Naval War College Associate Prof (and Centcom Guest Lecturer) Launches New Blog

Posted Jan 4, 2012 by Howard Altman

Updated Jan 4, 2012 at 08:44 AM

One of the many great things about my beat covering the military is having frequent discussions about foreign policy and national security with some of the most knowledgeable people around.

Unlike most reporters who cover this subject, I have pretty strict rules forbidding the use of anonymice, which, though frustrating at times, I am down with. So I expand my horizons and look for people who can offer perspectives on the record.

One of those sources, an associate professor of National Security Decision Making at the Naval War College in Newport, just launched her own blog – hayatalvi.org.

I met Hayat Alvi at a USF symposium on Af/Pak relations and, like a lot of people at that conference, she has helped me provide additional perspective on matters in the Centcom AOR. A USF grad herself, Alvi is a regular visitor to MacDill Air Force Base, providing a perspective on the AOR to the folks at Centcom, who run military affairs in the region.

Alvi also write occasional op-ed pieces for the Tribune.

Here’s how she describes herself:

I have years of teaching, researching, and writing experience within the United States as well as overseas.  As an American teaching overseas, I’ve had a unique multicultural perspective in and out of the classroom.  I have taught at the American University in Cairo, Egypt; I was the Director of the International Studies program at Arcadia University, Glenside, Pennsylvania; I teach a graduate online course for Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont; and currently I am an Associate Professor at the US Naval War College, Newport, RI.*

In her most recent post, she excoriates the pending legitimization of the Taliban:

This is a very dangerous precedent, because it symbolizes what I call the calcification of the mind.  The Taliban are the enemies of knowledge.  Their empowerment, or return to empowerment, even if it’s limited, does not bode well for the future of Afghanistan, which, in my view, will fall back to square one.  No doubt, some Taliban are already congratulating themselves for their “victory” in gaining even an ounce of legitimacy, just by virtue of being recognized as an entity with which presumably peace talks can happen.  Once again, no one is thinking about the ideological and developmental disaster this portends for the Af-Pak region.

No matter what she writes or says, Alvi is always quick to point out that the opinios are hers, not those of the NWC.