the syllabus be different if it were a National Security course? I would think more wonkish and less theoretical than it is now. Although I teach the fundamentals of military strategy, I still attempt to connect our discussions to broader IR theory (the causes of war, just war theory, securitization, and so forth).
I teach International Security, and in the original syllabus we spent three weeks on nuclear strategy (counterforce, countervalue, defense, offense, etc.). Now its down to a week and a half (we read just Arms and Influence now). The students tend to not find it particularly relevant in my experience, and those weeks tend to be unfavorably reviewed at the end of the quarter. How do you make it seem relevant? I’ve thought through using simulations, but although that might explain the concepts, it still doesn’t mean its particularly relevant.