Meet Our Alumni

I was a junior at Harvard and took a course with Graham Allison and David Sanger on U.S. national security decision-making and the press. I believe that Drs. Fred and Kimberly Kagan are friends with Dr. Allison, and he asked a small group of us if we were interested.

I had studied foreign policy and the diplomatic side before and felt very comfortable with those facets, but I never really understood military strategy. War Studies seemed like a great way to fill that gap. When I did the interview for the program, Dr. Fred Kagan asked me why they should take me. My response was, “I’m exactly the kind of student you’re looking for—I know nothing about this! I know about the diplomatic and foreign policy aspects, but I don’t know about the military side, and I want to learn.”

My story is a little bit unorthodox. When I did War Studies, I became close with ISW Research Director Jessica Lewis, who was in charge of the Al-Qaeda in Iraq (now ISIS) portfolio. I helped her with a project she was working on about car bombs in Baghdad and around Iraq.

I came on as a summer intern at ISW with the help of Hertog Foundation funding. I interned directly under Jessica on the counterterrorism team. I hadn’t planned to spend the majority of the summer focused on ISIS, but three days into the internship, ISIS started its urban offensive in Iraq and went into Mosul. Obviously, the entire office went into hyper drive. It was an amazing experience. Both being able to engage with the material and be a part of a really dynamic team was incredibly important and worthwhile.

Over the course of the summer, I started thinking about possibly trying to defer Oxford. Somehow everything managed to work out! As a Counterterrorism Analyst at ISW, I get to help out with ISW’s technology partnerships, which fits in very well with what I want to do in the long term. I’m extremely grateful to the Hertog Foundation for creating the space for these relationships and networks to grow for me.

The main thing I was struck by was the caliber of the students who were taking part in the program. Every single person was incredibly brilliant and interesting in their own way. I learned more in those two weeks than I did in some semester-long courses. It was one of the most intense experiences I’ve ever had, but also exceedingly enjoyable because of people who were there.

I loved that even though the program was obviously based in military studies, it was military studies coming from three people with academic backgrounds. The Drs. Kagan had taught at West Point, and General Dubik was completing his Ph.D. while teaching the program and had a philosophy background.

So for me coming from a social science background, they were the ideal people to be bridging that gap. I just remember reading Clausewitz’s On War and having them explain it to me. I was completely blown away by this material that I wouldn’t have picked up had I not taken the course.

The War Studies Program is definitely beneficial for young people interested in public service. The underlying philosophy of the Program is that civilian leaders can’t make informed national security decisions without an understanding of the fundamentals of war—and that’s absolutely true. War Studies offers a type of education that normally isn’t available to public service-minded civilian students.

I absolutely see myself working in public service, and public policy if possible. I would love to keep working in the national security space, hopefully doing something intelligence analysis related. I hesitate to limit myself to a certain region because you never know where life’s going to go, but ideally I’ll be working in the public sphere addressing some of the most complex national security problems we face as a nation.

I heard about the Hertog Foundation through Dr. Daniel Mark, one of my professors of Political Science at Villanova University. I applied because I thought Hertog would help me understand how theory and practice complement one another. I have had many political experiences, which might be called ‘practical,’ but previously did not have a solid foundation in the history of Western political thought. The opportunity to read canonical texts in the context of contemporary political discourse is what attracted me.

The Political Studies Program provided me with grounding in not only the theoretical aspects of how our institutions came to be, but also in the practical aspects of how they currently function. I read important thinkers such as Aristotle, Machiavelli, and de Tocqueville, while also placing these readings within the context of contemporary public policy, such as American foreign and domestic policy. On top of our seminar classes, we enjoyed weekly lectures and events with accomplished scholars, like Harvey Mansfield, and practitioners, like Congressman (now Senator) Tom Cotton.

I had many of the most intellectually stimulating conversations in my life with my peers at Hertog—both regarding the texts we read in class and about the issues of the day.

The Political Studies Program offers something that is overlooked in academia today: intellectual diversity. The Program truly attracts students from across the political spectrum, and that is something incredibly unique to Hertog.

The study of politics is critical for all people, regardless of someone’s interests or vocation. One of my friends from the program is a Physics major at Princeton, and we both agreed that the knowledge of political institutions is essential to human flourishing. Political ideas propel our republic forward.

I would recommend Hertog to anyone, especially folks who are interested in public service. During my junior year of college I had the opportunity to win the Truman Scholarship, which is awarded to students who have demonstrated leadership potential and a commitment to public service. After doing Political Studies I went back to the Truman people and said, “We’ve got to get more of our Scholars over to the Hertog Political Studies Program. It’s an incredible opportunity to learn about civic life, how to give back to one’s community and ultimately how to be a more well-rounded person.”

Life is very interesting; you never know where you’re going to end up. I helped organize the World Meeting of Families – Philadelphia 2015, an event which worked to highlight the important role of the family on a global scale. I never thought I’d help prepare for a papal visit to my hometown—it’s so hard to know what life with throw at you. But in 10 years, I hope to be in a position where I can give back to my community, especially on a local level.

While at Yale, Professors Norma Thompson and Steven Smith in the Humanities Program recommended me for Political Studies. They suggested that it would be a way to supplement my study of the Great Books and to think more deeply about political conversations—all in DC, which is an exciting place to think about those things.  And then it just became obvious that this was what I should do with my summer.

Of course! I’m going to do an MPhil in Politics at Oxford, with a focus on refugees, migration, and the political theories that underpin our ideas of human rights and state order.  The degree isn’t directly related to what I studied at Hertog, but all that I studied at Hertog is implicit in it.

These crucial crises of our time have to be solved by people who have an understanding of the ideas that came before us and the theories that underpin our own thought. T. S. Eliot talks about knowing the canon before you can change it, and it’s the same idea with politics. To know the canon in the way that Hertog taught us and then inspired us to do at our own universities is a great gift for people who want to go into public policy and public service.

The Gettysburg staff ride was really memorable. By the time we got to the field where Pickett’s Charge happened, it was pouring rain. We were running across this muddy battlefield, and it felt like we were really examining the relationship between the American history we learned about when we were younger and the great ideas we were discussing at Hertog. Pickett’s Charge was enmeshed in a broader discussion about strategy: It’s about Lee’s moral vision of the war and Lincoln’s language of the war.

After we came back from Gettysburg, a group of us ran down to the Lincoln Memorial and just sat there for a bit. It felt wonderful to be there in that city reading those books, feeling the presence of those figures. That’s what Hertog does best: They bring these texts, ideas, and events alive. All this was evident throughout the Program, but especially on that day.

The intellectual community at Hertog is really special. There’s this sense that everybody’s done the reading, so when we go into discussion, there’s an ability to focus on what’s really being said. It’s sometimes rare to get an unfiltered look at a great book or a great person.

My current plan after Oxford is to return to the United States and attend law school to study asylum law, problems of refugee movement, and general migration. Then I want to use the theoretical training I’ll gain from Oxford and the legal training I’ll have as well to make policy on these issues.

I think matters of migration touch aspects of our politics that go beyond humanitarian factors. Refugees flee political crises, and we have to solve the conflicts that they flee through political means. The first step is to understand refugee crises as inherently political, and that’s what I want to work towards.

My younger brother [Michael Falvey] participated in the Political Studies Program so I first heard about the Foundation from him. Then, the Yale Law Veterans group sent out an email to our incoming class and let us know about the Advanced Institutes. “The Lessons of the Iraq War” seemed like a great opportunity, especially for people coming from the military.

During tours for the Marines in Afghanistan, I gained a lot of very specific on-the-ground knowledge about America’s war strategy and plans. But the Institute gave me the opportunity to step back, look at the big picture, and think about the decisions on a presidential or strategic level that impact the guys on the ground.

The viewpoints of the instructor, Vance Serchuk, introduced an interesting take on what’s happening in our government and how it relates to our foreign policy and military. He shared his first-hand experience about how the different branches of government are interacting, how we’re driving the war effort, and how we’re changing our strategy. In the future, as a lawyer I’m interested in working in government so Vance’s perspective was extremely valuable.

One of the best intellectual benefits was the broadness of the views that were shared. We not only had world-class speakers from the American side of things like General [David] Petraeus and Senator [John] McCain, but also had the opportunity to interact with people like Professor Bilal Wahab from the American University in Iraq. Hearing Professor Wahab’s take on the war as a Kurdish citizen was fascinating, and he’s someone I never would have come across if not for Hertog.

The students included both people going into military and those involved in nonprofit and private sector work. The breadth of the experiences present in the classroom was extremely vital to the success of the course. It’s always great to get people together who won’t necessarily agree on everything. My peers challenged my assumptions, and hopefully, I challenged some of theirs.

I had a great experience; everything was very professional, very organized. Most of all, the course was brimming with ideas. Vance not only had personal knowledge of the events and the major decisions of the Iraq War, but he also had the desire and the ability to teach us. He put in an incredible amount of effort, and it definitely showed in how well the Institute ran.

Absolutely. The military is a subject that society at large doesn’t have a ton of knowledge about. There’s something of a civilian-military divide where it’s hard for civilians to glean information about the inner workings of the military, and colleges increasingly don’t offer comprehensive classes on the military or military history. So an Institute like that where you’re taking a very deep dive and exploring the detailed history of a specific event like the Iraq War is essential. Without looking at those hard facts, we don’t have the information we need to make good decisions as a country.

My interests include government and foreign policy, but I mostly just hope that whatever job I get will allow me to serve the country. Service is what drew me to the military, and I hope to find work that enables me to continue doing that.

One of my professors at Pomona, former Ambassador Cameron Munter, was teaching a course on international crises. He recommended that I apply to the War Studies Program. Following up on my experience at War Studies with “Lessons of the Iraq War” was simply phenomenal. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a course where I learned so much so quickly or been with such committed peers.

What keeps bringing me back to Hertog Programs is the remarkable learning environment. Since the nature of the Programs is so intense, you really get to know people quickly. Everyone is willing to get into difficult discussions about challenging issues because there is already a base of respect among the participants. I don’t know of another program where I could get such a high caliber of instruction on such complex issues.

I studied international relations and Arabic as an undergrad, and went abroad to Oman and Jordan on government scholarships. Directly after doing War Studies, I went to Doha through the Georgetown Qatar Scholarship Program. Right now, I’m in an interdisciplinary Master’s program in defense, development, and diplomacy through a Fulbright Scholarship in the UK.

I do not think I would’ve gotten into my Master’s program, nor would I be doing as well as I am, without the War Studies Program. Before War Studies, I had a bit of a sense of the diplomacy and development side of U.S. foreign policy, but I didn’t even have the vocabulary or any knowledge of the major texts and discussions in the defense realm. My first experience with the Hertog Foundation, and every follow-up course, has given me the vocabulary, background, theoretical knowledge, and confidence to engage these subjects.

There were definitely moments when developing my knowledge of defense sort of felt like learning a foreign language. During War Studies, we visited JCS Chairman General Dempsey, and Generals McChrystal and Petraeus came in to speak with us. We all had these incredibly interesting conversations about where warfare is going, and it dawned on me that even a week prior I wouldn’t have been able to participate in discussions like that because I lacked any background in the subject. To so quickly see the return on investment in starting to develop a language for discussing war was astonishing.

There is a larger flaw in the American education system at the moment, where post-Vietnam, we’re very quick to just say, “War: What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.” But the bottom line is that our country still goes to war. So let’s go to war smarter, only in the cases where we have to. Let’s have a public discussion that goes beyond the dichotomy of war: good or bad. The Hertog Foundation does a great job of filling in those gaps and moving us towards a better way of approaching these issues as a nation.

I think Hertog Programs are very empowering. One of my hesitations going in was that because the Hertog instructors are so involved in policy and have very strong political opinions, they would be pushing a certain viewpoint on the participants—that’s not what I’ve found at all.

One of the main reasons I keep coming back is that even with these extremely intellectual and experienced people leading the courses, you can have a different opinion. What they teach you to do is to develop a method to argue your own position very well. I’ve learned to put forth whatever political opinions I have, consider them rigorously, and defend them intellectually.

Definitely. There are plenty of students who have a great theoretical background in the issues, but without knowing case studies of military history and working through a conflict decision point by decision point, you’ll always be at the hands of someone else’s analysis. Hertog Programs give you the opportunity to not just learn theories, but test them. Having that much raw material of historical knowledge allows you to craft arguments for yourself and not just take someone’s analysis at face value.

The “Lessons of the Iraq War” Institute is a great example. It’s easy to have a sound-bite understanding of that conflict without really thinking through all the decisions, the evidence, the sequence of events, and the actual outcomes of certain policies as that war unfolded. The Institute deepened our knowledge of the Iraq War to such a degree where it’s impossible to walk away without a fully formed analysis of your own.

I’d really like to be involved on the civilian side of defense policy. I’m very committed to public service. I want to have a career where I’m intellectually stimulated, but also contributing to our society. I’ve been extremely fortunate in that the U.S. government has sent me all over the Middle East to learn Arabic on scholarships, so I’m eager to give back. I want to help shape U.S. policy in such a way that promotes both our national security and a positive image for America in the world.

I think I came across it on the email list for The Stanford Review. The Hertog program almost sounded too good to be true. I couldn’t believe that there were opportunities out there like that—let alone that they would even pay you to take them up.

At the time I was halfway through my freshman year at Stanford, and I just thought that the stuff I was learning was interesting and the professors were okay, but it wasn’t what I was expecting: the discoveries that would make me rethink what I had come in with, really challenge myself. Hertog sounded like exactly what I was missing, even at a school like Stanford.

Looking back on it, it doesn’t seem like that much of a surprise that I’m in journalism and working for The Wall Street Journal. I started reading the newspaper very young.

I arrived at Hertog with some vague notion that I would end up working in “business.” I walked into my apartment that summer, and the three other guys living with me—two were entering Ph.D. programs in political philosophy and the other one, the slacker of the bunch I guess, was entering Columbia Law School. They put me—18 years old, the youngest student in the entire program – with the cohort’s three oldest students.

It was such a gift. Hertog opened my mind to what was possible; I saw that ideas aren’t just something you study at university. They can launch and sustain careers. And at the end of summer my roommates joined together to buy me a book, The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom. A summer of Hertog and then reading that book—together the experience changed my life. I realized I was missing something, and it helped me to redirect.

I had some amazing professors who got me to ask questions I hadn’t even considered, that I didn’t know anyone was considering. It had a huge impact on me. Among those I would name Robert Bartlett on Aristotle and Darren Staloff on Lincoln.

Reading “What is Political Philosophy?” by Leo Strauss on the first night and then discussing it with my roommates—that’s the memory that stands out. It’s the intellectual excitement: Keeping the education going over dinner with my roommates, then coming back to the room and still continuing the conversation, and really living with the questions and readings.

I keep in touch with my roommates and several other people in the program, and they’re all over the place – in DC especially, New York City and elsewhere. It’s an amazing network of people.

You get sharp kids who challenge each to think deeper and consider new arguments together. You have teachers who bring the issues alive by treating them as fundamental, as human questions. I didn’t have that elsewhere, and I was grateful to be able to experience in the summer what my university should have given me.

The world of reading great books and the world of opinion journalism are not entirely shut off from each other. I find that the best opinion journalists, even if they don’t advertise how many books they’ve read in every single column, it helps inform their writing and can give them an extra edge.

On a more practical note, when I needed to find a job, one of the first people I emailed and spoke to was [Hertog director] Cheryl Miller, who was helpful in introducing me to people all over New York and D.C., and my phone call with her probably led to five other phone calls.

Another thing is meeting people your age, many of whom are going on to similar activities, like you are going out into the world together. Especially for people like me who are not from New York or DC and are moving there. Just having that network, that can be very helpful, too.

I think something similar—really I hope I can stay at the WSJ. Certainly, something that allows me to edit and write. One of the great things is that there are so many conservative magazines in New York and DC that need people to write and edit and to understand that kind of intellectual landscape and do well in it.

I loved the texts on their own. I thought they were amazing. I loved reading Pascal. I kind of can’t believe I’d never interacted with him as a philosopher before. I’m a scientist, so it’s a totally different perspective, and I was so impressed by his writing, by his life story, and by everything we read—but also by the way Ben [Storey] presented him. I thought he did such a great job, and I became such an admirer.

I really enjoyed Camus, too. I appreciated his clarity and his honesty.

So I loved the texts on their own, but the seminar and the instructors brought them to a whole new level. Existentialism necessarily asks these deeply personal questions, and I loved that the instructors dug into that. They weren’t afraid to lean into it and ask us these personal questions directly.

At one point, Ben asked us: What is it like to be in love? Have you been in love? These deeply personal questions were asked point blank because the nature of the ideas we were wrestling with is so personal. Questions like: Why are we here? What is our purpose? Should I commit suicide today? As Camus would say, the most important philosophical question.

So I loved that. It was so personal, yet so intellectually rich, and it really prompted everyone to do a deep and honest reflection on their lives and how they see the world.

I loved having the two instructors. That was super cool. I loved discussing in class, but I almost wish we had double the class time so we could just watch our instructors talk for an extra hour or something.

They had such different perspectives, but they were both not just thoughtful people—they were also really humble people. That kind of conversation, where people come from different perspectives but approach the topic at hand with humility and expertise, is so rare these days. That was incredibly valuable. I really, really enjoyed that.

Getting into specifics a bit more, especially with Pascal and Camus and how they approached existentialism and absurdism, there was a lot of room for disagreement there. Watching Thomas and Ben figure that out was fascinating—hearing their different perspectives. I really, really enjoyed that element of it.

I think even just the smaller class size, where you’re able to express your own opinions whenever you want and get feedback—that on its own is really valuable.

I have a science background, so that’s never the case. It’s usually a much larger ratio of students to teachers, and you don’t really have ideas—you just kind of regurgitate. So even just the discussion format is really refreshing because it challenges you not just to think critically, but also to think like an individual and think creatively.

Being able to write the paper is an extension of that, obviously, and I really enjoyed doing it. I loved having the excuse, almost, to dig into every line of text and really investigate at that level for the sake of a paper. I don’t think I—at least I don’t really get the opportunity to do that otherwise. So I really enjoyed it.

In my paper, I was supposed to discuss why Pascal thought the sciences were vain, even though he was obviously a spectacular scientist. I kind of deserved the question, being, I think, the only scientist in the class, so I didn’t mind it.

It’s a topic I like to think about anyway, and I found it really rewarding to think about from Pascal’s perspective. Pascal just destroys science. It was really entertaining to read generally, but I was also specifically looking for it.

Pascal tears down all the ways in which science can fail, all the ways in which we rely on human institutions that are fallible, and all the ways our efforts are, in a sense, for nothing—that the slightest inconvenience, the slightest buzzing noise, or the slightest change in our surroundings can distract this great human mind that we hold up to be invincible.

So I loved that. I loved how he talked about it, and I had a really good time writing about that, and also comparing his opinions and thoughts about science and the capacities of the human mind to some other writers.

I think the program is amazing. I think it’s such a fantastic opportunity for people who don’t normally get to learn about these topics, like me, to dig deep and engage with experts in the area.

It’s also a chance to be surrounded by other really thoughtful people who aren’t just open to learning or interested in learning, but are also willing to spend their extra time learning about these subjects—not for class, not for a grade, but because of their own genuine interest.

So it really is a beautiful synthesis of a lot of amazing parts.

I heard about the Political Studies Program through professors in Boston College’s Political Science Department. It struck me that that despite varying political beliefs and principles, each spoke highly of the Program. One professor said that the students in seminars at Hertog are “among the best of the best.” Such high praise paired with the possibility of an intensive study of politics and political theory motivated me to apply.

I was impressed by the mixture of ideas and activities at the Political Studies Program. We studied materials ranging from the Students for a Democratic Society’s Port Huron Statement to Augustine’s City of Godwith outstanding professors and visiting lecturers. Justice Scalia taught us about philosophy applied to law, and Marine Corps General James Mattis explained that duty often supersedes politics. We visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum and the National Gallery, we participated in a staff ride at Gettysburg, and we got to know one another and our nation’s capital while wandering the monuments. The Political Studies Program provided a wide-ranging education, much of which took place outside of the classroom.

Yes. Aside from the network that Hertog offers, the Program provides a schooling in political philosophy and political history. Both are essential to public policy, since it orders human affairs. One cannot hope to craft good policy without asking big questions, understanding what government and politics are capable of, and more importantly, what they’re not capable of.

They’re top-notch. Part of the reason they’re so good is that the Hertog Foundation’s educational mission is simply to form more thoughtful citizens. As a result, Hertog selects students who are bright, driven, and intellectually curious, but who possess a range of beliefs and pursuits. I have no doubt that some of the people I’ve studied with at Hertog will influence the civic, intellectual, and political life of the United States for the better.

I hope I’ll end up at the intersection of economics and political theory. Each subject is interesting in its own right, but I think it’s important to blend the disciplines because economics provides a sanity check on policy-making, and political theory provides the tools with which to examine the normative assumptions of economics.

I first heard about Hertog when I was in DC working at AEI. I didn’t really get the opportunity to study political philosophy during college or high school, and I also have a deep interest in public policy. I really loved how we spent the first week of the course looking at foundational and philosophical topics, and over the second week, we delved into policy topics like K-12 education and economic and social mobility.

I’ve never been in an intellectual environment where I felt the need to just sit back and listen to what everyone else had to say. Obviously, the instructors for the seminars are amazing, but I really think it’s being in a room with other concerned, engaged people that makes the entire experience worth it.

It helps so much that Hertog programs occur in Washington, DC. A lot of political science and public policy programs at the undergraduate level, or even at the graduate level, are very disengaged with what’s going on in DC. Hertog’s programs do a very good job of bringing you into the center of things, but also making you dive very deeply.

Hertog creates an environment where you can’t just skim the text in order to get along with the bare minimum. You really have to be willing to engage. Afterwards, you have a sense of confidence and excitement that Hertog has instilled in you. I definitely wish I had gotten the Hertog experience when I was a freshman or a sophomore versus when I was a senior. A lot of trying to figure out what I wanted to do and similar college-career struggles would have been far easier if I’d had the foundational experience with Hertog earlier.

I really love public policy, and I want to focus on taking a lot of the big ideas and finding a way to bring that to a more grassroots level. I want to find a way to make the policy work that I think a lot of great people are doing – especially those I met during my time in “American Democratic Capitalism” – more relevant and more useful to people outside of the Beltway corridor.

I was a sophomore at St. John’s College when I first heard about Hertog. My freshman Greek professor, Adam Schulman, nominated me for the Hertog Political Studies Program. I went into it being interested in the classics; I didn’t have any political background before that.

What drew me to the Program was the Machiavelli, the Aristotle, and the Great Books angle. That’s what I had already been studying at St. John’s and what I was most attracted to. And, of course, the chance to study with [Professors Amy and Leon] Kass was really exciting for me. So that was my pull, and all the political stuff was new to me.

Something I will never forget from Political Studies is the week we were reading Machiavelli. Henry Kissinger was coming to lecture, and I got to give an introduction about Machiavelli and Henry Kissinger in front of Henry Kissinger. That was amazing to me, and is something I will never forget. That class was one of my favorites I’ve ever been in.

At Hertog, the intellectual experience with your peers is also impressive. I met my best friend at Hertog; she was one of my roommates at Political Studies. I’m also close with a good number of other alumni from the 2010 class.

My time at The Weekly Standard was rooted in Hertog. I met the editor, Bill Kristol, at a Political Studies lecture on Tocqueville that he gave. The Political Studies scholars were given copies of The Weekly Standard, and that was my first time seeing it.

After reading The Weekly Standard, I knew that I wanted to work there. Meeting him through Hertog gave me the opportunity to ask for an internship. I don’t think I would’ve been able to do that without Hertog. This was my first exposure to that world, and I kind of ended up in journalism as an accident after the fact of wanting to work for Bill Kristol.

Hertog gave me a lot of great connections that I’m so glad to have had, especially in terms of friends, teachers, and mentors. After The Weekly Standard, I got a fellowship with the Tikvah Fund. That fellowship put me at The Wall Street Journal working for Bret Stephens, which was a wonderful experience. I helped work on a book he was writing that’s just about to come out.

I think because you have direct engagement with this high caliber of teachers, and just by virtue of being immersed in the DC world from the very beginning, Hertog is a great place to go if you’re interested in public policy.

Especially if you’re politically interested, but you’re not exactly sure what aspect of politics you want to get into. Whether it’s political journalism, think tanks, Hill work, or diplomacy, at Hertog you get a chance to preview all the different political lives at once. That’s something you really can’t beat, particularly if you go in like I did with a purely academic background.

I’d still like to be involved in politics and still writing in whatever capacity I can make a living at.

A friend of mine at Georgetown from political theory circles was an alum of Political Studies, and he suggested that the Program was something I would really benefit from and enjoy. At the time, I had recently transferred schools within Georgetown from security studies to political philosophy, and Hertog looked like a chance to delve deeper into the examination of big political ideas. That aspect of the Program was definitely attractive to me, and it proved to be really valuable.

Eventually I want to go to graduate school, and ultimately I see myself teaching at the university level. Political Studies was my first glimpse of what a life in academia would look like. Spending time around graduate students and other university students interested in entering the academy was certainly informative and influential.

Right now, I’m working for a research team that looks at government affairs from a business perspective. Since I was a government major in school, working in government affairs now lines up well. But it was my time at Hertog that really put me on the first path towards looking at politics writ large.

During Political Studies, I spent one of the weeks in the bioethics course. I found that really wrestling with questions of ethics and morality and the way that plays into policy was extremely valuable. I had never been exposed to such drastically different perspectives.

We had people there with views across the entire political spectrum, which I think is one of Hertog’s biggest accomplishments. Getting people who think completely different things into the same room and opening a dialogue is hard, but it was a hallmark of Political Studies. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people with whom to flesh out those ideas.

First and foremost, Hertog gives people the opportunity to think about politics for an extended period of time with other people who are also interested in doing the same thing. Though you have a similar experience in universities, the mindset Hertog puts you in is specifically defined by developing a reverence for old texts while also looking at contemporary issues.

The juxtaposition of those two activities is critical, and I don’t think students can get that in everyday college classes where you’re either focused on reading Plato in Ancient Greek or reading The Washington Post. Being able to do both at the same time, and furthermore, being expected to do both at the same time, is very important.

Hertog is great for people interested in journalism. The crux of journalism is writing about ideas, and Hertog gets you thinking about big ideas. Political Studies also gives you exposure to important organizations and the different parts of DC, which is definitely beneficial.

Hopefully by that time I’ll have finished a Ph.D. and won’t be struggling through lonely nights with Rousseau and ramen. The actual teaching part I would be willing to wait for—first, I want to either travel and explore cultures and political issues through different lenses, or work in a specific sector like education or technology.

Hands-on experience will give me better sense of how to look at certain topics, and thus enable me to teach others how to look at them. Whatever happens, I want to be reading good things, and talking to good people about them.

My academic advisor and mentor, Brigadier General (retired) Charles F. Brower IV, heard about ISW’s first ever Hertog War Studies Program through Dr. Kim Kagan, and strongly encouraged me to apply. His recommendation would have been reason enough, but after I read over the program’s curriculum, I recognized immediately that it had the potential to be a key educational opportunity in my career.

I commissioned as an Infantry Officer in the Army in the spring of 2014. I’ve had the privilege of seeing a lot of new places across the country and around the world by jumping out of a C-17 with some of our nation’s best.

The Hertog War Studies Program allowed me to access some of the greatest military leadership of our generation in a small-group setting prior to my commissioning. The curriculum delved deeply into a subject matter usually taught only to officers far beyond my current grade and experience level. I would say it placed me far beyond my peers in terms of knowledge of the nature of warfare, civil-military relations, and technology’s role in shaping conflict, just to name a few. It was a game-changer.

It was without a doubt the most influential and beneficial learning experience I’ve had thus far, despite the fact that it was only two weeks long. It continues to shape the way I view warfare and combat leadership in general; I still have my workbook and look over my notes frequently.  The other participants were brilliant, and the level of instruction was exemplary. My only regret is that I’ve not been able to experience anything like it since.

I consider it to have been central to my personal and professional development. As an aspiring member of the Armed Services, there simply is no better way to spend two weeks. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

For the time being, I plan to stay in the Army for as long as I have the privilege of doing so. In any event, I will stay as active in the Hertog community.

One of my professors at the University of Chicago, Robert Pape, recommended I apply to the War Studies program. The University of Chicago Scholarship Office said that based on my interests in great power politics and political thought that the War Studies program would be a strong fit.

Subsequently, I participated in the Hertog Seminar on “Nixon in China” and the Security and Strategy Seminar Series on China. I have also attended War Studies Advanced Courses such as “Civil Military Relations” and “Russian Hybrid Warfare.” I could not have asked for a better experience in these programs. They pushed me to develop the rigor of my ideas and built my personal network of like-minded young professionals.

I studied political science at the University of Chicago with a special focus on the foreign policy strategy of the late Hapsburg monarchy. One of my most formative experiences was being sent to the NATO Center of Excellence Defense Against Terrorism as an instructor for a weeklong program to bring social science research into the discussion with security practitioners. It convinced me that I want to continue to operate at the nexus of research and security.

Hertog programs have been instrumental in my professional development. The War Studies and China programs sharpened my ambitions and gave me analytical tools to succeed in my work and school environments.

The War Studies Program took me beyond being a foreign policy hobbyist. The War Studies Program conducts a holistic discussion of the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war. From close readings of theory of war to simulated debates over post-war doctrinal evolution, students leave with a deeper understanding of the concepts at work.

What most stood out to me was the War Studies instructors’ uncompromising approach to intellectual honesty. Every idea would be subject to intense scrutiny and every theory would be applied to unusual and difficult test cases. We discussed what Clausewitz would say about the Gulf War air campaign or the Russian Deep Battle doctrine. In subsequent experiences in school and work, I have had to work with similar frameworks and I always go back to the approaches taught in the War Studies Program.

The Hertog programs have helped more than anything else to keep me sharp and critical. It is all too easy to slip into comfortable opinions and routines, but the Hertog classes consistently force me to engage with new and diverging viewpoints and push me out of my comfort zone. The ability to engage with such an intelligent student body on such important issues is unparalleled.

Absolutely. My impression is that while many people are nominally interested in foreign policy and security studies issues, they are limited by resources which only scrape the surface. Hertog programs are unique in their ability to drive students deeper into these important topics.

The “Nixon and China” class I took under Dan Blumenthal is a great example of Hertog’s value. Instead of laying out a single viewpoint about a difficult issue, the class used a primary-source focus which forced students to develop their own opinions. Reading documents such as Kissinger’s transcripts and Nixon’s op-eds makes clear the enormous complexity of the decisions involved. For a generation of young people interested in participating in similarly momentous challenges, this is an invaluable experience.

I want blend my security studies and technology policy backgrounds to work on America’s technology competition with China. One lesson that Hertog teaches you is that competition has many faces and changes form throughout history. Today, it seems that technology competition will be a key foreign policy issue which spans political, economic, and military domains. I would like to work for a US government body such as CFIUS, BIS, or OSTP to help America design a technology strategy which protects our core national interests.

My political science professor at Davidson College, Peter Ahrensdorf, encouraged me to apply. The Program looked like a fantastic opportunity to study both the ideas animating politics and the way politics actually work. I find that it’s really easy to get lost in the ideas, so studying the practical unfolding of politics was a good balance to the theoretical. The Program looked like a great opportunity to see political theory and practice meet and inform one another in a really fruitful way.

I studied political philosophy at Davidson, and I wanted to come to DC to really understand the practice of politics. The Advanced Institute [“Transformation of the American Government” with Christopher DeMuth] certainly helped me see some of that. At that time I was a reporter at the Washington Free Beacon, covering government oversight, bureaucracy, and the institutions of government. Getting to study those things with him was immeasurably useful.

For example, he helped me understand what leveraging means for banks. Leveraging is a central concept of finance, and he spent awhile helping us figure out exactly what the ramifications of leveraging are. That knowledge was crucial to my understanding of the 2008 financial crisis and the consequent legislation that we’ve had.

Political Studies helped me get a foundation in DC and meet people like Bill Kristol. The Hertog Foundation got me grounded in the practicality of politics while at the same time keeping me in touch with the animating fundamental ideas of our traditions. I’m interested in contributing to the health and function of our society in a way that goes beyond just reporting ideas—National Affairs does much more than just report ideas, and Hertog has provided me with the tools be able to excel at doing more.

I was really impressed with the quality of my peers. The rigor and sophistication with which they were able to approach texts, and the lenses through which they viewed current events were challenging and extremely valuable to my own intellectual growth. In terms of instructors, getting to read Machiavelli’s The Prince in conjunction with his Discourses on Livy with Professor Nathan Tarcov was eye-opening. He fleshed out the argument for republicanism in Machiavelli, which I hadn’t seen when reading The Prince previously. Approaching Machiavelli using that lens was illuminating.

What I’ve most observed is that Hertog Programs are a rigorous study of the ideas that bring life to politics. They’re not technocratic, but they’re not too abstract either. That’s the essence of political philosophy. Hertog classes are an attempt to draw out the wisdom from great texts and not necessarily force them to directly apply to any one modern issue, but instead let them shape a broad picture of how society and politics should function. That’s the real advantage of Hertog programs.

Specifically, the Advanced Institutes are focused in such a way that they can provide very useful background and contextual information for contemporary issues. In a broader sense, the Programs provide a much larger framework for understanding the limits and constraints of politics as well as the ideas underpinning modern government. Journalism at its best is able to reflect on the traditions and ideas that have brought us to where we are today, and then place the current issues in that context.

I would like to stay involved in politics in some capacity. I don’t know if it’ll be here in DC or in journalism necessarily, but politics is immensely important. I think I’m well prepared to do a number of things; Hertog has certainly contributed to that.

I heard about the Constitutional Studies Program from a professor during my senior year of undergrad. And by that point, I knew that I was going to law school in the fall. So I had one summer left to really get things in order before I hit the ground running as a 1L.

And as I was thinking through what I wanted to get out of that summer, I realized that I really valued a chance to ground myself in the philosophical underpinnings of our constitutional system. I really wanted to make sure that I had a good understanding of why our legal system is the way that it is and what do we mean when we say that the people are the lawmakers? Like how do we approach disagreement about what the law is?

And as I was looking through the course selections at Hertog and reading through what the Constitutional Studies Program entailed, I just really felt that that was a great chance to have that experience before I hit the ground running at law school.

We talked a lot about originalism and its different “flavors”—for example, the differences between Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas—and how those approaches have played out in modern society. We were fortunate to hear from judges and scholars who defended originalism, but we also heard from the other side of the debate, including a scholar who strongly supports living constitutionalism.

What really stayed with me was how this challenged my instinctive reactions to Supreme Court decisions. I had been following the Court’s term closely, reading opinions as they came out, and it was easy to think: “I don’t like this decision, so it must be wrong,” or “I like the outcome, so it must be correct.” The program pushed me to step back and ask not just what the outcome was, but how the Court got there. What interpretive approach did the judges use? What does that say about how we understand the law and the Constitution’s higher purposes?

That shift has been really important for me as I begin reading cases as a law student. It has shaped how I think about constitutional law, especially from a natural law perspective. We started the course on a very abstract, philosophical level—asking what kinds of reasoning and ideas informed the Constitution. It’s not just a document we happened to inherit 250 years ago; at its best, it reflects higher ideals that the framers tried to articulate.

At the same time, we discussed how the system aspires to those ideals but doesn’t always live up to them. For example, we talked about slavery as a fundamental contradiction of the principles in the United States Declaration of Independence, and about Abraham Lincoln’s role in confronting that tension.

All of this has shaped how I think about the law—not just as a mechanism for order, but as something aimed at promoting human flourishing and higher goods….

One of the guest lectures, in particular, inspired me to pursue questions I didn’t even realize I had. I came in with a general background knowledge of many topics, but the way certain issues were framed—like debates between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, or even the question of which side “won”—was entirely new to me.

That exposure gave me the language and tools to articulate my own questions. In fact, just this week I attended an originalism debate where scholars and cases from that lecture came up, and I felt equipped to engage in a way I wouldn’t have before.

The community was also a huge part of the experience. From day one, we had shared interests—not necessarily agreement on specific policies, but a common commitment to exploring these ideas. That created a real sense of camaraderie.

Even early in the morning, when we were half-awake over pastries, someone might crack a niche joke about substantive due process from the reading, and everyone would find it hilarious. That kind of shared intellectual culture was genuinely delightful.

More importantly, people were curious and willing to learn from one another. Conversations didn’t stop when class ended—they carried over into meals and informal hangouts.

One moment that really stands out was when a group of us went to the monuments in Washington, D.C. While we were walking, someone brought up Griswold v. Connecticut—the birth control case—and we ended up having a long, thoughtful discussion about substantive due process.

It’s the kind of topic that can be controversial in everyday settings, but everyone felt comfortable sharing their perspective and asking genuine questions. It was a powerful reminder of what civil discourse could look like.

The relationships have lasted beyond the program. I’ve stayed in touch with several people who are now starting at law schools across the country—we’ve been texting each other encouragement and even talking about reconnecting at future events. I definitely expect some of these friendships to be long-term.

For anyone thinking about applying to the Constitutional Studies Program, the most helpful question to ask is: What do I want out of this next stage of life? Not in a narrow, career-focused sense, but in terms of what skills you want to develop and what ideas you want to explore?

If you’re interested in growing your ability to engage in civic dialogue—especially through the lens of the Constitution—then this program is an excellent fit.

I’d also borrow a point from Mary Elizabeth Halper, who spoke to us about the Socratic seminar format. She described it as an exercise in self-government—a way of practicing the very skills necessary for a healthy society.

If that idea appeals to you—engaging deeply with foundational questions about the rule of law and the Constitution—then I would strongly encourage you to apply.

It was really a treat to get to meet people from all walks of life, from schools all over the country, who brought really different perspectives to the practical security issues we were discussing….

This was a group that represented colleges from all over the country, different disciplines—mechanical engineers, political scientists, economists, technologists—and different political ideologies. So it made for a really, really rich discussion.

There was all sorts of sparring going on over questions like: Is India truly going to be the next great power? If so, is that good for the United States or bad? How ought the United States respond? How is China responding? What military technology should the United States be investing in as a source of enduring advantage? What should the U.S. trade relationship with China look like?

These are questions that policymakers are wrestling with right now. So it was really fun to get to throw around ideas in a very intellectually free and open environment with my peers. And it definitely challenged me to think in different ways. It definitely changed my thinking about the influence of artificial intelligence on the U.S.-China tech competition, and about the relationship with India.

So we spent a good bit of time talking about the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in the 1970s during the program. And this was something that I think those of us—the students in the room—came into thinking of as, well, this is the classic example of the Chinese military not doing its job very well, of losing a war.

And over the course of those couple hours that we discussed it, Dan really deconstructed that notion that we had brought into the discussion—the preconceived notion—and showed us that actually, despite what we might call tactical or operational failures, it had achieved its political objective, as far as the People’s Republic of China was concerned.

And so, one, it encouraged us—Dan encouraged us—to think about war as a political phenomenon, not just a sort of technical-military thing, but also to think about how China thinks about security problems. And that, I think, is emblematic of what made this program so great: we did not come in to think about China from the conventional American perspective. The bulk of what we learned was how Chinese leaders—how the Chinese military—think about the problems China faces, and what lessons U.S. policymakers ought to draw from that.

So this was a guest speaker discussion with Dr. Derek Scissors from AEI, who came to talk about the economic piece of the China challenge. And I think that was something that really challenged the way that I thought about things, and I think it challenged the way a lot of students thought about things.

Because the thesis of Dr. Scissors’ remarks is that, sure, if you look at Western economists’ favorite macroeconomic indicators, no, China is not going to be doing that well into the future. It’s got a lot of debt, population decline, problems with the availability of clean water necessary for high-tech industry….

But if you look at China’s political goals—and of course economics, like military strategy, is at the end of the day a function of a state’s political goals—the Chinese are actually doing quite well. They are obtaining leverage over the world. They are supplanting U.S. primacy in the global economic order.

And so he challenged us to think beyond what I learned in my freshman-year economics class back at Berkeley, and think about economics as one element of a broader political contest between two systems: the Western liberal order—advanced by the United States and its allies and partners—and this new alternative order that the People’s Republic of China thinks will be more advantageous for its interests.

One of the things I liked about the reader was that we read multiple excerpts from history books about the same thing. There were, I think, excerpts from three or four different books about Deng Xiaoping’s foreign policy, particularly as it related to the invasion of Vietnam, but also how Deng Xiaoping viewed his strategic moment in the 1970s and 80s.

And I thought that was really quite interesting. I don’t often find myself sitting around reading histories of the same thing at the same time, but you got a lot of different perspectives—because they were written at different periods, or because the authors had access to different texts, or because the authors had different implicit biases or preferences for some historical sources over others.

And so I think it was really interesting to compare information about the same thing conveyed in different ways. And it made the discussion of that history a lot richer in the classroom, because people could point to different things from the texts and amalgamate the knowledge together into a more complete picture—one that accounted for what early historians thought and what revisionists have since challenged.

One is it’s small and Socratic. Most of the time was not spent in lecture; most of the time was spent discussing the concepts. There were times where Dan would intervene to correct course or give us new information—because he is the subject matter expert—but he gave us a lot of latitude to think critically and wrestle with the ideas ourselves.

I came from Berkeley, which is a large public school, and I can count on one hand the number of classes I had that were smaller than 20 people. So this was really a treat—an intimate Socratic experience.

The second big difference was that it was very policy-oriented. A lot of schools, for good reason, focus on theory and history. But here, we were constantly asking: what do these lessons mean for policymakers? What does this mean for contemporary challenges?

All the speakers were practitioners—people who understood how the U.S. government works and what policy solutions are feasible. That grounded the conversation in very practical questions: What does the policy look like? What do you tell the Secretary of Commerce? The Secretary of Energy?

That can be rare on college campuses, and it’s incredibly valuable.

This is a program where if you come and you’re curious and you want to learn something new, and you do the reading and come ready to discuss and think critically, you will excel. It didn’t require a great deal of knowledge of arcane Department of Defense acronyms or detailed history or language experience. All that it asked from us was openness of mind and a willingness to learn and engage with our peers.

And I think that was phenomenal.

So if that sounds appealing—if you’re interested in wrestling with really important policy questions—I think this program is for you, and I highly recommend applying.