[Clips] Despite Govt. Funding, Universities Failing to Produce National Security Experts

[R. A. Hettinga]

Reminds me of a problem with West Point graduates before the Mexican War.
They made more money as engineers than they did in the Army, and Congress
was going the same kind of navel-gazing exercise about paying for people
who weren't going to do the jobs they were taught, at government expense,
to do.

More apropos of cryptography, (besides "financial cryptography is the only
cryptography that matters", I mean :-)), I'm reminded of something that
Whit Diffie was saying at Authors at MIT couple of years before 9/11 (Come to
think of it, the FBI's Kalstrom *was* there, for extra crunchy ironic
goodness). Diffie said something about how government can't actually
provide computer security, that businesses are going to have to defend
"themselves" from individual network-based attacks, and that was going to
have interesting consequences. I refer one to the previous post about how
Uncle Fed is pointing fingers at Chairman Mao about attacks on US
internetworking, for a possible bit of data in this regard...


So, yes, I think it's great fun that all these "policy" people, below, are
being retreaded into "strategy" (in the Sloan-School business-sense of
same) people, and that, guess what, they're going to not only going to be
used for their "policy" skills, whatever those are, but also, and more
valuably, to second-guess *governments* in their attempts to control
business.

Having some fun now? I thought so...



Cheers,
RAH

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 Subject: [Clips] Despite Govt. Funding,
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 Despite Govt. Funding, Universities Failing to Produce National Security
 Experts

 Tuesday, December 06, 2005

 By Olivia Albrecht

 In 1957, the Soviet Union announced the launch of Sputnik 1, the world's
 first artificial satellite, bringing global attention to the emergence of
 sophisticated technologies and international security threats that came to
 characterize the Cold War period.

 One year after the proverbial launch of the Cold War-- recognizing the
 relative dearth of regional expertise-- the U.S. government, through Title
 VI of the National Defense Education Act, established foreign language and
 area studies programs at American universities such as Harvard, Columbia
 and Berkeley. The regional studies centers of NDEA aimed to guarantee
 experts of sufficient quality and quantity to meet U.S. national security
 needs.

 Today, at the height of the global war on terror, those same regional
 studies centers designed to develop the newest generation of international
 expertise to ensure our national security are failing to produce graduates
 willing to work for or within the government.

 Despite the $120 million of federal money annually allocated by Title VI of
 the Higher Education Act (the successor to the NDEA of 1958) to the
 regional studies centers, law enforcement agencies and intelligence
 communities are stuck outsourcing positions such as translators to foreign
 nationals of uncertain reliability. The worry of such a practice, of
 course, is that national security can easily be compromised-and indeed it
 has. Just this past October, for example, an Arabic translator for the Army
 was arrested for allegedly assisting Iraqi insurgents by stealing
 classified documents from the Army.

 Yet, even putting aside the question of whether an outsourced expert may
 experience a clash of loyalties at some point, there is still a void of
 Arabic translators: the New York Times last year reported that 120,000
 hours of pre-9/11 intelligence "chatter" remains untranslated from Arabic.

 Unfortunately, the situation with these federally funded regional studies
 centers is unlike the case of Princeton Unversity's Woodrow Wilson School,
 which is involved in a lawsuit with the private financial support of the
 program. The donors, the heirs to the Robertson family who founded the
 center, argue that Woody-Woo (as it is affectionately named) has not met
 its mission of preparing students for government service, as too few of its
 graduates take positions in government. In fact, they are producing more
 iBankers, consultants, journalists and future officials for governments
 other than that of the United States'.

 In the case of the federally funded regional studies centers, the
 government cannot just yank their funding, like the Robertson heirs
 threaten to do with their $558 million grant.

 With the consistent flow of federal money running into these regional
 studies centers, which were developed to produce international experts for
 the needs of our national security, how is it possible that we still
 experience a dearth of experts willing to support the war effort and help
 protect this nation? With 70 percent of Ph.Ds being earned at Middle
 Eastern studies centers, how can the United States government afford to do
 without this talent?

 Some critics have suggested that the liberal, anti-government lean of
 campus politics discourages students from entering government service.
 Regardless of why students are choosing not to put their expertise to work
 for the government, the fact remains that these centers are failing to
 produce the national security analysts they were built to cultivate.

 In this post-9/11 world, the U.S. cannot afford to have Title VI produce
 Ph.Ds merely for the academic job market. The U.S. has other needs for
 these intellectual, international experts.

 One solution includes legislation proposed by Rep. Patrick Tiberi, R-Ohio,
 and Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio. Tiberi has proposed H.R. 509, which was
 recently added as an amendment to Boehner's H.R. 609. H.R. 609 broadly
 deals with the Higher Education Act of 1965, whereas H.R. 509 addresses
 only Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965 -- the regional studies
 centers.

 Addressing the distressing lack of national security personnel being
 graduated from these regional studies centers, the proposed amendment to
 Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965 recommends the establishment
 of an international higher education advisory board "to ensure that
 government-funded programs reflect diverse perspectives and the full range
 of views on world regions, foreign languages, and international affairs."

 The primary function of the advisory board is to recommend ways "to improve
 programs
to better reflect the national needs related to homeland security."

 However, it is critical to note that the bill clearly states that the board
 is not authorized to "mandate, direct, or control an institution of higher
 education's specific instructional content, curriculum, or program of
 instruction."

 It is merely authorized to study, appraise and evaluate a sample of program
 activities, including curriculum.

 Critics of such amendments fear that the true motivation for the
 government's involvement in the regional studies centers is not national
 security needs, but rather fear of intellectual criticism of their own
 foreign policy. They fear a "Big Brother" in the universities.

 However, this criticism is misguided. First, the legislation is very
 particular in establishing that the board cannot mandate curriculum. It
 prompts the analysis that, perhaps, it is the academians who are more
 concerned with criticism of their classroom policy than the government is
 concerned with criticism of its foreign policy.

 Secondly, because the regional studies centers are federally funded, such
 an advisory board is justified. It is permissible to establish
 accountability at the centers because they use taxpayer money.

 Fortunately, there are private donors, like the Robertson's children who
 support the Woodrow Wilson School, who are civic minded enough to demand
 that their money be spent for the original purpose of these institutions:
 to develop intellectuals to serve the nation. For the federally funded
 universities of the regional studies centers, we must rely on innovative
 legislation.

 Olivia Albrecht is the John Tower National Security Fellow with the Center
 for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. Ms. Albrecht researches
 international relations and national security issues, with a focus on the
 'Islamofascist' phenomenon. Albrecht previously worked for the Pentagon
 (Non-Proliferation Policy) and with the Heritage Foundation, and is a
 graduate of Princeton University with a degree in Philosophy.

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-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'