 Mae'n gweithio, yn fwyaf, ym mwyaf, mae'n gweithio ond wedi'u chi'n gweithio'r event Feidiant. Mae'n gweithio'n gweithio ond, mae'n gweithio'n gweithio. Felly, mae'n amlwg Chris Hobbs. Felly, mae'r profiad o Lŵn Cynllun Argymau Cymru yn y Ffartmando Bwysig a ymddioledur Gwyl Gysgwyrd Gweithredu Fyrddolol Cymru. Felly, mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. I want to thank Lauren and her team for all the work that they've done in organising this event. I also want to thank all of you for coming. So, what we see up on the slide is the rough agenda for this evening. We're running a little bit behind, but I don't think that matters. We'll have plenty of time for networking and informal discussion a little bit later. So, we're going to start with a couple of talks. And for this, we really just want to give some time outlining some of the different things that we've been working on at Chies and the broader school of security studies. We're then going to pass over to Professor John Byw and Professor John Gearsen. Professor John Byw is a foreign policy adviser to the Prime Minister and has very kindly come to speak to us today to talk a little bit about the role that academics can play in government when it comes to policy. Following the talks, and that will last to about 7.30 or so, I'm going to invite all of you next door where we have a number of research centres and research groups in the School of Security Studies who are setting up to talk about their different activities. And here's John. Thanks for joining us. And a lot of these also sort of relate to working with practitioners which is really the focus of this evening. Okay, so just very quickly in terms of the first set of speakers. So, in addition to myself, also we'll be hearing from Dr Hugh Davies who's head of online programmes at the Institute and Dr Kate Utting who's head of professional defence and security education. I should say that Hugh Kate and myself have been working to establish the Institute over the last 18 months, but we're really very ably supported by colleagues across the whole school, so from the Department of War Studies, from the Department of Defence Studies, academics and researchers that have helped to get involved in our different activities and products that we'll be talking about. We're also indebted to the professional services team in the School of Security Studies, as well as central units such as CAPED. They've really helped to take some of the ideas which we have off the ground and turn them into some of the things that you'll see today. Okay, so just firstly in terms of the big picture vision for Chias. So here we're very much focused on engaging practitioners, those that are working directly on defence and security issues, as well as those that may have an interest as part of their job role. So this is something that's not new to us in the School of Security Studies. We've been doing this type of work really for many decades, but what we've really looked to try and do in the Institute is to try and innovate in a way that allows us to reach people that ordinarily wouldn't necessarily have time alongside their busy J jobs to engage with us when it comes to educational programmes and also are up with their activities. We're also interested in developing opportunities for direct engagement when it comes to informing both policy and practice, and we'll show some examples of how we've been looking to do that in the coming slides. And then just finally, and this is more something that is an internal focus for us, some of the things we'll be talking about are relatively new for the college as a whole and we're really interested in sharing and learning lessons from others that are working within this space, and it's really great to see colleagues from across the faculty in the broader college here at this launch event. Okay, so in terms of some principles, in terms of how we've approached and to start with the new educational offerings that we've been putting together, so here we've really looked to consider the flexible accumulation of credits that can be built up slowly over time and then cashed in for different types of postgraduate award, be those postgraduate certificates, postgraduate diploma, or even up to a full MA. So here we've really looked to build on the new King's College framework for stackable awards, which was launched just a couple of years ago, and we've looked to build programs on top of that. Incorporating a number of things which allow practitioners and others to take advantage of education that may already have conducted through the recognition of prior credits. So, for example, academic courses taken here at King's or other universities that can be used as part of a future award. Also, recognition of prior formal learning. So, for example, professional development courses that might have been taken but never formally accredited, as well as recognition of prior experiential learning or RPE. So these really sort of relates to people that have spent, say, 20 years in a government role where they've done a lot of things that you would actually sort of equate to learning outcomes on some of our modules. So, hey, we've looked to sort of draw that experience across so that can be considered for credits again to an award. More broadly, as part of this, we've really looked to be interdisciplinary where we can, recognising that today's complex security and defence challenges require a range of different perspectives and approaches. We're very interdisciplinary in the school already. We've sought to increase this through parking internally with different units within the university, as well as external partners. And we'll see some examples of projects of that end in a moment. We're also interested in bridging the gap between theory and practice. And here, across a number of our programmes, we have this quite unique approach of co-developing and co-delivering with practitioners, be those in government, the military or industry. So, here I just wanted to show you all where Kia sits within the broader college and within the broader school of security studies. So, again, we were set up just a couple of years ago now. We sit alongside the very well-established Department of War Studies and Department of Defence Studies. And, as mentioned, we've really drawn on the expertise and support of colleagues in terms of launching a number of our initiatives. The school itself, it's very large and diverse. It really does cover all aspects of defence and security. Approximately 200 staff and a mix of academics, researchers and professional services team. We also have a vast array of postgraduate and undergraduate programmes, which includes more than 100 optional 15 credit modules. And, in fact, this is actually really important, in particular for the flexible MA in security studies that we'll talk about, as these can help form the building blocks of that programme. And, as mentioned, you know, there has been this long history of engagement between academics and others in the school with Government of the Armed Forces and industry, and we're just looking to sort of build and extend that. So, here is a precursor to later this evening when we go across to the south side of Bush House. I just wanted to highlight that we do have a number of sort of active research groups and centres within the school, within the two departments, which undertake really a wide range of work across defence and security. And, here, this is just a really small snapshot of what some of these research centres and groups do. Topics ranging from strategic communications to nuclear nonproliferation to space security to counter terrorism to military ethics, and many, many more, as well. So, these groups really help drive practitioner engagement as well as research and other activities. Many of these groups provided useful vehicles for our development of impact case studies that were submitted to the REF in 2021. I also just wanted to show the scale of activity within the school when it comes to third stream. So, executive education, continued professional development, as well as advisory and consulting work. So, a significant fraction of that constitutes the work that we do of the Defence Academy that Kate will talk about in just a moment. But we also have a number of other significant projects, more than 25 active ones at the moment with a similar number in the pipeline that sort of provide support and engagement with a wide variety of stakeholders, both in the UK and internationally. And, here, I just wanted to give a very quick example of one of these projects. It's quite a unique project in some ways. So, this is the UK's nuclear security culture programme funded and managed by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and then implemented in academia industry consortium, led by Kings, but we've partnered with two industry bodies, NTS and Amport Risk. So, under this programme, we worked for eight years around the world with partners in different countries to strengthen the security of nuclear materials, and by doing so, one of the ways to reduce the possibility of nuclear terrorism. So, we ran over 80 activities in 12 countries from 2014 to 2022, and it was a very diverse array of what we did. So, it was a mix of CPD, trained the trainer, we did a lot of applied research around contemporary issues, and then we actually went down to the more operational levels of security, supporting organisations with critical nuclear materials in a range of different countries when it came to assessing their security, in particular sort of focusing on the human factor and other elements to that. We also provided on the other end of the spectrum high level policy advice, engaging with organisations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency and many others. And if you want to learn more about that project, we have information at the Centre for Science and Security Studies booth next door. I also just wanted to flag something which is upcoming, which I think may be of relevance or of interest for maybe many people in the room, and this is a wargaming week that will be running at Kings at the end of May at the start of June. So, it's something that's been put together by the Kings wargaming network. Again, have a booth and even a small wargame which you can play, which is set up next door. And this is an event that they've been developing in partnership with NATO. It's going to be a mix of looking at some of the different methodological approaches to designing wargames, and there's going to be a large game that's going to be won as part of the week, focusing on conflict in Eastern Europe and having a look at different levels of escalation. Okay, so now I want to move on to a new educational product that we've been developing within the Institute. So, this is the smallest unit of learning that we have within the school. It can be completed in just five hours, and when you sign up for it, it's immediately available. So, it's five hours of asynchronous learning. Stand alone, if you took one of these online short courses, it would be unaccredited, but as Hugh will talk a little bit more about later, there's the possibility of consfining sets of three of these online short courses, adding live sessions and assessment to then accumulate sets of 15 credits. And this can be done a number of times within the flexible MA and security studies we'll talk about in a second. And here are some of the different online short courses that we've been developing. We think these are of great relevance for practitioners working on security. Those on the left are ones which are currently available, so sign up and get involved with those later, should you like. I should flag here, we're actually doing a small early bird discount on these courses, so they're 20% off, sound like a salesperson now. It's not quite the intention, until the end of this month. So again, if you're particularly interested in these, then now is the time to sign up and get engaged. And on the right-hand side, these are other courses that are under development. We should have these launched in the next two or three months or so. It's a very diverse range, really drawing on the sort of breadth of expertise that we have within the school. And here I just want to embarrass Professor Ken Payne if he's in the room, I'm not sure if he is. But this is the module that he's put together which looks at artificial intelligence and national security. And here you can see that it's a mix of texts, videos, we have infographics, we have knowledge checks as you pass through the module. OK, and with that short introduction I'll pass over to my colleague, the online MA programs. You've run in security studies, but also some of the new ventures that we're trying to put together with the institute. And that includes the flexible MA in security studies. So the genesis of the online programs actually predates the institution of Chias by a number of years. The first of the programs was International Affairs which came online in 2018. The objective of this program was to bring the world-leading in-person education that we delivered both in London and at the Defence Academy to a much wider global audience. And we launched International Affairs in 2018. The entire point of this program is a generalist curriculum. It combines the unique combination of subject matter within the School of Security Studies of International Relations, Security Studies Expertise, Strategic Studies Expertise and Conflict History Expertise to bring together for a generalist curriculum, one that appeals to a very large audience. And I'll talk a little bit about the audience that these programs cater to. There are several specialist pathways within the program, though, and students can specialize in these pathways by taking two specific modules on the subject matter. The first of those is Espionage and Surveillance, Intelligent Studies, where we look in depth at the influence of intelligence on international security and indeed in war. The second of those is Cybersecurity and the third is a more recently added Strategic Studies pathway. All of those allow students to specialize and the specialisms are defined by two specific modules on the subject plus a dissertation. Global Security was put together a number of years later, just as Keass was coming online. And the objective with Global Security was to cater to a market that the International Affairs was very slightly missing out on. The market that wanted more specialist education on security studies itself, particularly in a global framework. And the objective of this program was to look very much at aspects which lie outside of the more traditional security studies model. So there's lots of discussions of climate and health security, human rights, ethics, law, conflict and security and justice and also science and non-traditional security threats. So it caters to a very, a rather more niche market but one that nevertheless we felt when we were analyzing the market for international affairs had been missed. So we created global security to appeal to that. And it's been very successful since it's launched in January 2022. Defining features of both programs are that it's a flexible curriculum. Students can take modules six times a year and they can opt out of modules to allow them to cater for busy periods in their careers or in their personal lives. It also allows students to really adapt to and create a bespoke educational pathway through the programs. It's also worth bearing in mind that the two programs can share modules as well. It is though defined by very challenging and engaging content. We have a series, all modules defined by a series of recorded lectures but also activity-based learning, knowledge checks and live webinars and discussion forums. So it's a wide range of educational interventions. And we also employ a really quite diverse and wide range of assessment that's both innovative and rigorous. We maintain the level 7 standards that you expect of an MA from King's College London. So that's the broad overview of the online programs that exist. Currently K2 is really quite global in scale. Every country that we have students from is represented on this map and that's 550 students in total for international affairs and just over 100 for global security. So these are very successful programs and global security is growing. As you can see, the principal markets for international affairs and global security are the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia but also some Middle Eastern countries as well and European countries. So it is a broad market for the programs. The type of students that we have on these courses and to which the courses appeal generally mid-career professionals who are either looking to get a leg up in their current career or to move and transition to a new career. So we've had a number of students who have transitioned from a career in non-governmental organisations to the security sector. We had wonderful testimonial from a student who moved from basically a volunteering position in the Red Cross and combining it with some of her earlier professional experiences now for BA. So it actually has a genuine impact on people's lives. We cater, I think, as well to a very strong security and defence market as you would expect. We have a lot of security and defence professionals both from the armed forces but also from governmental agencies and non-governmental organisations are very well represented in our student body as well. And a fair few diplomats as well that have take some time out of their busy schedules to participate in our webinars and bring a real diversity of opinion and thought to those sessions. In fact, I love teaching this programme because you go on a team screen as well as it might be unfortunate that you're stuck on teams. You've still got people joining from Wellington and Vancouver and pretty much everywhere in between. It's a really wonderful experience to teach on. And I hope that the students and the testimonials seem to reflect this feel that way as well. So that's the overview of the market and the content of international affairs and global security. We're also launching a flexible masters in security studies. So if you bear with me this is quite a complex programme but I've tried to break it down into some easy to understand exercise snippets. So the foundation of this programme is the short courses that Chris has already mentioned and that's all of them there represented as they currently are. We'll be having more than the 13 that are currently on the board but that's the 13 that we've got in progress at the moment. As Chris said, students can take any combination of three of those programmes or those courses rather and once they've done those three they can apply to enroll on our flexible MA in security study and when they do so they can apply for recognition of prior credit learning or experience and in this case they'll be applying for recognition of prior learning because the short courses are not assessed so we need to understand how we're going to assess them and we can take any combination of those three short courses and we provide a 15 credit module assessment which is about a 3,000 word essay which then assesses the learning objectives of those three courses put together and it can be any combination of those three courses they've been specifically designed to be interchangeable in this context but it doesn't stop there you can take a combination of six module a combination of nine get 45 credits and a combination of 12 and you get 60 credits so in I appreciate perhaps 15, 30, 45, 60 doesn't really mean very much to you that 60 credits is one third of an MA so you can do one third of the MA using the short courses and then to top that up with assessments and live sessions and get those credits you can then progress to the remainder of the MA by selecting a series of existing modules from either war studies or defence studies and select them at one's discretion so you can take modules when you're able to and ones that interest you these are just a selection of the ones that are available we're looking at a very broad range of modules from across both departments so hopefully that's made some sense and the short courses are going live as we speak I'd also like to talk very briefly about another initiative within the institute and that's the security and defence plus partnership which is part of the plus alliance the alliance between King's College London the University of New South Wales and Arizona State University we've been working very hard with our partners in those two universities to develop a series of educational interventions research collaborations and hopefully some joint degree opportunities as well and programmes are currently under development and we're also looking at some similar executive and professional short courses along with the lines of the ones that we've been looking at in Keass that could be delivered jointly by the three universities quite a unique opportunity there but there is already one underway at the moment 15th to the 18th of May we have a short course an executive education course called Orcus in Context it'll be no surprise really that the security and defence plus is being built around the new orcus agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia and our objective with this course is to place the new orcus agreement in context and bring some context to the announcement which very helpfully has just been trail will be made on Monday in San Diego by President Biden Prime Minister Sunak and Prime Minister Albanese so we've got there an opportunity here to really develop some of those ideas so those that course will be expert led we're going to be looking at the impact of game changing technology that a new partnership seeks to bring to bear some regional security experts to provide some much needed context to the to the agreement we're also going to talk about the much grander strategic implications of the alliance sorry the partnership and we'll conclude the course with an Indo-Pacific theatre war game which our colleague Davey Banks is putting together it will be both delivered with a set of pre-recorded lectures and also live and we're going to try and do it so that we have people from the US Australia and the UK communicating and talking together about the subjects at the same time which will make the timing of it a little fruity but I'm sure you'll agree it'll be worth it if you're interested get your cameras out and scan the QR code to go direct to the the Kings East door to sign up immediately thank you very much I'm going to hand over to my colleague Kate Utting who's going to talk about the defence and security education thank you I get to have mine but I'm missing there's a lot to think about I think so I'm the head of defence and security education so I've also been a long time member of the defence studies department they've lost in five years it's my pleasure to talk about the new work of our partnership with the British military and allies and partners across all of the courses that we teach under the new CSAC arrangements we're very delighted to see some of our colleagues from the defence cabinet here this evening and I would like to talk to you about the different types of courses that we teach currently I'd like to talk about our long-term experience of teaching in the military remember Kings was founded by the Duke of Wellington but I'll start in 1961 don't worry I'm not going to go way back to the 19th century remember that the department of war studies was founded by Professor Michael Howard in 1961 on the day that he decided to stick a piece of paper on his door to say department of war studies and since then very much in line with our current mission service to society we have had a long tradition at things department of war studies defence studies and in the wider school of teaching those who serve and helping them in their career development we teach over 55 nations members of security services and military amongst them so the new contract building on this very very long-term relationship we've had with the Ministry of Defence we teach in three units currently defence services command and staff college which teaches officers civil servants and partners across 55 nations from two years out of initial officer training on the intermediate command and staff courses to the mid-career course of 260 students per annum on the advanced command and staff courses where we offer three MA pathways one in defence studies that has been going since 1997 an MSc in defence innovation and an MRes in defence studies too the land command staff college is a unit within the defence academy which has gone quite independent recently but we are still continuing our support for the British Army and we also offer a masters for that course as well the Royal College of Defence Studies started a masters with us back in 2001 and we have been supporting that top 1% of the British Armed Forces that go to the Royal College of Defence Studies again very much focus on international collaboration so that is the breath we can happily say since 1997 5000 5000 members of the military have postgraduate degrees from King's College London which is a wonderful achievement including the chief of the defence staff Admiral Sir Tony Raddican who was my dissertation student back in 2000 I hasten to add he obviously did very well and he did get a distinction but CSAP and what we do at the defence academy is just part of the story because our model of working in collaboration and in partnership in the creation and the delivery of postgraduate education to defence and security professionals is something that we are constantly seeking to improve by listening to the requirement of our professional partners to understand the value of being relevant up to date with the here today concern but also preparing these officers and civil servants to fight tomorrow so we are very much involved in a dialogue of listening to new requirements developing postgraduate educational products together and delivering them together I sit at the front of a class with a colleague and I thought one of my colleagues from RCDS here Gavin who we sit at the front of the class and we teach together quite an interesting proposition it's not just about teaching professionals it's teaching with a professional to deliver this education and I have to say it is a wonderful experience very challenging for the new contract we decided that we would try and give our military colleagues some depth of resource so that they could draw on all of King's expertise whether it's in the school the security studies the King's business school the policy institute the Russia Institute etc so that they could partner with King's as a whole and draw on expertise across the university to inform the development of curricula the other new aspect of our new partnership with the Ministry of Defence is bringing also Cranfield University who also supports courses at the Defence Academy as a direct subcontractor to this new contract plus working with Rand Europe so this is a very exciting enterprise for us in designing new courses for the military but also we have a member of staff I hope he's here this evening who is our Senior Academic Advisor to a project that Rand won with the Doctrine Centre also based at Shrevenham to develop Doctrine with the military so Rand's working with us to deliver CSAP and we're working with Rand to deliver at the Doctrine Centre it goes beyond the UK we've had quite a long history with supporting professional military and security education in Qatar and we have very recently started a brand new almost unique programme we could say in this country where we are teaching for the first time in Arabic this is a great new development for our school and for the university we think because it has the ability to be a model that we can replicate in other situations we hope that's me done over to the boys shall we come up on the stage we're running a little bit behind if there are any burning questions we could potentially take them or if not we might pass over to John and John for the next session nothing too burning so I think John and John we'll pass over to you we've got a couple of mics if you'd like to come up the stairs on that side or you can good evening everybody I'm John Gears and I'm Head of the School of Security Studies and the last 20 years of my career would have been so much easier if all of these things had been agreed about 18 years ago rather than 18 months ago but it's a fantastic exciting time for the school and we're very grateful for everyone to have joined us this evening and for the opportunity of growing chaos with our partners and with our friends which is what it's all about ultimately in support of education and at times one of our colleagues is Professor John Buw for those of you who don't know should know he's currently the we'll call it Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister but I think it's probably Foreign Security and Defence Policy Advisor at various times and I'll let John talk a little bit more about exactly what he does but the idea is that we're going to have a little conversation because long before John started long before John joined King's I left King's for a secondment to Parliament as a Defence Policy Advisor and at the time was the first academic to be in that sort of role and so the idea is that we'll have a conversation maybe and see what's changed in the last 15 to 20 years a little bit and perhaps what's continuing to go pretty much unchanged perhaps is in a more political environment I was going to say as an opening observation John, you've got it easy all you have to do is please one boss from one political party I used to have to write things that four political parties all could agree to and sign up to so apart from the fact that you've got an easier job than I had I had three bosses in 12 weeks John well we're going to come on to that in a minute actually I've got a nice question for you about that John also is getting on a bit so he won't remember that I was on the appointment panel that brought John into King's so it didn't surprise me to learn that he'd been poached by the Prime Minister's office to go and work with them so the first question is how are you feeling at the moment you've gone through a number of Prime Ministers you're still standing how's it going well actually to the two headline observations the first is just looking at the screen just how pertinent and bang on I think so much of that is and how much relates to what I've been thinking about and working on for the last couple of months because we just as I left number 10 this evening we left all the hard civil servants still working but they're submitting the refresh of the interview this evening to the printers so they can change XYZ but that's and I just thought in terms of the scope on the various courses just how relevant that is from the AI course, defence and deterrence lessons from Ukraine one year on it absolutely is exactly what people in Government are thinking I'm just not sure they even get enough time to do it and that's crucial the second just very personal observation is that in the third row I can see my head of department sitting beside a colleague of mine from the Kevin office who worked very intensely on the last integrated review he just happened to be sitting beside each other which is sort of tells you about the link between the two things and Kevin who's sitting beside Matt will recognise just why I look so frazzled and exhausted but he was very much involved in the last integrated review as well so I'm feeling pretty good it's nice to be among friends and colleagues it's an incredible experience coming back up to kings which I obviously don't do every day like I did beforehand and seeing this whole pedestrianised zone at the front and coming into what looks and the surface is a completely different environment than the mad circus I work in most days and then coming in and just saying that there's a kind of intellectual loop and connectivity between the two that's really quite strong and close so I won't probe about why you went most people here would probably regard it as self evidence that the opportunity came along but as an academic and as obviously distinguished academic with your publications how did you find fitting into an environment that's actually dominated by career civil servants special political advisers who were around and then elected politicians how far were you the very much the odd person out funny enough John so you mentioned maybe it's all your fault because probably the way I got into this is doing exactly what you did which is being a specialist on the foreign affairs committee or the defence committee and helped with their global burden report and had to do similar things so that's probably the kind of entrance into the world and then it is I was certainly to a certain extent an odd fit having been a recent biographer of Clement Attlee writing for the new states at the time and then going into conservative government but actually the best answer to that question is I've just come up with a call earlier today from a group of senior Americans previewing our integrated review and it's so common in other systems to have academic specialists expertise go in to government and work in certain things very common in this sort of science and technology area as well like Anthony Finkelstein or people like Patrick Valance who are much more distinguished than I am but it does happen it can happen and historically I'm a historian and I was writing about this before I came in at sort of periods of flux and crises and change in British constitutional history as well you've had quite a serious tradition of academics going in and out or that connectivity in academia and government happening I think there's a precedent for it it's not that common and you know you can't I guess my one sort of framing observation is to make it work and to go in you can't rely on the purity of your expertise or wisdom you've got to be political and you've got to act and respond to that environment but I don't think it's too uncommon probably will be complete scorched earth after I'll leave and go back to kings and no one will ever do it again but I think it does happen and it's probably deeply frustrating in some respects both for me and for the people I have to work with but for the most part it's deeply enriching and a useful exchange and I guess the key kind of thing is that when you're in government you to a certain extent depend on the kind of petrol fumes of the things you've learned or written or thought about before and you don't have enough time to replenish and keep thinking and analysing and I think that's necessary if you're working in the business of national security and defence and policy so people do need that year off here or there if I could change one thing to give them a reading week actually because it's so hard that you're servicing ministers, papers fighting over minutes and things like that so I think that's a sort of vital thing that they can actually provide OK, you're touching on a number of things that I wanted to raise how about academics working in the policy environment and what do you think they perhaps bring that isn't automatically there are these transferable skills or is there something about the academic training that you had and your experience that allowed you to bring something particular to the role there's lots of things you don't bring which are quite important to start with you don't by-law to have field experience some of the hard-rege experiences the person who I'm currently working with most closely who's acting as the scribe for the whole integrity refresh has field experience of our mission in Paris Iraq as well during some really difficult years so you must have the humility to recognise you don't have that experience I guess you do bring a certain, this is the petrol fumes thing you bring a reserve of thought study that other people have not had the opportunity to be afforded to so you have something there you have a sense of debates and things and you do bring a different type of network so if you're dealing with the American system particularly but I think it applies recently to a lot of different parts of European relationships as well I'm often bumping into people who have King's connections or academic connections as well who are nested in Prime Minister's offices in Estonia, Finland Paris as well so you do bring a different type of a network actually and I think that can have its uses in some scenarios in fact the last conference they organised just downstairs here had a number of senior people who were not during the later stages of the Trump administration who were of course not in the Trump administration but who subsequently went on, moved from academia think tanks into senior businesses in the Biden administration and one of whom I will see on Monday in San Diego when I go over the PM for the AUKUS announcement so it's a different type of network and that is a valuable thing So I assume you had a long and detailed induction when you first went into Downstreet You have a photo taken of your first day and you're onboarding and it's still my photo when you get an email from me which looks utter despair, stress and panic it was the hottest day of the year in July 2019 and I turned up the diner I basic my thought for the first 24 hours was what the hell have I done it's a complete disaster I don't know why I've done this this expression is eternalised in any email you get from me I'm probably 40-60% of the time I still think that anyway so it's a completely different experience in terms of the pace for an attic nature and just moving into just a different world in terms of who you answer to how you answer I'm still not quite sure I've cracked it this is a different mental universe but still for all the dramas externally it's the same as academia you're basically working with highly motivated talented intelligent people making difficult choices and so it is enriching from that perspective I was going to try an internal inward looking academic question to some extent yes all of us has been set out have been involved in our school in many cases of doing commissioned research trying to support policy writing things but nevertheless academics generally write their own articles, their own books they do their own research, they bring their own perspectives how difficult has it been for you to sometimes have to tow the line on something that is political your analytical your analytical instincts might have taken you in another direction you've said already you can't just say I'm the great academic to carry a room how do you adapt to that I mean the advantages you don't I don't and the people writing the stuff behind the scenes don't wear the responsibility so it's the minister who has to stand up on their hind legs in whatever scenario and speak to and wear the responsibility for those decisions and then it's even more challenging when you've got things like national security strategies which are based on collective agreement and inputs from different departments of course also that's obviously you can steer and shape and from the perspective of number 10 you have quite a privileged position you're close to the person who has ultimate authority over it but it's easy enough because you don't wear the responsibility for it each sort of big set for each speech is never as you wanted or intended and then there's those 5, 6, 7 personalities and you think so it's each bit of that is iterative but ultimately you don't wear the responsibility so you are behind the scenes it's not on you so in one sense it's kind of liberating but you know plenty of times that your principal says things but that's the nature of the beast so John you'll be surprised to know that I'm not going to ask you to tell us the contents of your whatsapp list on your phone doubtless you are preserving it to memory rather than onto a flash drive as you move forward but whilst being careful not to give away too much I'm interested to know whether you think that advisers can make a difference and could you anonymise as best you can perhaps give an example of where external advisers working inside the the centre can make a difference good question I think they can make a difference otherwise people wouldn't have them around and it depends on the person you're trying to make the difference on I'm trying to think of a good example that doesn't sound aggrandising or reveals something I shouldn't reveal I mean the advantage of being in for quite a few years and always using different skill sets on one hand you end up to de facto doing negotiations for which personal relationships and things like that matter probably the best thing you do is to stop stupid things happening by running from room to room and saying this is a mistake or this is a trap I guess more effectively anticipate when things look stupid and only going to backfire because you're spending more time thinking on that special subject and the real challenging thing about what the prime ministers have to do or ministers in general as they've got 15 different things going on simultaneously and so they rely on you to be a kind of early warning system across the piece that's probably the most useful thing you can do and political terms as well but the other things you do are just sort of matters of professional human conduct which is I guess you might have had a difficult boss or two and you can help sort of smooth the edges or follow up and sort of put the furniture back together or I guess you can have that effect sometimes as well on the side but that's less my job than stopping stupid things happening which has been plenty of stupid things that have happened so I've obviously done it very well I remember talking to McGeorge Bundy who was John F. Kennedy's National Security Advisor at an oral history events that we held where he told a pretty aggressive academic who was saying why didn't you do this and why didn't you do that why didn't JFK decide to do this and he said when you're in in this case the White House you look for opportunities not to take decisions I remember being very confused when I heard that to start with but over the years I've sort of come to understand it a little bit more I wonder if that obviously we're not the White House but we are still a pretty big player in security defence have you ever had that occasion where you perhaps would rather decisions were not made just this week actually that's a very thought about this week sometimes and you have different mindsets of the key figures that you serve or trying to deliver agendas some of them see an interest in letting things rumble others are more executive and want to get things done but I've just reflected this week I can't tell you what this one's about but sometimes it's best not to rush to try and bring things to an abrupt end it's best that history examples of people being impatient with the not time to make a decision thing and Ned Bould brave sometimes foolhardy decisions by trying to rush the ramparts and things as well just a boring academic reflection on that so when I was musing and spent a month saying I wouldn't do this job and I was asked one of the people I just chatted to about it was an academic called Richard Alders who just written a biography of Arthur Schlesinger who's a historian who went into the JFK and I'd just done a review of the book funny it was called The Perils of a Court Historian which is about the dilemmas of Schlesinger going in and working with the JFK administration so it was kind of Schlesinger's biographer who said to me well you kind of have to do it don't you because you've affected and thought about it but Schlesinger sort of wrestled with some of this as well because the pace of historical change at various moments in time and he would write occasionally memos about things that he thought were going to go wrong so he started by writing these memos and sort of squirreling them his way for his own historical record and he shifted gear and started going in harder with these memos and it's an interesting case that if someone is quite you know quite a demure, cautious personality he sort of played that game and you do go through that dilemma the intellectual thing to say is you're living through a dilemma constantly about historical change and the pace of historical change and the things that change you know, are you stuck sometimes you feel like you're stuck in historical circumstances and you can't really get out at other periods of time you feel like actually you do have agency and the actions you take and the words you use and the decisions you make on resources or timing or the brave you are or hard courses you are actually can change circumstances in which you operate so sometimes you're helpless, stuck other times you know you can see agency you can see the value of advice you can see the value of decision making speeches, phone calls other times it just feels like you're sort of in a loop Mindful that you're obviously still working at the centre, I also wanted to ask you about how far you think there might be things that could practically be done to inform not just the quality of the policy advice but the way in which advice is given to extremely busy decision makers you know sometimes you don't want to make decisions some people here in our school have long argued that the Prime Minister needs something more akin to a security council staff of people coming in on to comments not into number 10 but into an expanded cabinet office or more rotations coming in or more alternative voices you've now been working in it are any of those sorts of recommendations remotely realistic given what you've seen? Yes some of them are, some ideas are less good than others so on the kind of having external advice and expertise coming in yes to a certain extent but I think there's also the reality of probably more important is having practitioners who have spent 20 years of doing XYZ issue having the time to go out and think and not slowing their career but actually improving their career prospects coming back in. It's quite hard when you're there and presence matters a lot and being close to if a minister pats you in the head or likes you so there's a disincentive to go away and think and study rather than coming back in that's one aspect of it but I think that can be quite there can be permeation, there can be better and there is increasing I've seen it with my viewers in government there's lots of appetite and interest and external voices just not always the time to do it and sometimes the problems with universities and government is they're both two big bureaucracies trying to meet each other so when they try and do these things it's sort of like two giant pandas so you need a bit more in an art and it's got to be done in a fluid way in a bespoke way what I'm less convinced by that you hear sometimes is that you need sort of a sort of appointed figures like a chief government historian on X or Y because in the ultimate you just get sort of I think quite a static you know grandi producing kind of way of doing something and that person becomes sort of part of the furniture whereas if you have sort of in an art and people with hinterlands and lands to go back to if you can manage that process and I don't think it means massive structural change it just means a few appointments here and there a bit of openness in the system where it can happen I think that's probably the best word doing it but I see that trend so Gavin are embarrassed Gavin but Gavin's are doing RCDS at the moment for example so you know going back and forth and I think that that is happening and I think by and large people are receptive I think they're receptive to it if I've not burned everyone and made life miserable I think they are receptive to it and open to it and I think it is valued in a certain world and you know some different you know I mean I don't want to comment on my different bosses but you know some ministers obviously more interested in that type of skill set than others but I think it absolutely can work as long as you're sort of relatively preserved from getting your hands too far on the sort of political mangle Don't knock quasi-official historians I've just written a quasi-official accounts banner that's different than someone sitting on a perch that's right I certainly wasn't sitting on a perch that's very true I mean I was interested in what you said about scientific advisors having had a longer term role in much policy from various ministries and I do recall Solizio Cymyn once writing that basically he is responsible for us having the nuclear deterrents because he was in the room at the right moment and he added a few words to outline agreements and that was obviously in the 1960s there now I did have some other questions that people sort of suggested I ask you I was asked if you would grade your prime ministers by the most fun and the most difficult to work with and I thought we'd leave that for your next book perhaps there were some other ones about yes I'll probably not ask you most of those questions but I think to sort of bring it to some conclusion ultimately what are you most proud about over the last four years? I don't know I don't think I've sort of sat and felt you don't sort of feel pride or satisfaction and you don't sort of it's going to be personal to me but it's very fast moving so as soon as you didn't screw something up or did screw something up the advantages it just moved the next thing moves on so the trend goes very quickly the most enriching thing is using different parts of your brain at pace and learning different types of skills at pace and being able to do that I guess there are days in the office when you've literally dealt with 15 things in a different way and had a little say in each of them and that's quite like your synapses are going like that so that's probably the thing that provides a certain level of satisfaction or it drains enough of your mental focus to distract you from other things but I don't think if you sort of sit and toad-like smile I've never felt like that it's been too panicked and fearful about screwing up I think Not a very fair question sorry about that John and finally then if you had one lesson that you'd want to pass on to our brilliant students who are interested in going into policy work that they should keep in mind what would it be? It sounds like you've sort of it's all set up but it's not I said before when I'm looking at the screen looking at the modules and the types of things people are doing this is exactly what people should be looking at to do that I guess in the other way Ron come back to academia which I absolutely will that what I'd quite like to do is actually put into the teaching some of the skill sets that aren't naturally things you do in academia because we are focused on essays or a longer form or exams there are different forms in terms of memorandums and speeches or statements or Q&As for a orcus press conference or whatever it is that I think are actually quite useful in terms of useful intellectual exercises I think that learning those things are a good way of doing it and I guess the hurdle is not so high right if you're interested and engaged in the broad subject matter there are certain areas where the depth of experience is unreachable from academia and student because it's field experience it's decades of travelling in certain very difficult places but the sort of the bar to go from good solid undergrad graduate degrees into producing good policy work I don't think there's a massive leap there so I think that's none of this is sort of forbidding a very difficult love it I think as academics who have gone out and come back and also my colleagues in the school who have worked with practitioners and policy makers and members of the military but if humility is pretty much in order sometimes but certainly the transferable skills that that sort of experience allows us to share with our students I think is exactly where our students want to be they want the rigorous academic backgrounds and guidance in developing their academic interests but they also want to develop those transferable skills that will be useful when they go out into the wider world John I know A. you're very busy but B. it's a difficult time whilst you're still there to talk about and reflect on it but we're very grateful for you to almost return in March and we look forward to having you back in the fold in the autumn and sharing your experiences not just with our students but with your colleagues Thanks very much indeed for coming Thank you John My hand over to Chris I was just going to say huge thanks to John and John for that discussion hopefully it was really interesting fascinating for myself we will continue the events now next door so as mentioned we have the different research centres and groups in the school that are setting up so please do go across and learn more about their work we'll also have some food and drink there an opportunity for networking and just finally I've been asked by Lauren on our bench team to flag because we all have photographs being taken next door if you don't want to be in a photograph then please see Anna at the back who's waving right now and she will give you one of these green badges and then the photographers will not capture you in that Great, okay so thanks very much