The Batten School and UVA’s Applied Research Institute announced that the Honorable George W. Foresman will join the Batten School’s National Security Policy Center (NSPC) as a senior advisor. In this new role, Foresman will support U.S. national security leadership and engagement activities. Foresman’s hiring is part of larger partnership between the Batten School and ARI to elevate UVA as a leader in national security education, research, and outreach.

On the last day of fall classes, while other students prepared for the onslaught of exams, seven student teams from the Batten School traveled to the Pentagon to present their semester-long projects to officials from the Department of Defense (DoD).

What motivates someone to risk his or her life in the shadowy, often dangerous world of espionage? What are the needs and opportunities for spying amid the “war on terrorism”? And how can the United States recruit spies to inform its struggle with Islamic fundamentalists’ acts of anti-Western jihad?

On October 1, 2008, Congress enacted a proposal that originated with President George W. Bush in 2005 to approve an unprecedented nuclear trade pact with India by removing a central pillar of US nonproliferation policy. Despite the numerous political challenges confronting the Bush administration, the initiative won strong bipartisan support, including votes from Democratic Senators Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. 

Admiral Mike Rogers will engage in a wide-ranging discussion of cybersecurity and privacy. ADM Rogers oversaw the NSA and led the standup of US Cyber Command in a period of turmoil over citizen privacy. He brings a perspective on how to preserve and protect the freedoms of US citizens who live in a technologically enabled world, but where criminals and adversaries seek to exploit the democratic values that underpin our society.

For more than three years, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has been improving how it innovates in the face of rapid technological change. Dozens of departmental, service, and agency initiatives have emerged to address different aspects of the innovation problem.

Noah Myung is an associate professor of public policy and economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. He is an experimental and behavioral economist with research interests in game theory, organizational economics, and financial economics. Myung's current research deals with equilibrium selection in coordination games as well as information sharing between competitors

Philip Potter is a professor of politics and Founding Director of the National Security Policy Center at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. He is also a University Expert with the National Ground Intelligence Center, US Army INSCOM. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Politics and the Journal of Global Security Studies and is an Associate Principal Investigator for Time-Sharing Experiments in the Social Sciences (TESS). 

Todd S. Sechser is a professor of politics and public policy at the Batten School and the Pamela Feinour Edmonds and Franklin S. Edmonds Jr. Discovery Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. Sechser is also a Senior Fellow at UVA's Miller Center. His research interests include coercive diplomacy, emerging technologies, nuclear security and political violence

Allan C. Stam is a University Professor of public policy and politics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. His research focuses on the dynamics of armed conflict between and within states. Stam has also worked on several survey-based projects including surveys conducted in Russia, Rwanda, India and the United States.