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Mahan Scholars ARP

The Mahan Scholars Program is a year-long, seminar-based course of study focused on deterrence and related concepts at the strategic level as well as their applications to and implications for the nuclear realm. Depending on student cohort composition and interest, the program may also examine additional domains and/or tools of strategic importance, such as space, cyberspace, and/or special operations.

Director, Mahan Scholars

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About The Mahan Scholars Program

The academic work of the Mahan Scholars Program is focused primarily at the strategic level, involving a rich mixture of sources and activities. Students selected for the Mahan Scholars Program at the start of each academic year spend the fall in seminar working through key concepts and debates, the winter in seminar shaping and starting their individual research projects, and the spring primarily engaged in independent research and writing under the Director’s guidance to complete their final 30-page paper and associated products.

Mahan Scholars also have the opportunity to participate in a wargame of a regional contingency in a potentially nuclear environment, to go on funded class and individual research trips in furtherance of their projects, and to brief their work to relevant leaders at the end of the academic year.

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Daniel J. Leonard

Deputy Chair | Strategic and Operational Research Department

CDR Leonard grew up in Holliston, MA, and graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1995. He was commissioned through Officer Candidate School in 1997 and earned his wings in 1998. As a Naval Aviator, he has amassed over 2,200 hours and was designated a SH-60B Weapons and Tactics Instructor. He graduated from the United States Naval War College with a Master's Degree in National Security and Strategic Studies (with highest distinction) in 2011, and earned a Master's in Business Administration from Creighton University in 2017. CDR Leonard is married and has two children.

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Chris C. Demchak

Professor | Strategic and Operational Research Department

With engineering, economics, and comparative complex organization theory/political science degrees, Dr. Chris C. Demchak is the RDML Grace M. Hopper Professor of Cyber Security and Director, Center for Cyber Conflict Studies (C3S), U.S. Naval War College. In her research on cyberspace as a globally shared insecure complex ‘substrate’, Demchak takes a systemic approach to emergent structures, comparative institutional evolution, adversaries’ use of systemic cybered tools, virtual worlds/gaming for operationalized organizational learning, and designing systemic resilience against imposed surprise.

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