The International Security Studies Section (ISSS) of the ISA, in conjunction with the journals, International Security, Security Studies, and The Journal of Strategic Studies, is about to launch the International Security Studies Online Forum. 

Starting February 2010, we will be sponsoring on-line discussion of selected books and articles in our leading journals. Colleagues also will be invited to post their own comments, questions, and ideas about security studies and to provide announcements of forthcoming conferences and events.  These discussions will provide specialists in foreign affairs, international history, and security studies an opportunity to interact with recently published scholarship and to engage in lively and constructive dialogue with fellow scholars. By wedding the thoughtfulness of a printed article with the timeliness and dynamism of electronic media, we hope to increase the velocity of communication in our field and lower the barriers to entry to the discussions.  In addition to hosting discussions of security studies scholarship, we will facilitate discussions of current policy issues that are rooted in scholarship.  At the start, we will be posting roundtable reviews of Dan Reier, How Wars End, and Barbara Walter, Reputation and Civil Wars, and will have roundtable discussions of whether and how scholars’ political outlooks and preferences affect their scholarship, what light research on insurgencies sheds on the likely prospects for Obama’s policy in Afghanistan, and the implications of recent work in biology for security studies.

We are undertaking this with H-Diplo, a moderated, electronic H-Net discussion network established over 15 years ago and dedicated to the study of diplomatic and international history.  We urge all of you who are interested to subscribe by going to http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/ or by sending the following one line message to listserv@h-net.msu.edu: sub h-diplo first name last name, institutional affiliation.

This project is financially supported by private academic foundations and the following institutions:

– Center for Security and Cooperation, Stanford University
– Center for International Security Studies, Princeton University
– Center for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown University
– Center for International Peace and Security Studies (CIPSS-formerly REGIS), McGill University—University of Montreal
– GAGE Program, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia
– International Security, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
– Mershon Center, Ohio State University
– The MIT Security Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
– Security Studies, Dickey Center for International Understanding, Dartmouth College.
– Stanley Kaplan Program in American Foreign Policy, Williams College
– Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University
– The Triangle Institute for Security Studies, Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and NC-State
– Program in American Grand Strategy, Duke University

The International Security Studies Section thanks Professor Robert Jervis, Columbia University, for helping to initiate this project.