Spring Break
REALITY CHECK: Security is not a major
by David Litvak
Columnists | 10/28/08
Posted online at 1:22 AM EST on 10/28/08
Maybe you applied to college as an intermediary step before entering the workforce. Maybe you did not yet know what you wanted to be as an adult and hoped you would find out in college. At some schools across the nation, you would now have one more option to choose from: majoring in homeland security.
Cobbled together from a hodgepodge of existing programs at schools like Daniel Webster College, majors in homeland security include the study of topics like terrorism, disaster preparedness and Arabic. Eventually, study in the field of homeland security could act as a launch pad for a career in cyber-security, natural disaster response orchestration or, obviously, the Department of Homeland Security. The field-particularly as a specialization-may still be in its infancy, but I wonder if it perhaps too parochial, jingoistic and inappropriate as a college discipline.
This is not to say that homeland security is not an important, even vital career, particularly in these uncertain times. And the idea of a major area of study devoted to issues collectively related to homeland security is, on its face, not particularly problematic. But the way the growth of this field has progressed-there are now about 300 homeland security programs nationwide-as well as the apparent nature of the field itself, suggests we might be better off without it in the first place.
For one, majors programs centered on homeland security are supported in part by a division of the U.S. DHS dedicated to university programs and grants to schools with defense research or engineering and science scholarships. This DHS backing suggests that foreign students would have difficulty were they to want to study defense techniques useful in their own countries.
Also notable is the nonspecific definitions available for Homeland Security studies. American studies majors study the United States; business majors study business practices; chemistry majors study chemical processes. What does a homeland security major study? It would make sense that studies might include Arabic, international diplomacy, natural disaster readiness, Middle Eastern history-but these are almost all fields that already exist independently of any artificial amalgamation. Steven Lab, director of the criminal justice program at Bowling Green State University, put it succinctly in asserting to the Boston Globe that "it's a hodgepodge of topics that have already existed on college campuses for the most part. And they've strung them together in a meaningless whole called homeland security."
Cobbled together from a hodgepodge of existing programs at schools like Daniel Webster College, majors in homeland security include the study of topics like terrorism, disaster preparedness and Arabic. Eventually, study in the field of homeland security could act as a launch pad for a career in cyber-security, natural disaster response orchestration or, obviously, the Department of Homeland Security. The field-particularly as a specialization-may still be in its infancy, but I wonder if it perhaps too parochial, jingoistic and inappropriate as a college discipline.
This is not to say that homeland security is not an important, even vital career, particularly in these uncertain times. And the idea of a major area of study devoted to issues collectively related to homeland security is, on its face, not particularly problematic. But the way the growth of this field has progressed-there are now about 300 homeland security programs nationwide-as well as the apparent nature of the field itself, suggests we might be better off without it in the first place.
For one, majors programs centered on homeland security are supported in part by a division of the U.S. DHS dedicated to university programs and grants to schools with defense research or engineering and science scholarships. This DHS backing suggests that foreign students would have difficulty were they to want to study defense techniques useful in their own countries.
Also notable is the nonspecific definitions available for Homeland Security studies. American studies majors study the United States; business majors study business practices; chemistry majors study chemical processes. What does a homeland security major study? It would make sense that studies might include Arabic, international diplomacy, natural disaster readiness, Middle Eastern history-but these are almost all fields that already exist independently of any artificial amalgamation. Steven Lab, director of the criminal justice program at Bowling Green State University, put it succinctly in asserting to the Boston Globe that "it's a hodgepodge of topics that have already existed on college campuses for the most part. And they've strung them together in a meaningless whole called homeland security."
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