International Security Studies

Master of Arts

cb15a496-575a-4f92-b50c-da806b9511cc

Quick Facts

Credits Required: 34

Cost Per Credit: $700.00

Top 1%

of all Higher-Ed
Institutions

- Center for World University Rankings, 2024

In Best Value Among
Arizona's Public Universities

- Payscale, 2022

College of Social And Behavioral Sciences

Program Details

The International Security Studies program provides an empirical and conceptual review of the international system, including many courses that review the principal features of the system from the post-war period to the present day.

Since contemporary security goes beyond military capacity and force, the program seeks to address demographic, environmental, developmental, and social challenges. The conceptual framework applied across the course offerings provides a strong interdisciplinary and cross-regional approach.

Courses are drawn from a variety of topics, such as the conflict in the Middle East, climate change, foreign policy of Russia, American foreign policy, American national security, international security, global political economy, European security, terrorism, and terrorist networks, research design, and Japanese and Chinese nationalism.

View detailed program information

*Residents of some U.S. Territories may not be eligible. Please see our Eligibility & State Authorization page for more information.

Courses

The curriculum for this program includes:

There are numerous historical cases of strategic nonviolent conflict, also called civil resistance or people power, with dynamic and recent examples from across the Middle East and North Africa during the Arab Spring. Yet while the study of violence has long defined the field of international security, scholars have only recently began to examine the causes and effects of nonviolent conflict. This course is designed to overview these movements of nonviolent, antigovernment dissent, including their emergence, movement dynamics, and outcomes.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the mass media, and the role the mass media plays in American democracy. In this course, we will consider several key questions pertain- ting to the role of the media in democracy, such as: What effects do mass mediated messages have on voters? Do voters passively accept information found in the media, or do voters actively challenge this information? How do journalists and political elites interact?

Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) is a specialized field of practice within the broader domain of intelligence. The discipline encompasses all activities involved in the collection, use and dissemination of geographically referenced information (imagery, imagery intelligence and geospatial information) using technical capabilities that include remote sensing, GIS, data management, and data visualization. GEOINT processes and capabilities are designed to gain intelligence about the national security or an operational environment, visually depict this knowledge, combine the knowledge with other information sources, and present knowledge in a way that is appropriate to the decision-making environment. GEOINT supports key mission areas related to the national security of the U.S. including informing policymakers; supporting military, intelligence, and homeland security operations, and facilitating intelligence collaboration. While the GEOINT discipline is secretive in operations, this course presents publicly available unclassified information to describe its use, benefits and governance.

This course examines the international arms trade from several perspectives and at different levels of analysis. The purpose of the course is to acquaint students in the with the literature, questions, and debates about the role that military equipment and technology plays in international relations.