Introduction

Scott D. Sagan (Stanford University), Jacob N. Shapiro (Princeton University), Rose McDermott (Brown University), and Jennifer Welsh (McGill University)1

Additional Signatories: Deborah Avant (University of Denver), James Fearon (Stanford University), Peter Feaver (Duke University), Taylor Fravel (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Sir Lawrence Freedman (Kings College London), Michael Horowitz (University of Pennsylvania), Sarah Kreps (Cornell University), Steven Miller (Harvard University), and Elizabeth Saunders (Columbia University) 
 

Introduction

Today’s global security environment is in a deep crisis. The Russia-Ukraine war shows no signs of slowing down in its fourth year, and new conflicts have started in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. Novel types of deadly weapons are being used, existing alliances severely strained, international law increasingly ignored, and new defense-related technologies are being developed without international regulation. During similar crises in the past, including at the most dangerous heights of the Cold War and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, leading members of the security studies field in universities and think tanks rose to the occasion, producing new ideas, debating alternative policy solutions, consulting with governments, and training experts to help mitigate security risks. In the Cold War, novel ideas such as “strategic stability,” the “reciprocal fear of surprise attack,” and the “security dilemma” laid the intellectual foundations for nuclear arms control agreements and mutual deterrence. After 9/11, research on civil wars, peace negotiations and peacebuilding, terrorist organizations and other non-state actors, and counterinsurgency informed diplomatic strategies for ending conflict, helped defeat al Qaida and ISIS, and shaped international aid and peacekeeping. 

The field’s ability to address today’s grave global security crises is challenged, however, by its own organizational crisis. Foundation and government funding for security studies has been significantly reduced at exactly the moment when fundamental changes in the post–Cold War and post-1945 international system demand new thinking. Universities, under siege and facing severe budget cuts, are prioritizing departments and traditional disciplines, rather than the kind of interdisciplinary research and training that is necessary for this moment. 

Leaders in the discipline of security studies have a responsibility to determine how the field can rise to the occasion and to identify what resources it needs to play its historic role of helping reduce and manage global risks. In December 2025, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which convened the Cold War–era meetings that produced the pathbreaking 1960 Dædalus Arms Control volume, hosted a meeting of the directors of many leading university research centers, former government officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations, journalists and diplomats, and select philanthropists to discuss the current state of the world and the security studies field. 

That convening and subsequent conversations highlighted the need to build a new generation of expertise that can address a moment defined by the resurgence of interstate war, upending of the long-standing post–Cold War order, domestic instability in large democracies, and emergence of new environmental and socio-technical risks. Preparing for this confluence of forces requires pooling expertise to find new policy solutions, revitalizing outdated undergraduate and graduate curricula, and maintaining the international scholarly networks that facilitate cross-pollination between academic, military, and policy communities. This analysis of research priorities and resource needs leads to four practical steps scholars, philanthropists, and universities should take to ensure that the security studies field can continue playing its historical role in supporting peace and security:

1. Devote resources to improving the quality and currency of undergraduate training on security challenges, including innovative pedagogic approaches.
2. Support international and national study groups on the most pressing topics of current and emerging concern.
3. Sustain existing research centers of excellence that undergird the human capital development pipeline for national and global security policy, emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary communities producing innovative policy-relevant research and training of early-career scholars.
4. Invest in interdisciplinary pre- and postdoctoral fellowships that provide a proving ground for new talent and the connective tissue for the security studies ecosystem. 

The remainder of this document elaborates on the argument behind these priorities. Section I summarizes what we learned, explains the complex causes of the current crisis in the field, and identifies priorities for support. Section II provides a blueprint for future actions that could improve not only the academic study of security, but also, potentially, lead to concrete advancements in global security. Section III closes by discussing the critical need to make investments now.