The International Security Studies Section (ISSS) of the International Studies Association, in conjunction with the journals, International Security, Security Studies, and The Journal of Strategic Studies, is about to launch the International Security Studies Online Forum. 

Starting February 2010, we will be sponsoring on-line discussion of selected books and articles in our leading journals. Colleagues also will be invited to post their own comments, questions, and ideas about security studies and to provide announcements of forthcoming conferences and events.  These discussions will provide specialists in foreign affairs, international history, and security studies an opportunity to interact with recently published scholarship and to engage in lively and constructive dialogue with fellow scholars. By wedding the thoughtfulness of a printed article with the timeliness and dynamism of electronic media, the initiative aims to increase the velocity of communication in our field and lower the barriers to entry to the discussions.  In addition to hosting discussions of security studies scholarship, it will facilitate discussions of current policy issues that are rooted in scholarship.  At the start, it will be posting roundtable reviews of Dan Reier, How Wars End and Barbara Walter, Reputation and Civil Wars and will hold roundtable discussions of whether and how scholars’ political outlooks and preferences affect their scholarship, what light research on insurgencies sheds on the likely prospects for Obama’s policy in Afghanistan, and the implications of recent work in biology for security studies.

This initiative is being undertaken with H-Diplo, a moderated, electronic H-Net discussion network established over 15 years ago and dedicated to the study of diplomatic and international history.  All who are interested are urged to subscribe by going to http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/ or by sending the following one line message to listerve@h-net.msu.edu: sub h-diplo first name last name, institutional affiliation.
 
This project is financially supported by private academic foundations and the following institutions:
 
Center for Security and Cooperation, Stanford University
Center for International Security Studies, Princeton University
Center for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown University
Center for International Peace and Security Studies (CIPSS-formerly REGIS), McGill
University—University of Montreal
GAGE Program, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia
International Security, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard
University
Mershon Center, Ohio State University
The MIT Security Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Security Studies, Dickey Center for International Understanding, Dartmouth College
Stanley Kaplan Program in American Foreign Policy, Williams College
Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University
The Triangle Institute for Security Studies (Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and
NC-State)
Program in American Grand Strategy, Duke University