News + Media

Audit

January 1, 2006

Is Iran's reform movement dead?

Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, MIT

The surprise victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Iranian Presidential election last June brings up the question of whether the reform movement is dead in Iran. Does Ahmadinejad’s success imply that Iranians have economic demands only? Who now are the supporters of reform?

News Release

November 29, 2005

Francis Deng to join MIT Center of International Studies

Francis Mading Deng, research professor of international politics, law and society, and director of the Center for Displacement Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., will join CIS on May 1, 2006, as the Center’s Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow.

Analysis + Opinion

November 22, 2005

The heavy price of censorship

John TirmanInternational Herald Tribune

Turkish prosecutors in Istanbul have brought a criminal action against the publisher of a book I wrote eight years ago. The case, without the public uproar that accompanies a similar action against the famous Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, could result in a jail term and hefty fine for the defendant, Fatih Tas. It is unfortunate for him, and it is costly for Turkey in ways the country does not seem to grasp.

News Release

November 7, 2005

MIT Security Studies research scientist wins MacArthur Grant

Cindy Williams, Principal Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program, has received a two-year, $150,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She will undertake a major project on national security strategy and resource planning, entitled “Improving the Nation’s Security Decisions.”

Audit

November 1, 2005

Why intelligence isn't to blame for 9/11

Joshua Rovner, MIT

It did not take long for blame for the September 11 attacks to cascade onto the intelligence community. But it is not deserved, and the reasons for that are important.

Audit

November 1, 2005

The hidden cost of homeland defense

Benjamin Friedman

Conventional wisdom says that none of us are safe from terrorism. The truth is that almost all of us are. The conventional belief is that in response to terrorism, the federal government has spent massive sums on homeland security. The fact is that the increased federal spending on homeland security since September 11 pales in comparison to increases in the U.S. defense budget. But homeland security has costs beyond spending, costs that conventional thinking rarely considers.

News Release

October 13, 2005

Outspoken Iranian human rights activist joins MIT Center for International Studies as a visiting scholar

Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a leading advocate of human rights and democracy in Iran, has joined CIS as a visiting scholar. This is the first visit to the United States for Ms. Haghighatjoo, who resigned from Iran’s Parliament in February 2004 following a crackdown on reformers.

News Release

September 12, 2005

Innovative MIT program shines a spotlight on international education

Since 1994, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies has developed of one the most successful and wide-ranging international education programs in the country, particularly among universities focusing on science and technology.

Audit

September 1, 2005

Iran: rogue state?

Ali Mostashari, MIT

Iran is now an important focal point for U.S. foreign policy. Yet many have argued that the United States lacks a coherent foreign policy on Iran, amounting to no more than an enormous list of “evils”: namely, that Iran exports its radical Islamist revolution, supports Hezbollah and Hamas and actively opposes the Middle East peace process, is building nuclear and biological weapons capacity, was involved in the bombings of the Jewish center in Buenos Aires and the Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia, provides Al-Qaeda with safe passage and refuge, helps insurgents in Iraq, assassinates its own dissidents and oppresses its people, and so on. 

Audit

September 1, 2005

Who needs the UN?

Gary G. Troeller, MIT

There has long been a feeling in the corridors of power in Washington that the United Nations is irredeemably flawed and condemned to ineffectiveness. It is viewed as an irritating constraint on U.S. power, or worse—expensive, wasteful, slow to act, and irrelevant. 

Pages