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Active Duty Military and Veterans at SIPA
Active duty military and veterans from around the world are important contributors to the ongoing debates that form the foundation of the SIPA learning experience. From discussing the most effective relationship between humanitarian organizations and military units in a war zone to discussing best practices in serving populations during natural disasters, SIPA benefits greatly from the contributions of students, faculty and visiting speakers with military experience. SIPA thrives on the diversity of perspectives in its classrooms and counts among its student body military students from nations around the world
People | Programs | Financial Aid & External Funding
| Justin Johnson Justin Johnson served in the Marine Corps from 2001 to 2005. It was his time with the infantry in Iraq that shaped his decision to pursue a career in U.S. foreign affairs. Upon leaving active duty, he worked for the Pentagon through IBM Consulting on the Task Force for Business/Stability Operations in Iraq, examining Iraq’s financial infrastructure and proposing improvements to draw foreign direct investment. Justin served in Afghanistan in late 2007 and 2008 when he was recalled to active duty from his position at IBM. Before entering the Marine Corps, Justin volunteered for the political campaigns of Senator Jim Webb of Virginia and Congressman Mike McIntyre of North Carolina. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is completing his Master of International Affairs at SIPA, with a focus on International Security Policy. |
Major Reid Sawyer Major Reid Sawyer is both a member of the faculty and a graduate of SIPA. His course on Terrorism & Globalization is one of the School’s most popular, drawing students from a wide variety of backgrounds. He is an intelligence officer who has served in a number of special operations assignments prior to teaching at SIPA and West Point. These assignments involved extensive travel overseas in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America and included several humanitarian and peacekeeping missions. He also served in a counter-narcotics unit, which operated throughout the Caribbean basin. Additionally, he works with government agencies in addressing the terrorism threat including the Joint Staff, Combatant Commands, the Fire Department of New York City and the New York City Police Department Counterterrorism Division. Major Sawyer recently co-edited two books on the challenges facing policymakers from terrorism and other transnational threats, Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Readings and Interpretations and Defeating Terrorism. |
Lieutenant Colonel Isaiah (Ike) Wilson III Lieutenant Colonel Isaiah (Ike) Wilson III is an Adjunct Professor at SIPA and Associate Professor
and the Director of American Politics, Public Policy and Strategic Studies at the United States Military
Academy at West Point, NY.
Lt. Colonel Wilson holds a B.S. in international relations from the United States Military Academy, master's
degrees in public policy and government from Cornell University, master's degrees in military arts and sciences
from the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College and School of Advanced Military Studies, and a PhD
from Cornell University. |
One of SIPA’s oldest areas of concentration, International Security Policy (ISP) is designed for students interested in political violence and conflict management, defense policy, military strategy, terrorism and unconventional warfare, arms control, intelligence, peacekeeping, coercion, negotiation and alternatives to the use of force as an instrument of policy. The concentration provides a conceptual foundation for understanding conflict and the political, economic and military components of policies and capabilities for coping with the possibility of war, as well as expertise for analyzing specific functional and regional security issues.
Columbia offers a wider selection of courses in security studies than all but a handful of other universities in the world. The relative flexibility of the ISP Concentration allows students to tailor their specific course of study to fit their intellectual and career interests.
Many ISP courses are taught by members of the Columbia Political Science Department, one of few in the world with more than one faculty member in security studies. Among them is Richard K. Betts, ISP Concentration Director and Director of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. Before coming to Columbia, Betts worked at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.; taught at Harvard and SAIS, and served on staffs of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the National Security Council. He has been Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the National Security Advisory Panel of the Director of Central Intelligence, and a member of the National Commission on Terrorism.
Many military students choose this opportunity to develop their knowledge of other fields such as economics, development, or human rights; this list of options is available on the concentrations page.
Financial Aid and External Funding
SIPA participates in a number of programs for military veterans to help ensure that this vital part of the student body is well represented. For more information, click here.