Gordon Mitchell Receives New Appointment
Gordon Mitchell has been appointed deputy director of the Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
"Professor Mitchell's long term interests in deliberation, public debate, and formation of public policy have played a key role in drawing attention to issues that deserve public scrutiny," said Barbara Warnick. "Mitchell's new appointment is an excellent research and educational opportunity to generate interdisciplinary initiatives that will focus on security practices and policy."
As a senior research associate with the Ridgway Center from 2003 to 2006, Mitchell chaired a working group on preemptive and preventive military intervention that produced 12 working papers, two policy briefs, "Hitting
First: Preventive Force in U.S. Security Strategy" (co-edited with William Keller), the premier volume in a book series launched last year by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
In his new role as deputy director, Mitchell will build on this research, develop initiatives to facilitate dissemination of Ridgway research products, and cultivate Ridgway's ties with the intercollegiate policy debate community. That community has produced leading international relations scholars such as Alexander Lennon (Center for Strategic and International Studies), Dan Reiter (Emory University), and Michael Mazarr (U.S. National War College). Mitchell is a former top-ranked intercollegiate debater who competed with Lennon, Reiter and Mazarr in the 1980s, then went on to coach two national championship teams in the 1990s.
"At the juncture of policy, foreign affairs and politics is inquiry into the traditions of public argument," said G. Thomas Goodnight, a contributor to "Hitting First" and professor in the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California. "Professor Mitchell is a foremost theorist and critic of policy persuasion, debate traditions, and the communicative practices of our contemporary global, public sphere."
The Ridgway Center at the University of Pittsburgh is dedicated to generating scholarship that educates the next generation of security analysts. Its purpose is to produce original and impartial analysis that informs policymakers who must confront diverse challenges to state and human security on a global scale.
Pitt's Office of Public Affairs has more on Mitchell's appointment.
