Director's Message to Prospective Students
Dear Prospective Student,
DSS began more than half a century ago under Professor William Van Cleave at the University of Southern California as an effort to push back against the prevailing winds of an American academic community that Professor Van Cleave felt was not taking national security as seriously as it should at a time when the United States faced grave international challenges. For several decades since then and continuing through the program’s affiliation with Missouri State University, and then our physical relocation to the Washington, DC, area more than 20 years ago, DSS has continued to provide security-forward, hard-nosed, and realistic higher education opportunities to students from all over the United States and many other parts of the world besides.
Today, from our new offices in Arlington, Virginia, just a proverbial stone’s throw from the Pentagon and the White House, we offer students the unparallelled opportunity to earn graduate certificates, master’s degrees, and professional doctorates from a superb faculty of former senior government officials, military officers, intelligence analysts and operators, and think tank scholars. (We’re even developing a PhD program now, too, so keep your eye on this website for more news!)
With classes available via Zoom or even entirely asynchronously online, we offer a security-focused higher education opportunity like no other to students (including many active-duty members of the U.S. armed forces) based all over the country and around the world, including through the valued partnerships we have built with institutions such as the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the U.S. Strategic Command. We do all of this, moreover, at “Middle America” rates, notably below the price tag of any other program anywhere near our level of quality.
If this sounds like the national security education you want, you’ve found the right place. So check out this website, reach out to us, and become a part of the DSS community and network of national security professionals!
All my best,
Chris
Professor Christopher A. Ford
Director
School of Defense and Strategic Studies
