Clements Center for National Security

Congratulations to Clements Center Postdoctoral Fellow Daniel Chardell on his appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the United States Naval Academy. (USNA).

At USNA, Daniel will specialize in the history of post-1945 U.S. foreign relations, bringing his expertise in American foreign policy, the Middle East, and international order to the classroom.

We are proud to celebrate Daniel’s next step and grateful for his contributions to the Clements Center community.

Summer Beyond Borders is underway. This week, a group of Clements Center students arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania, to begin Baltic Perspectives: History, Geopolitics, and Security in the 20th and 21st Centuries.

Over fifteen days across Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, students will study the region where the history of the Cold War, Soviet occupation, and contemporary NATO defense meet. The itinerary moves from lectures at Vilnius University to a visit with U.S. forces at the Pabrade training area, from a decommissioned Soviet missile base to meetings at three national defense and foreign ministries.

Follow along as the group travels north toward Riga and Tallinn over the coming two weeks.

From the lecture hall to the field—some recent sites from the Clements Center Korea May Term.

Haedong Yonggungsa Temple: a Buddhist temple originally built in 1376 during the Goryeo dynasty, set on cliffs overlooking the East Sea just outside Busan.

Gamcheon Cultural Village: a hillside neighborhood in Busan that developed during the Korean War as a refugee settlement and has remained a residential community ever since.

United Nations Memorial Cemetery, Busan: the only United Nations-designated cemetery in the world. It contains the graves of soldiers from 11 countries who died during the Korean War.

Several days in Hiroshima, midway through the Clements Center's Korea May Term.

Students walked the grounds of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and spent time in the Peace Memorial Museum. They held presentations at sites across the Peace Memorial Park, among them the Memorial Tower to the Mobilized Students, a monument to the schoolchildren sent to wartime labor who did not return, and the Cenotaph for the Korean Victims, which marks the tens of thousands of Koreans who were in the city on August 6, 1945.

The program continues this week in Okinawa before returning to Seoul.