Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the US Military

Women in Combat

Often cast as a “battle of the sexes,” the debate over women in combat is dominated by questions of physical standards, push-ups and pull-ups and deadlifts and sprints. However, the transformation underway is about much more than the status of women. It is about how an institution built on the ability to conform approaches diversity in all its variations. How does the uniformity of the US military incorporate difference? Does opening the most prestigious combat roles to women change the military? Or does it change the women? 

This project addresses these questions through the eyes of the self-described ‘Gunship Girls,’ the first women to hold combat roles in Special Operations Command. The Gunship Girls flew the deadliest missions of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as members of AC-130 Gunship crews. However, unlike the high profile fights over the integration of military academies, and the fighter community, the integration of women into Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) largely unnoticed. This project tells their previously untold stories.

Nuclear Strategy and Politics

The Symbolic Power of Nuclear Weapons: The Case of Iran

Despite widespread recognition that nuclear weapons have value as a symbol of power and prestige, we know relatively little about the source and utility of that value. Existing literature explores symbolic status as a motive for nuclear proliferation but has less to say about whether or how states capitalize on that value. What determines the socio-political utility of nuclear weapons? Which strategies have states used to leverage their symbolic value? And to what ends? This article project addresses these questions by developing a theory of nuclear value and illustrating the utility of that theory by applying it to the case of Iran. The overarching claim it makes is that nuclear weapons have evolved into a distinctive socio-political object; in addition to being a weapon of war, nuclear weapons have also become a ‘power commodity.’  Their possession has long brought states either infamy or prestige, but increasingly states have begun viewing their value pragmatically, seeking to ‘trade’ on their possession to secure a range of political, economic, and military outcomes.

Behavioral Economics and Nuclear Weapons

Will cognitive science and behavioral economics put the last nail in the coffin of homo atomicus? The assumption of the rational, utility-maximizing actor has done a lot of work for nuclear deterrence theory. Rational choice is a seductive form of logic for any social system that entails a combination of conflict and cooperation. And there is nothing that epitomizes this tension like the dynamics of nuclear deterrence and nonproliferation. The assumption of a rational actor is at the center of nuclear deterrence theory and nonproliferation policy and the incorporation of systematic deviations from that idea into theory holds out the potential of being paradigm shifting on a tectonic scale. In this project we explore whether insights from behavioral economics about how actors often behave in predictably irrational ways will change the way we think about nuclear deterrence.

Highly Nriched


Our first-of-its-kind, nonprofit, non-partisan online platform creates a synergistic experience for educators in the nuclear field by combining teaching resources with a broad-based mentor network of policy practitioners and experts.

Highly NRiched is a first-of-its-kind, crowdsourced platform for teaching and mentoring resources on nuclear issues. It promotes diversity by breaking down barriers to sharing and accessing resources. Its synergistic experience combines educational resources with a broad-based mentor network of policy practitioners and experts. 

The idea for Highly NRiched came out of a year-long design process supported by NSquare and the Rhode Island Institute of Design. The inspiration for this project is the documented need to support and promote education on technically and socially complex topics like weapons of mass destruction in order to raise awareness of their dangers. NRiched incentivizes educators to incorporate lessons about WMD into their classrooms by making it easy for educators to share, access, and build curricula. 

Highly NRiched’s tech-based solution takes advantage of the transformation underway in how educators provide resources to students. It provides educators with teaching and mentoring resources in one easily searchable, online hub. Educators can search a database of crowdsourced games, simulations, videos, and podcasts to build bespoke curricula that are easily uploadable onto courseware sites. 

Highly NRiched’s mentor network bridges the gap between academia and the policy community. The site is supported by a community of more than one-hundred policy makers and nongovernmental organization experts who have volunteered their time as guest speakers and/or professional mentors and can be contacted through Highly NRiched’s mentor portal. Together these elements create a synergistic user experience. Experiential learning exercises engage and motivate students and a vibrant expert mentor network facilitates engagement with the community.

Teaching