Griffith Awarded Post-doctoral Fellowship at RAND Corporation

Luke Griffith, Ohio University History and Contemporary History Institute alumnus, won a post-doctoral fellowship from the RAND Corporation. The Stanton Nuclear Security Fellows Program identifies scholars who are at the forefront of the next generation of thought on nuclear security-related topics and supports interdisciplinary research that advances policymakers’ understanding of nuclear issues.

Beginning in September 2019, Griffith will spend one year at RAND’s Washington, D.C., office carrying out independent research on a nuclear security topic that will be considered for publication by the think tank. He will also join an interdisciplinary team of researchers as part of an ongoing client-sponsored project on nuclear security, conducting research and writing that will produce a RAND publication.

Griffith earned his PhD in history in 2018 under the direction of Dr. Chester Pach and a graduate certificate in Contemporary History from the College of Arts & Sciences at OHIO. His dissertation, “Green Cheese and the Moon: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and the Euromissiles,” analyzes the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s dual-track decision, which called for the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe and simultaneous arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union. Using archival records from the Library of Congress, the Carter and Reagan presidential libraries, and the British National Archives, Griffith tracks US nuclear policy and alliance politics through two presidential administrations from 1977 to 1987. He examines the presidential administrations’ management of the NATO alliance, the course of arms control talks, American nuclear strategy, and the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) arms control treaty that eliminated American and Soviet land-based short- and intermediate-range missiles. His dissertation has taken on increased relevance recently after President Donald Trump suspended the United States’ compliance with the INF treaty on February 1, 2019.

Griffith held CHI’s Baker Peace Dissertation Fellowship in 2017-18, which facilitated his dissertation’s completion. Following numerous teaching assistant assignments at Ohio University, he taught “U.S. History to 1877” and “World History since 1500” on the Athens campus. Most recently, he taught courses at the University of Rio Grande and Washington State Community College.

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