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IUS Fellows in The Washington Post

IUS Fellows David L. Leal and Jeremy M. Teigen published a piece in The Washington Post's political science focused blog, Monkey Cage. The piece "Recent veterans are more Republican than older ones. Why?" was published on November 11, 2015:

Military veterans matter in American electoral politics, both as candidates and as voters. In the 1970s, three-quarters of congressmen were veterans, but now only about 20 percent have served. About half of this country’s major party presidential candidates, from George Washington to today, have served in uniform.

To read the full article, click here.

IUS/Canada 2016 Conference

IUS/Canada will be hosting a conference in Ottawa from 23 to 25 October 2016 at the Lord Elgin Hotel. The call for papers will be available soon.

Follow the IUS on Social Media

The IUS has expanded our online presence by setting up accounts on each of the main social networks. From Twitter and Facebook to Google+ and LinkedIn, the IUS's new social media initiative will notify you of all IUS updates. In addition to news from the IUS, we're going to be working to use each of these hubs to allow IUS Fellows to meet and sustain the kind of professional relationships that make Fellowship such a worthwhile pursuit.

Social networking allows organizations like the IUS to continue the conference experience to our membership through the entire year by providing discussion platforms for research, opportunities, and conversation. With the addition of a YouTube account, we'll also be able to make video content available.

There's no need to follow every account; information will be shared across all platforms while continuing to be posted here on the IUS website. Add the IUS on your preferred network and you'll start connecting with your peers instantaneously.

Annual Appeal: Donate Online

Help support the IUS by making a donation today.

The Morris Janowitz Career Achievement Award

The Morris Janowitz Career Achievement Award is awarded by the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society to a limited number of senior scholars whose careers most demonstrate excellence in the study of armed forces and society and important service to the discipline.

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Conference Papers Now Available for Download

In advance of the 2015 International Biennial Conference at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, all the conference papers are now online and available for download.

IUS/Canada 2014 Photos, Abstracts and Tweets Now Available

The 2014 IUS/Canada Conference photos are now available on the IUS Facebook page. Click here to view and download the photos.

For more information, including all abstracts and tweets, click here

IUS Fellow Receives Lifetime Achievement Award

IUS fellow Dr. Leena Parmar received the Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to the field of military sociology at Rajasthan University in India. As a Professor of Sociology at Rajasthan University, her achievements span 40 years of research, teaching, and dissertation supervision. Please join us in congratulating her contribution to our field.

IUSAFS Releases First Podcast Interview

As part of OnlineFirst, by which forthcoming articles are published online before they are scheduled to appear in print, Armed Forces & Society has released a podcast interview on an article in an upcoming issue. Listen to our Editorial Assistant Colin Smith interview Dr. Neil J. Diamant about his article with co-author Dr. Kevin J. O'Brien titled "Contentious Veterans: China’s Retired Officers Speak Out.”

What drives retired military officers in China toward contention? Decades of research on protest has produced little on veterans’ collection action, and even less on that by ex-officers. Newspaper reports, police journals, and veterans’ blogs show that contention by Chinese former officers (ranging from occupying government compounds to marches, mass petitioning, open letters, and class action lawsuits) is the result of bad luck in post-military job assignments, a fragmented political system that makes it difficult to ensure that pensions and other benefits reach retirees, and pervasive corruption that leads ex-officers to feel that local officials have embezzled funds meant for them. Contention by former officers typically uses military rhetoric and builds on military experiences, even for former officers who were employed in civilian jobs for many years. Although contention by ex-officers is not likely to rock the state, it says much about how “sticky” military identities are, where veterans fit in the political landscape, Leninist civil–military relations, and the treatment that old soldiers receive in a fast changing socioeconomic order.

Listen to the podcast interview here.

Camacho Advising for Peace in Somalia

Meeting at the conference, in Mogadishu, from left to right, Hassan Madadallah, Professor in the Nelson Mandela School at School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Southern University and A&M College; Paul R. Camacho, an IUS Fellow, William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences, University of Massachusetts, Boston (retired); and Abdi Dirshe, an IUS Fellow and Permanent Secretary, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Dr. Paul R. Camacho, a long-time IUS Fellow, was invited by the Federal Government of Somalia to participate in its Conference on Internal Security held in Mogadishu on 20-23 April 2014.

Camacho made a formal presentation on Security Sector Reform: Challenges and Opportunities. He emphasized the importance of taking a holistic rather than a purely military approach to overcome security problems.

In particular, he argued that achieving internal security requires a reconstruction of Somali's civil society that draws on leadership from all sectors of government. Others offered similar or related arguments.¹

Yet the path to peace remains a rocky one. The UN has established a UN Guard Unit (UNGU) with troops provided by the Uganda People's Defense Forces to help create safe and secure conditions so that peace and state building programs might succeed. ²

¹""7 Points Communiqué on Strengthening Somalia's National Security,"" Somalicurrent news,"" accessed May 19, 2014 online at http://www.somalicurrent.com/ 2014/04/24/7-points-communeque-on-strengthening-somalias-national-security/

²""Somalia: UN deploys new special force to protect staff in Mogadishu,"" UN News Centre, accessed May 19, 2014 at http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.as?NewsIS=47820#.U3pgdCj49uA

2013 Morris Janowitz Career Achievement Award Ceremony

Click here for more information on the award and past recipients.