Fascinating chart below.  Interesting what policy makes assess as most useful:  policy analysis, area studies, historical case studies, contemporary case studies.

V/R

Dave

What do policymakers want from academics?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2013/09/25/what-do-policymakers-want-from-academics/

• By Erik Voeten

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•  E-mail the writer

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• September 25 at 9:00 am

We are delighted to welcome the following guest post by Paul Avey (MIT) and Michael Desch (Notre Dame).

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We are grateful to Henry Farrell and his colleagues at the Monkey Cage for their interest in, and thoughtful comments on, our forthcoming International Studies Quarterly piece.  We would also like to congratulate them on their move to The Washington Post.  Indeed, we are thrilled to be hopping on the MC bandwagon to engage in a longer discussion of our article.

It is not only the MC’s recent success, but also its original mission of connecting work within our discipline with broader audiences, that makes us so excited to have our piece the subject of discussion here.  Indeed, of all of presentations at this year’s APSA panel on the National Science Foundation decision to restrict funding for political science, it was the presentation of MC member John Sides that we found to be the most constructive in responding to that challenge. It is our hope that our own work will help advance this cause as well.

In our piece, we try to ascertain what the most senior national security policymakers want from international relations scholars.  An answer to this question matters because there has been recurrent interest among policymakers in drawing upon academic social science expertise in support of more effective national security policymaking. Despite this high-level interest, there has also been enduring frustration on both sides of the “theory-policy gap” with our inability to bridge it. One of the primary obstacles to building this bridge is the lack of systemic data about when and how academic social science is useful to policymakers.

As early as 1971, a National Academy of Science study concluded that “what are required are assessments of the research needs and resources from the point of view of policymakers.” (Advisory Committee on the Management of Behavioral Science Research in the Department of Defense, 1971:28)

Working with the Teaching and Research in International Politics (TRIP) project at the College of William and Mary, we have taken a first step to get a better sense of when and under what conditions policymakers pay attention to the work of academic social scientists.  Our unique survey of nearly 1,000 current and former national security decision-makers (of whom 25 percent responded) provides the most systematic evidence to date of what the highest-level national security decision-makers want from academic international relations scholars.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2013/09/25/what-do-policymakers-want-from-academics/

History: In Ignorance We Trust

And I would add to Mr. Egan's thesis that we will not produce good policymakers and strategists without the study of History (and military theory, geography, operational art, and strategy)

V/R
Dave

DECEMBER 13, 2012, 8:15 PM

In Ignorance We Trust

By TIMOTHY EGAN

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/egan-in-ignorance-we-trust/?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

A packet of letters arrived the other day from the honors English class at St. Lawrence School in Brasher Falls, N.Y. Snail mail, from high school sophomores? Yes, and honest, witty and insightful snail mail at that. They had been forced to read a book of mine.

"Personally, I don't like reading about history or learning about it," wrote one student, setting the tone for the rest of the class.

"The Dust Bowl? Really?" So began another missive. "When we heard we were reading your book...heads dropped. Let me rephrase that, heads fell to the floor and rolled down the hallway.

You get the drift: history is a brain freeze. And, writers of history, well, there's a special place with the already-chewed gum in nerd camp for them. But as I read through the letters I was cheered. Some of the last survivors of the American Dust Bowl were high school sophomores when they were hit with the nation's worst prolonged environmental disaster. In that 1930s story of gritty resilience, the Brasher Falls kids of 2012 found a fresh way to look at their own lives and this planet.

History is always utilitarian, and often entertaining. It stirs the blood of any lover of the past to see Steven Spielberg's majestic "Lincoln" - at its core, a drama about politicians with ZZ Top beards writing legislation - crush the usual soulless, computer-generated distractions at the box office.

But history, the formal teaching and telling of it, has never been more troubled. Two forces, one driven by bottom-line educators answering to corporate demands to phase out the liberal arts, the other coming from the circular firing squad of academics who loathe popular histories, have done much to marginalize our shared narratives.

David McCullough, the snowy-headed author and occasional national scold, says we are raising a generation of Americans who are historically illiterate. He cites Harry Truman's line that the only new thing in the world is the history you don't know. And today, in part by design, there's a lot of know-nothingness throughout the land. Only 12 percent of high school seniors are "at or above proficient" in American history, which, of course, doesn't mean they're stupid.

(Continued at the link below):

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/egan-in-ignorance-we-trust/?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print