December 8, 2021
Dr. Keith Antonia, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and University of North Georgia (UNG) associate vice president of military programs, and Dr. Edward Mienie, executive director and associate professor for UNG's strategic and security studies degree program, know the crucial role higher education plays in all aspects of national security.
For this reason, UNG will host the 2022 Institute for Leadership and Strategic Studies (ILSS) Symposium April 6-7 at the Convocation Center and the theme for the event is "United States Higher Education and National Security."
UNG's ILSS, College of Education, and strategic and security studies program are partnering with the Army War College, the Association of the United States Army, and the Army Strategist Association to host the symposium.
"This symposium will explore ways in which higher education serves to strengthen the many facets of our nation's security through the lens of the human security theoretical framework and all its components of personal, community, political, food, health-care, economic, and environmental security, as well as others such as energy and military security," Mienie said.
Retired Gen. Robert Brooks Brown and Dr. Larry Wortzel are two of the keynote speakers for the event.
A four-star general, Brown completed more than 38 years of service with a final assignment as commanding general for U.S. Army Pacific, the Army's largest service component command, responsible for 106,000 soldiers and Department of the Army civilians across the Indo-Pacific region.
Brown is a 1981 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he commissioned as an Infantry second lieutenant.
His assignments took him across the globe, including deployments in support of Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti, Operation Joint Forge in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and two combat deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Wortzel had a distinguished 32-year military career, retiring as an Army colonel in 1999.
A graduate of the U.S. Army War College, he earned his Master of Arts and Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii and his Bachelor of Arts from Columbus College in Georgia. His last military position was director of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College.
U.S. and international scholars and graduate and undergraduate students are invited to submit abstracts for papers on topics related to the symposium theme. Abstracts (500 words) and a short biography (150 words) are due by Feb. 1 and can be sent to keith.antonia@ung.edu. Conference panelists will be selected from the submitted abstracts. They will be notified of acceptance by March 1.
Symposium participants may submit articles for possible inclusion in a peer-reviewed symposium monograph to be published by the University of North Georgia Press. The deadline for article submissions will be July 7.