The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI) and the Tikvah Fund are delighted to offer a seminar series on Understanding Cognitive Warfare to take place in Washington, DC, from June 21 – August 2. The series is devoted to examining key issues necessary for understanding the history and methods of cognitive warfare currently being waged by enemies both external and homegrown. Having evolved from the AHI’s highly acclaimed Washington Program on National Security (WAPONS) that began in 2016 under the direction of Dr. Juliana Geran Pilon, the new partnership with Tikvah allows for an expansion of the AHI family, explains Dr. Pilon, by reaching out to participants from a broader community who both “embrace the values that the AHI and Tikvah share – namely a profound respect for the principles of Western civilization that lie at the root of America’s founding.”
As before, the program has both an on-site and zoom component. But this year, the format is somewhat modified, as in-person discussions are limited to recent graduates and young professionals residing in the DC area. They will meet on consecutive Fridays at noon at the offices of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. These sessions will be followed by zoom discussions on the following Sunday evenings which are open to a few pre-selected additional participants. The readings will be collected into an anthology to be released later in ebook format, thanks to generous funding provided by the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation.
Guest speakers include several previous WAPONS experts, including Dr. John J. Dziak, a former Senior Executive in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Defense Intelligence Agency; Todd Leventhal, for many years the sole US government official countering disinformation at the State Department, recently retired from its Global Engagement Center; Eric Rozenman, former Washington director for CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America; Dr. Paul Lieber, an Associate Research Scientist at the University of Maryland’s Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS); Dr. J. Michael Waller, Senior Analyst for Strategy at the Center for Security Policy and instructor/lecturer at the John F Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg; and WAPONS alumnus Mason Goad, currently a brilliant researcher with the National Association of Scholars.
They are joined by distinguished experts new to the AHI, such as Dr. John Gentry, former CIA analyst and later professor at National Defense University, Georgetown, and Columbia; Mike Gonzalez, the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation; Dr. Marlo Lewis, Jr. senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute; Dr. Yael Lieber, a psychologist formerly on staff of US Special Operations Command; Dr. Jay W. Richards, PhD, Director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family and the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation; and Ellie Cohanim, former U.S. Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism at the U.S. Department of State.
Additional information can be found at www.ahi-wapons.org; and for the Tikvah Fund, at Understanding Cognitive Warfare – The Tikvah Fund.
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