The Department of Defense and Strategic Studies (DSS) at Missouri State University (formerly Southwest Missouri State University) is a stronghold of conservative scholars. Its faculty has included a number of high-profile security experts and government advisers to Republican administrations. While MSU’s main campus is located in Springfield, Missouri, DSS is based in Fairfax, Virginia—a stone’s throw from the Capitol. Although devoted to academic training, the department's website makes it clear that the core goal is to influence policymaking, saying that, “The Department of Defense and Strategic Studies (DSS) at Missouri State University exists to provide professional, graduate-level academic training for students planning careers in U.S. national security policy, defense analysis, and related fields.… Unlike most academic programs, the program is highly practical in its orientation. The focus of the program is to train tomorrow’s policymakers to confront the dangers that the United States will face in the twenty-first century.” The department also says its graduates “have gone on to work for a variety of government entities, including the Departments of Defense and State, various Congressional committees, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Also, a number of our graduates serve as officers in the United States military, work in the defense industry or private think tanks, or otherwise have careers related to national security.”
DSS faculty members include: William Van Cleave, founder of the DSS and a leading Cold Warrior whose record includes membership on the Team B Strategic Objectives Panel and in the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD); Keith Payne, former chair of the Bush administration's Deterrence Concepts Advisory Panel and founder of the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP), a hawkish strategic affairs think tank; Robert Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control, former NIPP director of studies, and former advisory board member of the Center for Security Policy; and Ilan Berman, president of the hawkish American Foreign Policy Council and a CPD member.
Former DDS faculty include: J.D. Crouch, a deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration; Henry Cooper, former head of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and founder of the pro-missile defense group High Frontier; William Graham, a former Reagan administration adviser whose record includes membership on Donald Rumsfeld's Commission on the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States and executive positions at various defense contractors, including R&D Associates and Jaycor; and Charles Kupperman, a NIPP board member and former Lockheed executive. Guest speakers at DSS have included Stephen Cambone and Michelle Van Cleave.
According to data gathered by MediaTransparency.org, between 1987 and 2005, Missouri State University received more than $2 million from major rightist foundations, with many of the grants earmarked for the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies. Funders have included the Earhart Foundation and the Scaife Foundation.
Other U.S. academic institutions that, like DSS, serve as headquarters for predominantly conservative and hawkish scholars include: Ashland University’s Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs in Ohio, which runs the “No Left Turns” conservative blog; Claremont University in California, which runs the pro-missile defense website MissileThreat.com; and Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, from which George W. Bush pulled many scholars for his first administration.
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Contact Information
Defense and Strategic Studies
Missouri State University
9302 Lee Hwy Suite 760
Fairfax, Virginia 22031
http://dss.missouristate.edu
Additional Resources
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