Mershon Center for International Security Studies

The Mershon Center was founded in 1952 upon the death of Ralph D. Mershon, an alumnus of the school, who left funds to the university for the establishment of a research institute dedicated to the fields of international relations and security. Many schools founded similar centers in the aftermath of World War II such as the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University.

The first director of the Mershon Center was Edgar S. Furniss Jr., who was appointed in 1960. However, he would die unexpectedly only six years later. Fellows throughout the years have included Francis Beer, Erika Bourguignon, Ofer Feldman, Azar Gat, Margaret Hermann, David P. Houghton, Kimberly Marten, Robert J. McMahon, Margaret Mills, John Mueller, Mary Ellen O'Connell, Allan Silverman, Alexander Stephan.

The Mershon Center houses scholars from a variety of fields, including doctoral students, visiting fellows, and permanent faculty affiliates. Its programs include a multi-day national security simulation; a State Department Diplomacy Lab project; the Divided Community dispute resolution program; a number of international peacekeeping programs; a comparative national election project; and numerous conferences, workshop, and speaker programs.

• Edgar S. Furniss Jr. (1960–1966)
• James A. Robinson (1966–1970)
• Richard C. Snyder (1970–1980)
• Charles F. Hermann (1980–1995)
• Richard Ned Lebow (1996–2000)
• Richard Herrmann (2002–2011)
• J. Craig Jenkins (2011–2015)
• Christopher Gelpi (2018–2022)
• Dorothy Noyes (2022–present)

In 1982, then-director Charles F. Hermann initiated a book award in honor of the first director of the center, Edgar S. Furniss Jr. The award is presented annually to a scholar whose "...first book makes an exceptional contribution to the study of national and international security."^[2]

Notable recipients have included: Harry G. Summers Jr. (1982), John Mearsheimer (1983), Barry Posen (1984), Bruce G. Blair (1986), Andrew Krepinevich (1987), Stephen Walt (1988), Aaron Friedberg (1989), Stephen Peter Rosen (1992), Michael E. Brown (1993), James Goldgeier (1995), Lars-Erik Cederman (1998), Robert D. English (2000), Matthew Connelly (2002), Benjamin Valentino (2004), Michael C. Horowitz (2010), and Keren Yarhi-Milo (2014).

The Center hosts an annual lecture in honor or Joseph J. Kruzel Jr. Kruzel, a political science Professor at OSU, who was in the State Department delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks in Helsinki and served the Clinton Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO policy. Kruzel created the Partnership for Peace program in 1994, and served in Bosnia as the Defense Department special envoy and chief negotiator on the US team working to end the Yugoslav Wars. He was killed in a 1995 plane crash while on a diplomatic mission, and later received the Presidential Citizens Memo. Amongst those who have delivered the Kruzel Lecture are: Rt Hon Rory Stewart, former UK cabinet minister, diplomat, and Member of Parliament for Penrith and the Border; Fiona Hill, Deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the U.S. National Security Council; Chris Hill, the Dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, and former U.S. ambassador to Iraq; Ted Warner III, the Secretary of Defense representative to New START and senior advisor for arms control and strategic stability; former Secretary of Defense William Perry; and many others []

• History of Ohio State University
• Timeline of Columbus, Ohio