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From http://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/universities-prepare-for-a-cold-war-redux/71979

Universities Prepare for a Cold War Redux
by Nick Fouriezos
October 21, 2016

In Rhode Island, the U.S. Naval War College has launched the Russia Maritime Studies Institute, created partially “in response to a resurgent Russian military that has enabled Moscow to assert itself in Ukraine.” Meanwhile, undergrad interest in Russian courses is on the rise, especially in feeder schools for the American intelligence community. Georgetown University, for one, has added programs over the past two years, and enrollment in one Russian foreign policy class has increased by at least a third. The stakes are high, says Angela Stent, who served as an adviser on Russia to both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and is now director of Georgetown’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies. “We’re not in a Cold War,” she adds, “but we’re certainly in a Cold War 2.0.”

The shift follows decades of relative indifference from the West, which began after the collapse of the Soviet Union as a world power. Slavic departments suffered severe cuts through the turn of the century, the Berlin Wall came down and the aftermath of 9/11 combined with the economic ascent of China pushed the next generation of global affairs students toward Arabic and Chinese studies instead. At the same time, fewer students went on to earn graduate degrees focused on Russia. During the height of the Ukraine crisis and Crimea takeover in 2014, federal lawmakers stopped funding Title VIII, the program that supported much of the postgrad research and language training in Eastern Europe.

Read the full article at http://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/universities-prepare-for-a-cold-war-redux/71979