Intellectual Roundtable

The Intellectual Roundtable is ALLIES’ chief annual event. It has traditionally been comprised of a multi-day conference held in the fall, attended by students and faculty members from all ALLIES branches along with military officers, government professionals, academics, and other practitioners. The Roundtable, now in its third year, gives students the opportunity to explore civil-military issues and discuss these topics in an intimate environment with attending experts and professionals. In addition, the Roundtable provides students—future military officers and civilian leaders--the chance to build lasting relationships, both personal and professional. Past Roundtable topics have covered a broad range of civil-military topics, such as the role of the military in humanitarian response missions, security sector reform, the role of academic sciences in peacekeeping and stability operations, and ways to increase civilian participation in security and defense.

This past October, the third Intellectual Roundtable was held at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. The highlight of this year’s Roundtable was a crisis simulation exercise (SIMULEX) facilitated by the Center for Applied Strategic Learning (CASL) at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. Students and cadets role-played as military and civilian government agencies, representing security, foreign, and domestic interests, tasked with devising policy recommendations for a unified response to multiple simultaneous crises. The simulation challenged participants to work together in the face of the harsh political realities of civil-military cooperation in decision-making and policy implementation. Response to the simulation was highly positive on the part of both students and professionals, and ALLIES hopes to integrate simulation exercises into its future programming.

2008 ALLIES Intellectual Roundtable Participants outside of Paige Hall; 10/31/2008

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Intellectual Roundtable

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