Visit Programs and Events and Seminars to learn about all of the Center's activities. Many of our events are available to view on YouTube. Below is an editor’s pick of recent programming.

CIS offers resources on the Israel-Hamas war
Since the Israel-Hamas war commenced last fall, the Center has hosted events and a mini-course with the aim of providing context to the ongoing conflict. Programming included a Starr Forum: Israel-Hamas conflict: Expert perspectives on the ongoing crisis (Marsin Alshamary, Boston College; David Fitzpatrick, the New Yorker; Steve Simon, Quincy Institute; Peter Krause (Boston College, MIT; and Evan Lieberman, MIT). A MENA/MIT-sponsored mini-course Israel, Palestine, Gaza before and after October 7: Understanding historical context and contrasting narratives (taught by Peter Krause, Boston College, MIT); and an Emile Bustani Middle East seminar Gaza: Can anyone hear us? (Sara Roy, Harvard).

Join the Center’s M³ (Mens, Manus, Mundus) initiative
To help further amplify the work of CIS and foster connections across the Institute, we recently launched a new initiative called M³ that organizes communications across regional (Africa, Asia, Europe, Americas, MENA) and thematic (initially including climate, but soon to include security, computing, democracy, migration) focus areas. If you would like to receive updates based on specific regions or themes, please sign up here.

SSP launches summer wargaming program
The Security Studies Program’s  new Summer Wargaming Institute is a four-day “bootcamp-style” program hosted by the MIT SSP Wargaming Lab. The goal is to teach practitioners and scholars how to design and run wargames for research, training and analysis. Applicants must be PhD candidates or junior faculty in international relations, political science or a related field, or early-to-mid-career foreign policy/national security professionals. Learn more here.

New pledge expands MISTI-Netherlands
A new pledge agreement between MIT International Science & Technology Initiatives (MISTI) and the Netherland’s Ministry of Economics and Climate Policy was signed on March 1 at a ceremony held at the MIT Museum. This new agreement of €530,000 over five years will help expand the MISTI Netherlands program and will fund internships for MIT undergraduate and graduate students to work at innovative startups, research institutions and government agencies in the Netherlands.

650+ MISTI students across the globe
MISTI has pioneered international education at MIT for almost four decades. A program created by and located within CIS, MISTI works across departments, centers, and labs throughout the Institute to enable immersive, impactful learning experiences and research opportunities for students and faculty alike. This summer, MISTI is sending 653 students across the globe. These students will be doing internships, study abroad programs, attending workshops, working on short-term research, and attending the Global Classroom programs.

Seminar XXI spotlight
The Center’s Seminar XXI program is an educational program for current and future leaders in the US national security and foreign policy communities. Based in Washington, DC, the program links the worlds of policymaking and academia by bringing together its fellows with scholars from MIT and beyond. Through this interdisciplinary and intergenerational learning experience, the fellows share their differing viewpoints, challenge each other’s assumptions, expand their interagency networks, and develop fresh ways of analyzing the complex national security issues they face each day. Selective and renowned, fellowship candidates must be nominated and sponsored by their organizations in order to apply. Learn more about the program here.

Starr Forums on China, Ukraine, and Haiti
The Center hosted several Starr Forums on a range of topics including: China: The rise and fall of the EAST (Yasheng Huang, MIT; Will Knight, Wired magazine); The war in Ukraine: Insights at year three (Dmitry Adamsky, Reichman University, Israel; Michael Kofman,  Center for Naval Analyses; Carol Saivetz, MIT, and Elizabeth Wood MIT) and Haiti: Linguistic barriers, exploitation and resistance (Dominique Dupuy, ambassador of Haiti to UNESCO, and Michel DeGraff, MIT.) Starr Forums are available to watch on demand and are archived here on the CIS YouTube channel.

SSP Wednesday seminars
The Security Studies Program (SSP) Wednesday Seminar series runs weekly during the academic year from 12:00pm to 1:30PM, EST.  In-person attendance is limited to the MIT community while the public can watch on the SSP YouTube channel. A selection of spring seminars included: From neuroscience to national security (Marika Landau-Wells, UC, Berkeley); Kim Jong Un’s pivot to the north (Alexandre Mansourov, National Committee on North Korea); Afghanistan revisited (Colin Jackson, US Naval War College); and Nuclear revolution revisited (Charles Glaser, MIT). All seminars are archived on the SSP YouTube channel.