Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
Kyaw Hsan Hlaing
Reppy Fellow 2025-26
Kyaw Hsan Hlaing is a PhD student in the Department of Government. He studies comparative politics and international relations with a focus on political violence, insurgency, authoritarianism, and regime change, exploring dynamics of civil conflict and post-war transitions.
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Cassidy Fowler
Reppy Fellow 2025-26
Cassidy Fowler is a PhD student in the Department of Government. Her research focuses on international security, with a particular interest in nuclear weapons strategy and operations, IR theory, and security studies.
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Anurag Koyyada
Reppy Fellow 2025-26
Anurag Koyyada is a J.D. candidate at Cornell Law School. He is interested in how law, society, and technology interact in military and surveillance contexts. His work, as it relates to conflict and security, examines how emerging technologies both mirror and mold societal power, both constraining and enabling peace. Anurag is a researcher at the Aerospace ADVERSARY Lab, studying cyber- and space-based warfare, and works on NATO's HEIST project. Previously, he studied political economy at King's College London.
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What Does U.S. Military Disengagement Mean for European Security?
Agnieszka Nimark, PACS Visiting Scholar
“After decades of providing security guarantees for Europe, the recent announcement of the US plans to reduce its troops has reignited debates not only about the European security but also about Europe’s nuclear deterrence,” writes Agnes Nimark.
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2025 Peter Katzenstein Book Prize
The Katzenstein Prize, in honor of Peter J. Katzenstein, the Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies at Cornell University, recognizes an outstanding first book in International Relations, Comparative Politics, or Political Economy. The prize was established on the occasion of Professor Katzenstein’s 40th Year at Cornell University and has been made possible by the generous support of his colleagues, collaborators, and former students.
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Richard Garwin, Physicist and Nuclear Arms Control Advocate, Dies at 97
By Rebecca Slayton, PACS Director
Richard Garwin, an innovative physicist who made major contributions to nuclear weapons development while also advocating for nuclear arms control, died on May 13, 2025, at the age of 97.
Described by his biographer as the “most influential scientist you’ve never heard of,” Garwin played a crucial role in the design of the first nuclear fusion weapon, which was detonated in the Marshall Islands in November 1952. Garwin went on to advise several presidents and spent much of his career at IBM Research, working first out of Columbia University and then Yorktown Heights.
Garwin also had a special relationship to Cornell University, collaborating with physics professor and Nobel laureate Hans Bethe on arms control efforts for several decades, and becoming an A.D. White Professor in the mid-1980s. While at Cornell, Garwin played an important role in the intellectual life of the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.
Herb Lin, who was then a postdoctoral researcher at the Reppy Institute, recalls first meeting Garwin at Cornell: “I was quite excited to be able to learn from him and to engage him as a colleague, so I was taken down a few pegs when our first interaction was him asking me to get him coffee.”
Lin, who subsequently pursued a distinguished career at the National Academy of Sciences and then Stanford University, notes that over the next 40 years, “our relationship evolved to be more peer-like, but truth be told, I’ve never met anyone who was really a true peer of Garwin’s.”
For more on Garwin’s life and legacy, see this collection of essays published in the May 2025 issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
Photo credit: Richard Garwin, Kurt Gottfried and Hans Bethe at a press conference on missile defense, March 22, 1984. Source: James J. MacKenzie, flickr.com.
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Sabrina Karim, PACS Associate Director, Wins Berlin Prize
Sabrina Karim, PACS
The highly competitive Berlin Prize is awarded annually to U.S.-based scholars, writers, composers and artists from the United States who represent the highest standards of excellence in their fields.
Karim will join the Berlin Class of Spring 2026. Her project, “Pockets of Restraint in Violent Security Forces, will look globally for pockets of restraint that emerge among different security forces around the world based on research from her NSF CAREER award (that was recently terminated).
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David Cortright, PACS Visiting Scholar, Publishes New Book
David Cortright, PACS
David Cortright, PACS Visiting Scholar, has published a new book titled Protest and Policy in the Iraq, Nuclear Freeze and Vietnam Peace Movements (Cambridge University Press, 2025).
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This Is Why Trump Is Always Talking About Corruption
Sarah Kreps, PACS
“Corruption is deeper than whether someone is making backroom deals. Instead, it’s a sense that the game itself is rigged in favor of a select few,” says Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute.
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The Best Evidence Yet That Roman Gladiators Fought Lions: A Bite Mark
Barry Strauss, PACS
Barry Strauss, professor of history, says “The rules they followed in Rome were not necessarily applied in godforsaken Eboracum. So, although the man was probably not a gladiator, he may indeed have been one. Burial in the gladiator cemetery is certainly an argument in favor of that theory.”