Whitaker Chair in Security Studies
As one of PSSI´s principal benefactors, Dr. James Q. Whitaker has long dedicated his formidable policy-related talents and financial resources to expanding the work of non-profit, non-governmental policy groups and academic institutions in the US and abroad in the areas of security studies and free market economics. Dr. Whitaker helped launch PSSI´s Security Scholars Program in 2002 and helped ensure that its courses properly emphasize the connectivity between economic freedom and national security.
In 2004, Dr. Whitaker provided a generous grant to establish a Chair in Security Studies at the prestigious Charles University in Prague. Since that time, the university, with the assistance of PSSI, has decided to offer an undergraduate major and
Master´s Degree Program in security studies, one of the first of their kind in Central and Eastern Europe. Appropriately, PSSI requested that this Chair, within the American Studies Department of Charles University, be named after Dr. James Q. Whitaker for his visionary, ongoing support of this critical, 21st century discipline.
In the past three years, under the James Q. Whitaker Chair, the Faculty of Social Sciences has offered several undergraduate and graduate courses including: Geostrategic Importance of Central Europe ; Introduction to Strategy and National Security ; Questions in U.S. Post-Cold-War Security Policy and Current Problems in Global Security. The curriculum has been prepared by Prof. Otto Pick, formerly the Deputy Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Director of the Institute of International Relations, Prague.
