Kyle Balzer
Ohio University doctoral student Kyle Balzer was recently awarded an America in the World Consortium Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin for the 2022-23 academic year.
“The Clements Center for National Security is one of the nation’s premier national security research institutes, and this is a very prestigious fellowship,” said Ingo Trauschweizer, Ph.D., professor of history and director of the Contemporary History Institute in the College of Arts & Sciences. The center’s mission is to train the next generation of national security leaders through education, research and public debate.
A sixth-year graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in History and a Certificate in Contemporary History, Balzer is currently in the final stages of completing his dissertation on “The Revivalists: James R. Schlesinger, the Nuclear Warfighting Strategists, and Competitive Strategies for Great Power Competition.” He plans to defend his dissertation in April.
Balzer’s dissertation examines the contributions made by strategists like James R. Schlesinger, a former director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense in the 1970s, to American defense policy during the latter half of the Cold War.
While a post-doctoral fellow at the Center, Balzer will participate in Clements Center programming and have the chance to further his research. He hopes to produce several articles for publication, while also gaining experience and knowledge from senior scholars at the institution.
Balzer credits OHIO and the Contemporary History Institute and the History Department for laying the foundation for much of his recent success.
“CHI has been a wonderful experience,” he said. For “a historian-in-training struggling to navigate a Ph.D. program,” the institute provided a conducive and supportive environment for research and writing. “My first seminar at the center was vital for my dissertation” Balzer noted. “It helped me develop a methodological approach” to the study of the past.
Balzar said the program’s professors were tremendously helpful, while an older cohort of CHI students set an example for him to follow. Finally, Balzer was able to make use of the funding resources available to CHI students, and he benefited from the many guest speakers CHI brings to campus every year.
“CHI students are fortunate to have numerous funding resources, and we are able to meet and talk with interesting academics and policy-practitioners who visit as guest lectures. We were able to meet Ret. Admiral James Stavridis, and I talked briefly with historian Stephan Kieninger, whose work has helped by dissertation immensely,” Balzar said.
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