Universities Must Not Ignore Intelligence Research

By AMY B. ZEGART
Last week the CIA finally released the "Family Jewels" — a 700-page secret file made in 1973 that chronicles domestic spying programs, foreign assassination plots, and other skeletons in the agency's closet. Jewelmania quickly ensued: a feeding frenzy to examine what these documents revealed, what they continued to hide, and what they mean. As bloggers, pundits, journalists, policy makers, and others raced to their computers and hit the airwaves, one group remained conspicuously absent from the debate: university professors.

This is not an aberration. At a time when intelligence agencies have never been more important, universities are teaching and studying just about everything else. In 2006 only four of the top 25 universities ranked by U.S. News & World Report offered undergraduate courses on intelligence agencies or issues. Students at America's elite universities had greater opportunities to learn about the rock band U2 than the spy plane by the same name; more of the top 25 offered courses on the history of rock 'n' roll.

Scholarly inattention is even more glaring in academic publishing. Between 2001 and 2006, the three most highly regarded academic journals in political sciencethe American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and The Journal of Politics — published a total of 750 articles. Only one discussed intelligence. At precisely the time that intelligence issues have dominated headlines and policy-maker attention, the nation's best political scientists have been studying other subjects.