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Abstract
During 2009 and early 2010, the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) at the Monterey Institute of International Studies conducted a survey of teaching on nonproliferation and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) at the leading twenty-five US national universities, twenty-five public universities, and twenty-three (all private) liberal arts colleges and compared the results to those from a similar CNS survey published in 2002. The new survey found that schools in all three categories had greatly increased the number of both “general” courses (which include a unit of a week or longer on nonproliferation or WMD) and “specialized” courses (which focus on nonproliferation or WMD for 75 percent or more of course content). The number of departments teaching both types of courses had also expanded significantly. Nonetheless, despite repeated international WMD crises since 2002, the CNS survey found that more than one-third of America's top college and university undergraduate programs did not include a single specialized course concentrating on this subject.
Notes
1. The original survey, published in 2002, was conducted by a team of specialists led by Leonard S. Spector, director of the Washington, DC, office of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. To view the 2002 report, see “Nonproliferation Education in the United States: Part 1: Undergraduate Education,” Nonproliferation Review 9 (Fall-Winter 2002), pp. 9–30, <cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/93surv.pdf>.
2. As used here, the term “weapons of mass destruction” includes nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
3. The 2001 U.S. News & World Report rankings incorporated more than seventy-five institutions due to ties in the rankings and overlaps in the various categories (particularly national and public schools).
4. The list was based on rankings published by U.S. News & World Report <colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/> for 2008 for the top twenty-five national universities, top twenty-five public universities, and top twenty-five liberal arts colleges, plus the four US armed services academies. Taking into account duplications and other factors (discussed below), the total number of schools surveyed came to seventy-four. The magazine ranked the top twenty-five national universities as: 1) Harvard; 2) Princeton; 3) Yale; 4) Massachusetts Institute of Technology; 5) Stanford; 6) California Institute of Technology; 7) University of Pennsylvania; 8) Columbia; 9) Duke; 10) University of Chicago; 11) Dartmouth; 12) Northwestern; 13) Washington University, St. Louis; 14) Cornell; 15) Johns Hopkins; 16) Brown; 17) Rice; 18) Emory; 19) University of Notre Dame; 20) Vanderbilt; 21) University of California, Berkeley; 22) Carnegie Mellon; 23) Georgetown; 24) University of Virginia; and 25) University of California, Los Angeles.
The top twenty-five public universities (note that three schools also appear as top national universities) were ranked as: 1) University of California, Berkeley, 2) University of Virginia; 3) University of California, Los Angeles; 4) University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; 5) University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; 6) College of William and Mary; 7) Georgia Institute of Technology; 8) University of Wisconsin, Madison; 9) University of California, San Diego; 10) University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; 11) University of Washington; 12) University of California, Davis; 13) University of California, Santa Barbara; 14) University of California, Irvine; 15) University of Texas, Austin; 16) Pennsylvania State University, University Park; 17) University of Florida; 18) University of Maryland, College Park; 19) Ohio State University, Columbus; 20) University of Pittsburgh; 21) University of Georgia; 22) University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; 23) Clemson; 24) Texas A&M, College Station; and 25) Rutgers, New Brunswick.
The top twenty-five liberal arts colleges in the U.S. News & World Report rankings were: 1) Amherst; 2) Williams; 3) Swarthmore; 4) Wellesley; 5) Middlebury; 6) Bowdoin; 7) Pomona; 8) Carleton; 9) Davidson; 10) Haverford; 11) Claremont McKenna; 12) Vassar; 13) Wesleyan; 14) Grinnell; 15) Harvey Mudd; 16) US Military Academy; 17) Washington and Lee; 18) Colgate; 19) Smith; 20) Hamilton; 21) Oberlin; 22) US Naval Academy; 23) Bryn Mawr; 24) Colby; and 25) Bates. Together with the four service academies surveyed—the US Military Academy, the US Naval Academy, the US Air Force Academy, and the US Coast Guard Academy—and counting only once the three public universities and the two military academies that are found on two lists, the total number of schools in the survey sample comes to seventy-four.
5. Some courses are offered annually, some semi-annually, and some every two or three years. Inasmuch as a course offered on any of these schedules would presumably be available to a student at least once during his or her tenure at an undergraduate institution, the chart does not differentiate among courses according to this factor. In addition, the tabulation includes courses that are incorporated as standard components of departmental catalogues. It was assumed that such courses, if not taught during a particular year, would be available at some point prior to a student's graduation, and that including them in the tabulations was consistent with the attempt to obtain a “snapshot” of teaching in the field. Courses specifically designed for Reserved Officer Training Corps students are not covered in the survey, which focuses on courses available to the entire student body of the schools in question.
6. In this context, consortia are cooperative arrangements among educational institutions under which students at one member school may enroll in and receive academic credit for courses at other member schools. For example, students at Swarthmore may take courses at Bryn Mawr and Haverford.
7. For a more detailed list of the identified specialized courses, please see the Appendix.
8. These ten undergraduate programs are found at: Princeton; Yale; Stanford; Johns Hopkins; University of Virginia; University of Michigan; University of California, Los Angeles; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Georgia Institute of Technology; and the University of Washington.
9. While it was beyond the scope of this paper to obtain hard data on enrollment numbers, the general increase in WMD interest on the part of students has been supported by numerous interviews with professors teaching WMD courses at the surveyed institutions.
10. These six institutions are Cornell, Dartmouth, Washington and Lee, Colby, US Military Academy, and the US Air Force Academy.
11. For the category breakdowns, see note 5.
12. To determine appropriate questionnaire recipients at each school, CNS staff reviewed the school's online course catalogues to identify one or more faculty members teaching a course specifically addressing WMD or a closely related subject, such as national security. CNS staff then contacted the faculty member by telephone and/or e-mail to solicit his or her participation in the survey and to inquire about others at the institution who might be teaching in the field. In addition, the direct exchanges with faculty provided anecdotal information and assessments about teaching on WMD issues.
13. The three overlapping schools in the 2002 survey were the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia, and University of California, Berkeley.
14. The relevant consortia are identified in the section of this survey addressing the liberal arts colleges, below.
15. For the purposes of its rankings, U.S. News & World Report defines “National Universities” as schools with student bodies drawn from across the United States (and abroad) that grant doctoral degrees, as well as offering undergraduate degree programs.
16. For a more detailed list of the identified specialized courses, please see Appendix I.
17. Columbia University and Barnard College maintain a co-ordinate relationship, which allows respective students from each school to cross-register with the other, thereby providing access to one specialized course (“Science, State Power, and Ethics”) as well as several general courses at Barnard.
18. Due to their many similarities, we counted courses within Science, Technology, and Society and the History of Science departments within one category.
19. The four liberal arts colleges offering one specialized course in 2002 were Middlebury, Hamilton, Washington and Lee, and Colby.
20. The following are the consortia for the liberal arts colleges: the Quaker Consortium incorporates the University of Pennsylvania, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Swarthmore; the Five Colleges consists of Amherst, Smith, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and the University of Massachusetts; and the Claremont Colleges Consortium consists of Harvey Mudd, Claremont-McKenna, Pomona, Scripps College, Claremont Graduate University, Pitter College, and the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences.
21. For a more detailed list of the identified specialized courses, please see the Appendix.
22. Professor Susan Lindee, University of Pennsylvania, e-mail to Richard Sabatini, December 11, 2009.
23. The Nuclear Threat Initiative website and online materials can be found at <www.nti.org/index.php>.
24. President Barack Obama's April 2009 speech in Prague calling for the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons, North Korea's second nuclear detonation in May 2009, and the revelation of Iran's secret uranium enrichment facility at Qom in September of that year were too recent to influence curriculum decisions reviewed in the current study, but these developments once again highlight how salient WMD and related proliferation issues have become since 2002.
25. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “Communiqué of the Washington Nuclear Security Summit,” April 13, 2010, <www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/communiqu-washington-nuclear-security-summit>. See also: William C. Potter, “Bomb School,” ForeignPolicy.com, April 23, 2010, < www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/23/bomb_school>.