New JGI review addresses global security issues

Tapkannia Keoun/Staff Writer

Global security continues to be a central issue facing the international landscape today, officials said.

Fostering awareness of security threats is the mission of the recently published  Global Security Review provided by the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy within the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs. The inaugural review was published in late May of this year and the JGI plans to release subsequent issues annually.

The Global Security Review provides a hub where academic experts and practitioners are able to think, discuss and assess the most prevailing trends in global security, according to Brian Fonseca, director of the JGI.

“About a year ago, [the Institute] started to survey the types of journals that were out there and the material we were producing at FIU,” Fonseca said. “We found that there was a space within the context of focusing on global security issues.”

The Global Security Review is composed of brief essays written by global security scholars and experts in academia. The review topics, he said, are first selected by a “quasi-committee” at the Institute based on relevance and importance.

“Once we’ve decided the topics, we look at who are the top experts in those issues in our networks at FIU and our expanded networks in academics,” he said.

The opening article was authored by Robert Jervis of Columbia University, a renowned scholar in security policy and studies.

The institute, Fonseca said, was also pleased to include FIU professor Jonathan Rosen as one of its foundational writers.

Rosen wrote a joint piece with Bruce Bagley of the University of Miami on “Is Plan Colombia a Model?” The article discusses combating the war on drugs between the U.S. and Colombia.

“The case of Colombia is important as it is a key player in the Americas and has faced a variety of security challenges, including drug trafficking and organized crime as well as the more than 50-year internal armed conflict,” Rosen wrote in an email to Student Media.

Anthony Clayton of the University of the West Indies also wrote a piece called “Assessing the Threat from Terrorism in the Caribbean.”

He was invited to participate in the publication after presenting a paper at a conference on a similar topic that was held at FIU, he wrote in an email to Student Media.

Clayton’s essay denotes that terrorism is not only prevalent in the Middle East and Western countries, but in developing regions such as the Caribbean which are highly susceptible to terrorist operations.

The Global Security Review, according to Fonseca, does not focus on a single security area, but rather, a variety of collective interdisciplinary themes.

“The first edition focuses on the social science realm of security, but we talk about physical science aspects such as climate change, energy, cyber security and innovation,” Fonseca said.

Fonseca hopes the Review will spark topics of conversation among faculty and students and that the Institute will receive feedback on how they can improve it for future issues, such as having more diversity.

“A faculty member recognized that there were no female scholars included in the review and this tells us that moving forward we need to be more inclusive and diverse in terms of the scholars we choose,” he said.  

Fonseca and his colleagues at the Institute plan on improving the next review through a closed process of selecting future writers and offering more diverse relatable content to the University community.

The Global Security Review is currently available to the University and the public via E-format on the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy’s website.

 

Image retrieved from Flickr.

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