On Oct. 21, the University announced an endowment to the Notre Dame International Security Center, gifted by Kevin and Cynthia O’Brien. In addition to allowing for greater scholarship opportunities, the Center will be named in honor of the O’Briens.
“For nearly two decades, the Notre Dame International Security Center has been an exemplary force both in impactful research and in shaping the lives and careers of future leaders,” Kenneth Scheve, the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts & Letters said in the University’s press release. “This incredibly generous support from the O’Briens empowers us to expand our commitment to fostering critical conversations and forming influential voices on national security policy for generations to come.”
ONDISC was founded in 2008 and has evolved over the past 17 years from a small program to a much larger one including the international security studies minor, an undergraduate fellows program and graduate education programs.
In addition to teaching civilian graduate students, the Center frequently enrolls senior military officials in its three-year Ph.D. program through a partnership with the Department of Political Science and welcomes fellows from the National War College, the Army, the Marine Corps and the General Staff.
ONDISC has hosted marquee events, such as a lecture in September by former CIA director and Notre Dame alumnus, John Ratcliffe, and will be hosting a similar event Friday afternoon with former CIA director and ambassador William Burns.
Explaining the Center’s work, political science professor and affiliate of the Center Eugene Gholz said, “There’s really almost nowhere else in the country that has this, an equivalent group of active, dynamic researchers doing a lot of work on international security or related work. It's a community where we can talk to each other and riff off each other and kick around ideas. It's a very exciting research place to be.”
The O’Briens first became involved with ONDISC in 2017, when they made a gift to the program which helped it to grow during its formative years. Kevin O’Brien is a 1988 graduate of the University who participated in the Naval ROTC program during his years here. Following his time at Notre Dame, he went on to serve in the Navy during Operation Desert Storm in the Gulf War. Cynthia O’Brien spent 20 years serving on nonprofit boards including the Ronald McDonald House of Dallas following her time as a professor of engineering technology.
Professor Michael Desch, the Brian and Jeannelle Brady Family director of the Center, praised the O’Briens for their generosity. “Service is a big part of the O’Brien family ethos. They’re absolutely delightful people. They’ve not only made possible a lot of our undergraduate overseas travel, but have joined us for it,” Desch said.
Desch added, “Their vision for the program and Notre Dame's mission in general are remarkably in sync. And they're great people who have a vision for what we can do that really is perfect for what Notre Dame and what the country needs today in preparing the next generation of senior international security scholars and practitioners.”
Similarly, Gholz said that the O’Briens “want to help enable that for others, which I think is a very noble thing to do … They're the kind of people who recognize the importance of these topics and the importance of passing on the interest and the expertise to future generations.”
Desch said the mission of the Center is “to train the next generation of American leaders in national security at a time when most of them will not have served in uniform.”
He said the Center does this through coursework and extracurricular activities, citing the work the program does with NROTC marine students to bring them together with midshipmen learning at the Center. He added that ONDISC conducts trips to pertinent sites such as the Department of Energy, the nuclear labs at Los Alamos, Sandia National Laboratories and a nuclear test site in Nevada.
The O’Brien endowment will also go toward helping with research at ONDISC. All ONDISC fellows are required to write a senior thesis. This, Desch said, allows undergraduates to “get the opportunity to meet the next generation of scholars and practitioners who are doing research.”
Graduate students affiliated with the Center will have new opportunities to get involved following this endowment, as an O’Brien Fellowship for two graduate students and two postdoctoral scholars will be created.
Both students and faculty in ONDISC will be able to apply to use the money within the O’Brien Endowment, as well as previously donated grants, in order to facilitate their research projects. Gholz said, “One of the great things about the center is that we have a very high concentration of faculty who are actively engaged in cutting-edge scholarly and policy-oriented research in international security.” Faculty research, Gholz said, can be aided with research assistants, who will also gain experience from this opportunity.
The O’Brien’s endowment has also allowed for the creation of a position for a new executive director under Desch. Jenna Gibson, a recent Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, will assume this role and work with the Hans J. Morgenthau Predoctoral Fellowship. This non-residential program allows 20 scholars to work on international security issues.
