essay on homeland

A Vision for Homeland Security in the Year 2025

Subscribe to governance weekly, darrell m. west darrell m. west senior fellow - center for technology innovation , douglas dillon chair in governmental studies.

June 26, 2012

Imagine a future in which unmanned drones attack critical infrastructure, endangering millions of people, or digital intruders disrupt the financial sector. Or natural disasters could upset food and medical distribution and supply chains around the world.

These are just a few of the risks facing the United States. As demonstrated by the devastation of natural events, such Fukishema in 2011, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami in 2004, and the continuing threats of terrorism and cyber intrusions, there are numerous threats with the potential to harm lives and damage our economy, society, and public order.

Together with the MITRE Corporation, we gathered a group of leading experts in November, 2011 to discuss a vision for homeland security in the year 2025. This gathering brought together individuals who were knowledgeable about homeland security from the public, private, and non-profit sectors to think about the country’s threats, challenges, and proposed remedies. Guests included leaders from organizations such as federal, state, and local government agencies, Congress, the private sector, non-government organizations, think tanks, and nonprofit organizations for a discussion with an interactive dialogue.

The goals for this event were to help shape strategic thinking for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), its critical stakeholders, and the nation. This paper summarizes key ideas that emerged from the day’s discussion, such as future threats, integration challenges and the resulting considerations for leaders across the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as they work to make the United States safer. Key themes that emerged from this dialogue included the following points:

  • Understand homeland security as a diverse array of organizations, functions, capabilities, and priorities. • Raise awareness of a systems approach to homeland security. • Organize joint action across sectors and leverage private sector resources. • Develop real-time data analytics and decision-making tools. • Institutionalize future-thinking across the security agencies. • Educate senior officials and critical decision-making regarding state and local authority roles, processes, and procedures.

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98 Homeland Security Essay Topics

🏆 best essay topics on homeland security, ✍️ homeland security essay topics for college, 👍 good homeland security research topics & essay examples, 📌 easy homeland security essay topics, 🌶️ hot homeland security ideas to write about.

• Homeland Security: Physical Security Incident Case Study
• Conceptualization of Homeland Security
• Leadership Issues in the Department of Homeland Security
• Research Proposal on Homeland Security in the US
• Homeland Security – Immigration Policy
• Comparing Homeland Security Research Products
• Interactions of Local Police and Homeland Security Officials
• Homeland Security Efforts to Counter Terrorism The counter-terrorism efforts of the Department of Homeland Security have multiple positive outcomes and generally ensure safety for citizens.
• Homeland Security and Emergency Management Education The sphere of emergency management has become an area of intense interest for researchers of the 21st century.
• Homeland Security Efforts: Counter-Terrorism and Threats The homeland security mission is to protect the country from various types of threats, including terrorism and national disasters.
• Terrorism and Homeland Security Terrorism is an act of political violence aimed to incite terror and panic into the target population and further a specific political goal.
• Preventing Potential Attacks and Counter Terrorism The objective of this paper is to develop recommendations for a mayor to solve the issues of homeland security efforts to combat terrorism.
• Homeland Security in New York City The homeland security measures are crucial for New York City, and its citizens receive the government’s reports about efforts to ensure the society that they are safe.
• Department of Homeland Security: Main Functions The most useful law associated with homeland security is the Homeland Security Act of 2002. It established the primary mission of the newly created Department of Homeland Security.
• Strategic Planning in the Homeland Security Organization Strategic planning helps organizations plan for the future. The Homeland Security organization employs strategic planning, which enhances its competitiveness.
• Analysis Homeland Security Act of 2002 The paper assesses and critically analyses the Homeland Security Act passed by the United States federal Congress in 2002.
• Homeland Security: Organizational Change Influential people play an important role in the decision process, as the business community can be affected by situations where their country of interest might get sanctions.
• Online Disinformation and Homeland Security Examples incorporate the spread of cyber-rumors by social media bots during French elections within the Macron Leaks attack or the partisan messages during Brexit in the UK.
• United States Homeland Security Strategies Modern society currently faces many dangers such as crime and terrorism. Security of the citizens is of the utmost importance for the United States government.
• Job Rotations in the Department of Homeland Security The directive to rotate jobs within security-oriented organizations can only achieve substantial results once the right people are identified for the right jobs.
• The Department of Homeland Security The idea of creating a new department was to do “the most extensive reorganization of the Federal Government since the 1940s by creating a new department of Homeland Security”.
• “Homeland Security” of Rod Propst The article to be analyzed is “How to Protect Ourselves From a Terrorist-Induced Nuclear Incident at a Commercial Site in the United States” by Rod Propst.
• Homeland Security, Race and Crime in the US Homeland security has become a significant part of the American republic security sector especially in this age of industrialization.
• Homeland Security: The Role of the US Military Increased military involvement in homeland security better prepares the country for multiple disasters as it expands its capacity.
• Department of Homeland Security: The Biggest Challenge DHS faces many challenges. The biggest challenge which it seems to be dealing with since it was created is the issue concerning the broader DHS environment.
• Homeland Security and Change The original homeland security organization was characterized by uncoordinated responses amongst its respective agencies and cooperation was a difficult aspect to achieve.
• Homeland Security-Protecting Critical Infrastructures Post 11th September 2001 attacks on the twin towers of World Trade Center; the FBI has faced a brunt of a lot of criticism from the public and media alike.
• Homeland Security and Critical Thinking Skills The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a lack of critical thinking skills on a governmental scale could cause long-term issues and threats to homeland security.
• Varieties of Homeland Security Article Critique This paper shows that “Varieties of Homeland Security” contains an alternative perspective on HS definitions and uncovers certain issues in the ability of state-level agencies to define HS.
• Homeland Security Concepts in the United States Risk management (RM) is a complex activity that has been undertaken by the US government structures for the tasks related to homeland defense (HD) and homeland security (HS).
• Critical Thinking for Homeland Security The skill of critical thinking is helpful in all areas of people’s lives. It is vital to understand what factors contribute to the development of one’s critical thinking.
• The United States’ Homeland Security Strategies This paper will provide an overview of homeland security strategies, their economic, social, and legal implications, as well as how they relate to Saint Leo’s core values.
• US Political Surveillance and Homeland Security This paper identifies the primary law enforcement agency responsible for political surveillance in the investigation of terrorism in the United States.
• US Homeland Security Structures and Technologies In the wake of cyber threats to the U.S. security and economy, there have been efforts to develop structures, which can shield the nation from these challenges.
• Homeland Security in Agriculture and Health Sectors Lack of attention to the security and protection of the agricultural sector in the U.S. economy can create a serious threat to the health and safety of the population.
• US Homeland Security Strategies and Structures According to the US Homeland Security Council, homeland security should be regarded as a legitimate discipline that helps train professionals who will work in the area.
• US Gun Laws and Homeland Security Strategies The government of the USA has developed a range of gun policies that are meant to ensure the security of its population.
• Homeland Security and Terrorist Attack Prevention This paper focuses on the real nature of terrorism and the governmental structures responsible for reducing the threat of potential terrorist attacks.
• Terrorism and Homeland Security The article is important since it provides information on the functionality of Homeland Security, which is an essential department in terms of maintenance of security.
• Dallas County Homeland Security: Methodology The researcher will obtain an array of qualitative data related to the policy-making process in Dallas County and the efficiency of the existing homeland security strategies.
• Homeland Security Concerns and Responsible Governance The highest priority that enabled the formation of the Homeland Security was the fight against terrorism. It still continues to improve the fight.
• Department of Homeland Security: Bureaucratic Structure The objective of this paper is to communicate the views of an analysis regarding the effectiveness of the bureaucratic structure in the DHS.
• US Homeland Security: Strategies and Expenses The paper analyzes two articles on US national defense: Homeland Security: Building a National Strategy by Ruth David and Avoiding the Bear Trap by Mark Lefcowits.
• US Homeland Security Issues The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has the responsibility of ensuring that all Americans remain safe while in the American soil.
• Homeland Security Website: Communication Process This piece of work will critically look at the Homeland Security website where different aspects of communication will be evaluated through answering of the questions.
• Homeland Security: Fast Response to Disasters and Terrorism Department of Homeland Security sets counter terrorism as the main priority before the adoption of all hazards approaching disaster management.
• Homeland Security of the US Transportation System This paper will set out to analyze how the transport system in the country has adjusted to meet the Homeland security demands that became apparent after the 9/11 attacks.
• Dallas County Homeland Security and Emergency Management The major question that will be answered in the proposal can be formulated as “Why did the tragedy with shooting policemen take place in Dallas in 2016?
• Managing Fear: The Politics of Homeland Security
• Homeland Security Agencies: Federal, State, and Local Levels
• Challenges to Federalism: Homeland Security and Disaster Response
• A Capacity for Mitigation as the Next Frontier in Homeland Security
• Homeland Security After Hurricane Katrina: Where Do We Go From Here?
• Public-Private Partnerships in Homeland Security: Opportunities & Challenges
• Defining the Role of the Environmental Health Profession in Homeland Security
• Managing Homeland Security: Deployment, Vigilance, and Persistence
• Homeland Security: An Aristotelian Approach to Professional Development
• International Organizations, Transatlantic Cooperation, and the ‘Globalization’ of Homeland Security
• Misuse of Immigration Policies in the Name of Homeland Security
• Homeland Security Through the Lens of Critical Infrastructure and Key Asset Protection
• Community Policing as the Primary Prevention Strategy for Homeland Security at the Local Law Enforcement Level
• Crisis Bureaucracy: Homeland Security and the Political Design of Legal Mandates
• Qualitative Risk Ranking Systems in Assessing Homeland Security Threats
• The Homeland Security Dilemma: Imagination, Failure, and the Escalating Costs of Perfecting Security
• Dispersed Federalism as a New Regional Governance for Homeland Security
• A Costly Price of Homeland Security for Ensuring the Country’s Safety
• Homeland Security and Information Sharing: Federal Policy Considerations
• Domestic Intelligence Agencies and Their Implications for Homeland Security
• USA Patriot Act: Protecting National Security or Violating Civil Liberties?
• Color Bind: Lessons From the Failed Homeland Security Advisory System
• Armed Forces in Homeland Security: European vs. American Practices
• Homeland Security: Advancing Intelligence-Led Policing in Confronting Jihadi-Salafism
• Emergency Management and Homeland Security: Exploring the Relationship
• Balancing the Risks, Benefits, and Costs of Homeland Security
• The Department of Homeland Security and Why It Needs Stronger Safeguards Against Bias
• How Homeland Security Can Benefit From Crowd-Sourced Applications
• Recent Developments in the US Homeland Security Policies and Their Implications for the Management of Extreme Events
• Imperfect Federalism: The Intergovernmental Partnership for Homeland Security
• Homeland Security Management: A Critical Review of Civil Protection Mechanism in Korea
• Strengths and Weaknesses of a Distributed Homeland Security
• Applying Cost Management and Life-Cycle Cost Theory to Homeland Security National Priorities
• Emergency Medical Services as a Vital Partner in Homeland Security
• Public Service Motivation and Willingness to Collaborate: An Examination in the Context of Homeland Security
• The Importance of Dedicated Investment in Academic Homeland Security Research and Inquiry
• Homeland Insecurity: Thinking About CBRN Terrorism
• Towards a Unified Homeland Security Strategy: An Asset Vulnerability Model
• Homeland Security in Real-Time: The Power of the Public and Mobile Technology
• A Social Infrastructure for Hometown Security: Advancing the Homeland Security Paradigm
• Homeland Security: Protecting America’s Roads and Transit Against Terrorism
• China’s Quest for Intangible Property and Its Implications for Homeland Security
• Environmental Security and Climate Change: A Link to Homeland Security
• The Department of Homeland Security as the Pinnacle of Bureaucratic Dysfunction
• How Public Perception of Homeland Security Has Evolved
• Intelligence and Security Informatics for Homeland Security
• Technology Strategies for Homeland Security: Adaptation & Co-Evolution of Offense and Defense
• E-Government: Overview and Issues for Homeland Security Interests
• An Overview of Risk Modeling Methods and Approaches for Homeland Security
• Homeland Security Culture: Enhancing Values While Fostering Resilience

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These essay examples and topics on Homeland Security were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

This essay topic collection was updated on January 8, 2024 .

Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — Homeland Security

Essays on Homeland Security

The importance of writing an essay on homeland security.

Writing an essay on homeland security is crucial for several reasons. Firstly, it allows individuals to gain a deeper understanding of the various aspects of homeland security, including the policies, strategies, and technologies that are put in place to protect a nation from threats. Secondly, it provides an opportunity for individuals to critically analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of current homeland security measures and propose new ideas for improvement. Lastly, writing about homeland security helps to raise awareness and educate others about the importance of safeguarding a nation's security.

Writing Tips for an Essay on Homeland Security

When writing an essay on homeland security, it is important to conduct thorough research on the topic. This may involve reviewing government reports, academic journals, and reputable news sources to gather information and data. Additionally, it is crucial to clearly define the scope of the essay and establish a well-structured outline to ensure that all key points are addressed.

Furthermore, it is essential to use critical thinking and analytical skills to evaluate the effectiveness of current homeland security measures and propose potential solutions or improvements. This may involve considering various perspectives and potential implications of different strategies.

Additionally, it is important to use clear and concise language to effectively communicate ideas and arguments. Avoiding jargon and technical language can help ensure that the essay is accessible to a wide audience. Finally, it is crucial to properly cite all sources and references used in the essay to maintain academic integrity and avoid plagiarism.

The events of September 11, 2001, marked a turning point in the history of homeland security in the United States. This essay will explore the evolution of homeland security in the United States, from the immediate aftermath of 9/11 to present day. It will examine the changes in policies, strategies, and technologies that have been implemented to prevent and respond to threats to the homeland.

Intelligence plays a critical role in homeland security, providing policymakers and law enforcement agencies with the information they need to detect and prevent threats to the homeland. This essay will explore the various types of intelligence used in homeland security, including human intelligence, signals intelligence, and open-source intelligence. It will also examine the challenges and ethical considerations associated with gathering and analyzing intelligence in the context of homeland security.

In an increasingly digital world, cybersecurity has become a critical component of homeland security. This essay will explore the impact of cybersecurity on homeland security, examining the threats posed by cyberattacks and the measures taken to protect the nation's critical infrastructure and sensitive information. It will also consider the role of the private sector in cybersecurity and the challenges of international cooperation in addressing cyber threats.

Immigration has long been a contentious issue in the United States, and it has become increasingly intertwined with homeland security in the post-9/11 era. This essay will explore the intersection of immigration and homeland security, examining the policies and practices that have been implemented to secure the nation's borders and address the challenges posed by immigration. It will also consider the impact of immigration enforcement on civil liberties and human rights.

Emergency management is a critical component of homeland security, encompassing the planning, coordination, and response to natural and man-made disasters. This essay will explore the role of emergency management in homeland security, examining the agencies and organizations responsible for disaster response and recovery. It will also consider the challenges of preparing for and responding to complex, large-scale emergencies, such as hurricanes, terrorist attacks, and pandemics.

Homeland security policies often raise complex ethical questions, including issues of privacy, civil liberties, and the use of force. This essay will explore the ethical considerations of homeland security policies, examining the trade-offs between security and individual rights. It will also consider the role of public opinion and democratic accountability in shaping homeland security policies and practices.

Globalization has created new opportunities and challenges for homeland security, as threats to the homeland can originate from anywhere in the world. This essay will explore the impact of globalization on homeland security, examining the interconnected nature of transnational threats such as terrorism, organized crime, and pandemics. It will also consider the role of international cooperation and diplomacy in addressing global security challenges.

Technology has revolutionized the field of homeland security, providing new tools and capabilities for detecting, preventing, and responding to threats. This essay will explore the role of technology in homeland security, examining the use of surveillance, biometrics, artificial intelligence, and other advanced technologies. It will also consider the ethical and legal implications of technology in homeland security, including issues of privacy and data security.

Climate change poses significant challenges to homeland security, as rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and resource scarcity can destabilize societies and create new vulnerabilities. This essay will explore the impact of climate change on homeland security, examining the ways in which environmental changes can exacerbate existing security threats. It will also consider the role of homeland security agencies in preparing for and responding to climate-related disasters.

The field of homeland security is constantly evolving in response to new threats, technologies, and geopolitical dynamics. This essay will explore the future of homeland security, considering the potential challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. It will also consider the implications of emerging trends, such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and geopolitical shifts, for the practice of homeland security.

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The Journal of the NPS Center for Homeland Defense and Security

How to Learn About Homeland Security

By Christopher Bellavita

The article describes how one can begin to learn about homeland security. Starting with institutionally approved, rather than objectively-tested and validated, foundational knowledge may provide academic order, but the order is achieved at the cost of constraining prematurely what homeland security could become. The method presented in this essay starts with the subjective interests of a learner, and relies on the usefulness of intellectual conflict to transform the learner’s ideas. The article outlines several frameworks learners can use to structure their homeland security inquiry. The author argues claims about what constitutes foundational knowledge in homeland security frequently are based on socially- constructed agreement that masks the subjectivity needed to arrive at consensus. Rather than avoiding subjectivity in determining the roots and bounds of homeland security, we can encourage reflective practitioners to construct and share insights derived from their experience -based, research- informed understanding of homeland security.

Suggested Citation

Bellavita, Christopher. “How to Learn About Homeland Security.” Homeland Security Affairs 15, Article 5 (September, 2019). www.hsaj.org/articles/15395 .

Podcast: Christopher Bellavita on learning about Homeland Security

What This Article is About

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” 1

The core question addressed in this essay is how to begin learning about homeland security. The primary audience is master’s degree participants at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS). 2 The students are public-sector practitioners from federal, state, local, and other government agencies.

The approach I advocate in this essay embraces subjectivity and the requirement to present and defend subjective observations to other people. For experienced practitioners a foundational approach 3 to learning homeland security “fills a pail.” Starting from where you are, learning what you need to learn, and exposing your ideas to your colleagues can be a pathway to “lighting a fire.”

I support my argument by reviewing the factors involved in deciding what constitutes valid foundational knowledge about homeland security. Those factors make it difficult to achieve objective, evidence-based agreement about what counts as foundational knowledge. But the difficulty provides opportunities for learners to create, assert and defend their own ideas about what counts as homeland security knowledge.

After describing and linking subjectivity, andragogy (adult education), and questions and learning, I discuss the phenomenological context within which homeland security learning can occur. I describe the Cynefin framework and illustrate how it can be used to structure questions and inquiry about homeland security.

The final part of the essay outlines a matrix offering alternative ways to conduct homeland security inquiry. The matrix is constructed from three types of truth (correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic) and seven inquiring systems (induction, deduction, multiview, dialectic, unbounded, abduction, and detour and access).

The method described in this essay is based on my experiences teaching over 65 Introduction to Homeland Security graduate seminars since 2003. It is one answer to the question of how best to learn about homeland security.

Creating Homeland Security Knowledge

Figure 1 contains topics one is unlikely to find presented in a homeland security textbook (yet).

• Examining Female Genital Mutilation as an Act of Terrorism
• 21st Century Crime: How Malicious Artificial Intelligence Will Impact Homeland Security
• The Implications Of Nanotechnology For The Fire Service: Avoiding The Mistakes Of The Past
• Cyber Federalism: Defining Cyber’s Jurisdictional Boundaries
• Pyro-Terrorism in High-Rise Buildings
• The Arctic: A Wait and See Approach to Defending the Homeland
• The Intergenerational Transfer of Trauma and Implications for Syrian and Iraqi Refugees
• Crowdsourcing Threat Analysis; Applying a “Superforecasting” Methodology to Detection of Homegrown Violence
• Big Brother or Trusted Allies? How the Police Can Earn Community Support for Using Unmanned Aircraft
• Fake News, Conspiracy Theories, and Lies: An Information Laundering Model for Homeland Security
• Asserting Collective State Sovereignty to Strengthen the National Network of Fusion Centers
• Obsessive Compulsive Homeland Security: Insights from the Neurobiological Security Motivation System
• Measuring State Resilience: What Actually Makes A Difference?
• It Takes a Village: Integrating Firehouse Hubs to Encourage Cooperation among Police, Fire,and the Public
• Implementation of Active Cyber Defense Measures by Private Entities: The Need for anInternational Accord to Address Disputes
• Homeland Security from a Tribal Context
• Tusks, Traffickers and Terrorists: Is Wildlife Trafficking a Homeland Security Concern?
• The Maple Leaf and the Olive Branch: A Comparative Analysis of Refugee Policies in Canada and the United States and the Potential for Blended Reform
• Puerto Rico’s Homeland Security Readiness: Redesigning the Island’s Power Grid to Improve Its Resiliency and Efficiency
• Military Doctrine Relating to Homeland Security Does Not Adequately Guide Domestic Use of the National Guard
• Disaster Housing for High-Density Urban Environments
• Diversity in Homeland Security: Analyzing Environment, Not Numbers
• Social Media Screening of Homeland Security Job Applicants and the Implications on Free Speech Rights
• Disruptive Emergence in Disaster Response Systems
• Effectiveness of Blockchain Technology in the Customs Environment
• What the Homeland Security Enterprise Can Learn from The Stock Market
• Creating A Secure Border by First Agreeing What Secure Border Means
• Reacting to School Shootings by Engaging the Lost Time Interval
• Black American Social Status and Post 9/11 Unity
• Hi Tech, Low Tech, And No Tech Communication Strategies When the Power Goes Out
• Applying the National Infrastructure Protection Plan to State and Local Infrastructure Priorities
• The ESTA Program and Northern
• Border Security Loopholes
• The Role of Social, Personal and Perceived Isolation in the Radicalization Process
• Preventing Police Murders by Identifying Early Warning Indicators
• Information Sharing Within the Critical Infrastructure Community
• Creating A “State to Grass Roots” Strategic Communication Model for ESF 8
• Evaluating Adherence to The Intelligence Cycle Within the Homeland Security Intelligence Environment
• Modifying the Risk Formula for Homeland Security Grant Allocations By Incorporating Indirect and Spillover Consequences
• Establishing a 4th Phase Air Cargo Screening Strategy
• A Strategy for Preventing the Theft of Public Safety Vehicles
• Re-Visioning Border Security as A Complex Adaptive System
• Punching Above Their Weight: The Homeland Security Contributions of the U.S. Pacific Territories

Figure 1 : Selected CHDS Thesis Topics

Figure 1 contains titles of research conducted in the last four years by cohorts at the Center for Homeland Defense and Security. The authors are reflective homeland security practitioners. 4 They, like the alumni who preceded them, did not learn homeland security by relying on foundational ideas about homeland security. They learned by starting with the experiences, knowledge, and interests they brought to CHDS; by sharing those experiences with their colleagues; and by modifying and growing what they know about homeland security through interactions with courses, lectures, assignments, readings and challenges to their ideas. The knowledge they are creating helps to advance homeland security as both a practice and an academic discipline.

Three Approaches to Learning Homeland Security

In this section I describe three (not mutually exclusive) ways to begin learning about homeland security: 1) a foundations approach: start with the fundamental concepts of homeland security; 2) an objective approach: start with concepts whose validity can be objectively determined; and 3) a subjective approach: start with the ideas, questions and knowledge each learner brings to the educational activity.

If the homeland security discipline were firmly established, one could learn about homeland security by building on the discipline’s conceptual foundations. 5 Textbooks are one place to find candidates for a foundational approach to homeland security. 6 They codify homeland security into a series of categories, frequently a large number of categories. 7 Textbooks are constructed by experts who assert – based on experience and research — what one needs to know about homeland security. 8 Students who rely primarily on textbooks, according to Kuhn, tend to “accept theories on the authority of teacher and text, not because of evidence.” 9

Eighteen years after September 11 2001, homeland security is still not a discipline. 10 There is no national agreement about what homeland security is. 11 There is no broad consensus about what the core homeland security problems are. They seem to keep changing. Different language communities have settled – more or less – on working definitions of homeland security. 12 Where there is agreement within those communities, homeland security foundations look similar to ideas from other fields of study – like law enforcement, emergency management, and public administration. 13 The claims I have seen about homeland security foundations are supported largely by socially-constructed agreements about what constitutes foundational knowledge. 14 I consider those agreements to be based on a consensus that masks subjectivity. 15

I do not see a practicable way to avoid subjectivity. Consequently I think of subjectivity more as ground truth to be acknowledged rather than a problem to be solved. I believe socially- constructed agreements about foundations can be useful. In fact, my argument encourages socially- constructed foundations. However, I want to expand who gets to decide what the foundations are, and to encourage reflective practitioners to construct and share their own foundations. This essay describes how that can be accomplished.

In addition to a traditional foundational approach, 16 there are at least two other ways to learn homeland security. One way is to remove, as much as possible, the subjective element in deciding what a foundation is, and to replace subjectivity with objective referents. This would follow the practice of physical and material sciences (like physics, biology, chemistry, and engineering), and would base foundations on empirical knowledge — by which I mean knowledge that is repeatable, and whose validity is falsifiable and independent of the observer’s mental state. 17 As I will argue later in the discussion of the Cynefin framework, an objective approach to homeland security might help learning simple and complicated issues. 18 It is less helpful in learning about the complex issues that – in my opinion — constitute the bulk of the dynamic concerns facing homeland security practitioners.

Another strategy — the one advanced in this essay — is to approach learning about homeland security from the perspective of radical subjectivity. 19 This strategy adopts, makes explicit, and extends the subjectivity inherent in contemporary models of how to learn about homeland security. 20

Instead of subjectivity being an opaque tool reserved to those who possess institutional authority (such as people who publish textbooks or who develop homeland security curricula), I want to make subjectivity transparent, legitimize it for homeland security scholarship, and make it available to anyone who wants to learn about homeland security. 21

Subjectivity in this context does not mean considering as true whatever one wants to be true (e.g., that Obama is a Muslim or that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job). I use subjectivity to refer to a process that begins with individual interpretations and reflections of sense data 22 and extends through a transformational process of presenting and defending one’s observations about homeland security to other people. I use the term “radical” in a dictionary — not a political — sense, to mean “root.” I am looking for homeland security inquiry to start with the baseline of what each participant brings to the CHDS program.

“Start from where you are” is the phrase I use to describe the subjective approach to learning homeland security. I use “transformational dialectic” to describe a cyclical process of presenting and defending one’s observations to other people, and refining one’s ideas based on that process. 23

My belief — maybe stated more accurately as my hope — is that starting from where you are, and using the transformational dialectic will serve two purposes (in addition to keeping students motivated to learn).

1) It will enable individuals to learn about homeland security in a way that keeps homeland security knowledge alive and continuously evolving. This contrasts with a learning model based on collecting and remembering a series of facts and interpretations about homeland security. 24 My view is that a foundational approach to learning homeland security (as illustrated by textbooks) emphasizes learning at the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. 25 Starting from where you are encourages learning at all six levels. 26

2) It will help to expand, sustain, and grow understanding of homeland security as a social enterprise. For example, the research topics described in figure 1 – and research developed by subsequent cohorts at CHDS (and elsewhere) — will be added to the store of homeland-security knowledge. Many of those ideas may have a short life. Other ones may help to shape the future of homeland security.

A relevant aphorism is “Let a hundred flowers bloom. Let a hundred schools of thought contend.” 27 In my opinion, it is too early in the development of homeland security as a field of study to declare victory and say we know what it is. I recognize there are institutional, efficiency, and resource issues encouraging us to say what homeland security is, and then move on to whatever comes after that. 28 Foreclosing homeland security too quickly risks substituting a false sense of certainty for a missed opportunity to learn – and to influence — what homeland security could and should be.

Each of the participants at CHDS has the opportunity to make and defend claims about homeland security that can help shape the field. Because CHDS selects experienced practitioners with the demonstrated ability to do graduate-level work, I believe we would do a disservice to program participants if we first insisted they agree on the foundations of homeland security before they were allowed to develop their own perceptions about the discipline. My approach, instead, is to encourage them to start from where they are, share and defend those perceptions, and use a variety of tools (research, classwork, reading – even textbooks) to refine what they know and what they are learning.

Start from Where You Are by Asking Questions about Homeland Security

Starting from where you are means identifying what you want to learn about homeland security. If you don’t know what you want to learn, you can always start by asking, “what is homeland security?” That will lead you down a — thus far — endless path that touches international and domestic terrorism, emergency management, public health, critical infrastructure, privacy, cyber security, climate change, elections, human trafficking, artificial intelligence, child pornography, immigration, border security, the national debt, obesity, education, mass casualty events, biotechnology, and who knows what else. 29

People who come to CHDS have questions about homeland security. These questions emerge from professional and personal interests. Instead of discounting those experiences in favor of a “foundations of homeland security” approach, experience becomes an integral part of an andragogical learning process.

Andragogy – an adult learning philosophy – is based on five assumptions about the characteristics of mature learners: 30

• Self Directed — mature learners move from being dependent to being self-directed, from depending on others to determine what should be learned, to deciding for themselves what they learn, why they learn it, and how they learn it.
• Experience — Adults bring significant experiences to the learning enterprise, and use those experiences as learning resources.
• Readiness — Adults are ready to learn something when they perceive the need to learn it.
• Learning Orientation — Their learning focus is on solving problems or taking advantage of opportunities to advance the issues they care about.
• Motivation — Adults are motivated to learn more for internal than external reasons.

Starting with a question engages learners in each of the andragogical assumptions. 31

So what? If you want to learn about homeland security ask yourself why. Also ask what specifically you want to know about homeland security — not because your class assignment is to ask a question, but rather because you really want to know the answer. Pick something you care about.

A Working Definition of Learning 32

I recognize there are many definitions of learning. 33 For the purposes of this essay, I will define learning as transforming experience into knowledge. 34 I am using “knowledge” here to mean information that can be used to serve a purpose. 35

Elinor Ostrom suggests how frameworks can aid learning: 36

The purpose of a framework is to “identify the elements (and the relationships among these elements)…, to consider for analysis…, organize diagnostic and prescriptive inquiry…, [and] provide the most general set of variables that should be used to analyze all types of settings relevant for the framework.

There are two frameworks I find especially useful in analyzing how I learn something: one is Kolb’s learning cycle. 37 The other is Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives in the cognitive domain. 38

Kolb’s cycle, shown below, 39 illustrates how learning can occur. The model is drawn as a cycle, but one can enter at any point. The learning model consists of 1) having an experience, 2) reflecting on that experience, 3) generalizing from a set of similar or related experiences, and 4) using the generalization to structure (either through behavior or interpretation) a new experience.

Figure 2: Kolb’s Learning Cycle

If one maps the learning cycle against Bloom’s Taxonomy, illustrated below 40 , one can see how the learning cycle moves through several taxonomic dimensions. I will illustrate that claim with a cyber-security example, first by identifying questions derived from each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Figure 3: Bloom’s Taxonomy

Learning can focus on knowledge gained by gathering facts — for example, what were the dollar costs of cyber intrusion in 2018?

Learning can focus on demonstrating comprehension – e.g., where is a particular agency vulnerable to cyber intrusion?

Learning can focus on applying what one knows – e.g., what steps can an agency take to reduce its vulnerabilities to a cyber intrusion?

Learning can focus on analysis – for instance, how are the costs of intrusion calculated; how are vulnerabilities identified; what are the reasons leading one to believe steps taken to reduce vulnerabilities will be effective?

Learning can focus on synthesizing knowledge – e.g., what can we learn about mitigating cyber vulnerabilities by exploring how other security vulnerabilities – in human and non-human environments 41 — have been reduced?

Learning can focus on evaluating knowledge – for example, what are the advantages and disadvantages of an offensive cyber-security strategy as opposed to a defensive strategy?

For a reflective practitioner, one’s learning about homeland security evolves at each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy through having experiences ( in the world of practice, research, readings, seminars, informal discussions etc.), reflecting on and generalizing from those experiences, and transforming those experiences into a different way of thinking, feeling or acting.

So what? Ask yourself what you mean by learning, and what indicators you use to confirm that you have learned something.

Homeland Security Exists in More than One Phenomenological Space 42

I find the Cynefin framework 43 useful in organizing and understanding homeland security “realities.” 44 It segments reality into ordered and unordered systems,and it describes the characteristics of four systems in a way that allows for description, analysis, and prescription. 45

Figure 4: Cynefin Framework

Applied to homeland security, Cynefin assumes 1) a homeland security issue can be framed according to cause-effect relationships embedded in the issue, and 2) the way the issue is framed affects how one approaches learning about it. 46

Some issues are simple 47 , meaning (in Cynefin terms) cause-effect relationships are clear and widely understood (for example, get caught trying to bring a weapon onto a plane and you will likely not fly that day). Other issues are complicated, meaning cause-effect links are presently unknown, but with some research they can become known (for example, how to improve an organization’s cyber-security practices to reduce the likelihood of a successful intrusion). Both simple and complicated issues can be positioned in what Cynefin terms the ordered space. Learning in these domains consists, prototypically, of memorization (for simple issues) and conducting research (for complicated issues).

Complex and chaotic issues reside in the unordered space. In the complex domain, cause and effect relationships are known after the fact, not before 48 (for example, the impact of Kirstjen Nielsen’s tenure as DHS Secretary on border security policy), and generally neither the causes nor the effects are repeatable in precisely the same way. In the chaotic domain, cause and effect have no discernible relationships (for example, the first 102 minutes after the 9/11/01 attack in New York). 49 Things just happen. 50

So what? Do you believe what happens in homeland security has a cause that can be known before the effect appears? If so, where does that belief come from, and what evidence can you cite to support that belief? What if you entertained the hypothesis that some causes can only be known after the fact? How would that change your approach to learning homeland security?

Each Phenomenological Space Has Different Rules About Cause and Effect, and Understanding Cause-Effect Relationships is Important if One Wants to Improve Homeland Security

To illustrate in more detail how the Cynefin framework can be applied to homeland security, consider this subject: “how to measure the effectiveness of homeland security program expenditures.” To make the topic more specific, I’ll say the program is intended to improve the capability of a jurisdiction to respond effectively to a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED). Stated as a “cause-effect” relationship, the desired effect is “being prepared to respond to a VBIED;” having the required capabilities is the cause .

Approached as a simple issue, 51 measuring effectiveness means identifying the goals of the program (the desired elements of the capability, as outlined – for example – in grant documents), and then measuring whether the goals were achieved.

Treated as a complicated issue, it is not apparent what capabilities a jurisdiction needs to prepare for a VBIED response. 52 There may be some general recommendations from the Department of Homeland Security or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, but the recommendations must be tailored to the jurisdiction’s context. Adapting the recommendations to a local jurisdiction requires answers to additional questions — e.g., what happens if the device is detonated in a particular location (such as a high school), what are the elements of an appropriate response, and so on. Research can provide answers to those questions, and in the process establish jurisdiction-specific performance metrics.

In summary: simple and complicated issues reside in the ordered domains of homeland security. Cause-effect relationships are known or can be known. Learning can occur before a device explodes.

From a complexity perspective, the jurisdiction will not know with certainty how prepared they are until they experience a VBIED. They may approximate knowing through a plan or an exercise, but the empirical truth about the relationship between grant expenditures and preparedness cannot be known until the jurisdiction experiences a detonation. Even then, the truth, revealed through after-action analyses, may be shaped by a social process that is as much concerned with political and legal concerns as it is with preparedness. 53

A detonation creates chaos . As happened with the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, prepositioned capabilities will be combined with improvised capabilities in ways not considered by security planners. 54 When preparedness is viewed from within the chaos space, it is difficult to separate unexpected response assets from the part preparedness-grant expenditures played in response. They are all combined. In principle, from this view, measuring the effectiveness of homeland security program expenditures can at best be approximated, and probably only in general terms.

In summary: complex and chaotic issues reside in the unordered homeland security domain. Any order that does emerge is after the fact. Cause-effect relationships are known retrospectively, not prospectively, and they will not be repeated. Learning can only happen after experience. 55

So what? For the issues you care about, for the questions you want answers to, for the parts of the homeland security enterprise you want to change, what assumptions are you making about cause- effect relationships, about why and how things happen the way they do? Does changing those assumptions offer alternative ways of thinking about your topics of interest?

How to Find Answers to Homeland Security Questions

Simple questions (in the Cynefin sense) are characterized by known and repeatable cause and effect relationships. For example, “how can a vacationing American citizen take her 12 year old son from the United States to Canada if the child does not have a passport?” Answering a simple question involves collecting data, placing the data in the appropriate category, and providing an answer based on the way the question has been asked and answered previously. There is an answer and a procedure to be followed for the vacationer’s simple question (simple for Customs and Border Protection, if not so for the parent. 56 )

Complicated questions come from systems whose constituent elements can be described completely. 57 The system may be characterized by unknown, but knowable cause-effect relationships. For example, “how is the electric grid vulnerable to an E2 electromagnetic pulse?” 58 or “what impact will new screening technology have on passenger flow rates at large primary hub airports?” Answering complicated questions requires conducting research: gathering data, analyzing data, and reaching conclusions that can be supported by the analysis.

Complex questions emerge from socio-technical systems whose constituent elements can neither be prospectively described nor understood by analyzing their components. 59 The questions are characterized by unrepeatable cause-effect relationships knowable only in retrospect. Examples of complex questions are “how can the public be engaged so they remain interested in homeland security?” or “how can the Department of Homeland Security’s organizational culture be changed?” One way to answer complex questions is to try a comparatively minor solution (i.e., probe) and, through continuous feedback (i.e., gather data), see if you are learning anything useful. If you are, do more; if you are not, try something else (i.e., respond to what the data say). 60

A chaotic question is not a single question. 61 It refers instead to a set of questions about an issue whose dimensions span the simple, complicated and complex domains. There is no agreement on what is a correct or useful question. Consider, for example, questions about immigration. Why is immigration a homeland security issue? How can the U.S. stop the unrestricted flow of illegal immigrants or refugees across the border? What are the ethical implications of removing young children from their parents, or returning families to countries where they may be killed? How can the families of American-born children of undocumented immigrants be preserved? Why do employers persist in hiring illegal aliens? What jobs do undocumented immigrants take away from citizens? How much money do illegal immigrants contribute to and take from the U.S. economy? What civil rights do undocumented immigrants have? Answering questions within a chaotic policy space like immigration involves taking action — start somewhere, anywhere. Just pick one question to answer and see where it goes (i.e., gather data about whether the inquiry is productive or not). Inquiry leads to other, more refined questions, and so on. Your goal — as a learner — is to move from the chaotic space to the complex, complicated or simple space. You get there by taking action and paying attention to where that takes you.

So what? The phenomenological space where you situate your homeland security questions will influence the approaches you use to answer those questions. What does your question look like if it is reframed within a different phenomenological space?

The Story So Far

Here I will summarize what I’ve argued up to this point and why. I will then describe where the argument is going next.

The core question addressed in this essay is how CHDS students can begin to learn about homeland security. I suggested there are at least three ways: a foundational approach, an objective approach, and a subjective approach. Learning about homeland security by starting with foundations may provide academic order, but the order is achieved at the risk of constraining too quickly what homeland security could become. I also believe what I called an objective approach to learning homeland security would ignore the dynamic strategic, policy and operational reality faced by many CHDS participants. The approach I advocate embraces subjectivity (start from where you are) and combines it with the requirement to present and defend subjective observations to others (the transformational dialectic), modifying ideas as needed.

A foundational or an objective approach to learning about homeland security may become appropriate as the field matures. 62 But I believe it is too soon to consider restricting the conversation about what constitutes homeland security. I suggest one way to “start from where you are” is to identify what you want to learn, what questions you have about homeland security. I connect that approach to the assumptions embedded in andragogy, an adult learning philosophy. I then describe how I use “learning” in this essay, and show the connection between asking questions about homeland security, Kolb’s learning cycle, and Bloom’s Taxonomy.

After linking subjectivity, andragogy, and questions and learning, I shift to discussing the phenomenological context within which learning will occur. I describe the Cynefin framework and illustrate how it can be used to frame questions and inquiry about homeland security.

The next part of the essay describes alternatives available for conducting inquiry into homeland security issues. The discussion is aimed at general inquiry frameworks (also known as inquiring systems), not at specific methods of inquiry, such as case studies, policy analysis, surveys, focus groups, experiments, and so on.

Using Inquiring Systems to Learn

C. West Churchman defined an inquiring system as “ a system of inter-related components for producing knowledge .” 63 Each inquiring system consists of inputs (how inquiry starts; the building blocks of knowledge within that system), an operator (the process used to transform inputs into outputs), outputs (knowledge produced by a particular mode of inquiry) and the guarantor (the criteria to be met to demonstrate the inputs and operator are correct, so a valid output will be produced).

For example, observations (i.e., data) provide the inputs for an inductive inquiry system. The operator (i.e., a process for handling data) examines the data to identify any hypotheses, patterns, or theories in the data. If any are discovered, they become the knowledge produced by the inquiring system. The guarantor in this case is the ability to use the hypotheses, patterns or theories to predict future outcomes. The inductive system focuses on data . 64

Here is a homeland security example of an inductive inquiring system. Assume video information is collected from a drug-interdiction operation showing individuals training inside an abandoned school. Based on papers, cell phone records, internet surveillance, and other data, analysts conclude the people are likely planning to attack a middle school in a Midwest American state. Part of the briefing to decision makers about the findings includes analysts describing how they reached their conclusions.

The system collected data, generated a hypothesis, reached a conclusion, and demonstrated the logic they used to reach that conclusion. That is how an inductive inquiring system operates. 65

In addition to the inductive system, there are at least six other inquiring systems that can be used by someone who wants to learn about homeland security: a deductive inquiry system, a multiview system, a dialectic system, an unbounded system, an abductive system, and an inquiring system based on detour and access.

A more comprehensive treatment of the inductive, deductive, dialectic, multiview, and unbounded systems can be found in works of Churchman, 66 Mitroff and Linstone, 67 and Mitroff and Pondy. 68 Information about the abduction and detour and access systems can be found in the works of Peirce, Fann, Josephson, Ramo, and Jullien. 69 I will sketch core elements of each approach. 70

Deduction – A Focus On Theory : Where the inductive inquiring system starts with data and produces a theory, the deductive approach to inquiry begins with a “theory” 71 and uses the elements of the theory to determine what constitutes data. For example, I know one researcher who used complexity theory to model border security. She shaped her perception of the border through the lens constructed from the conceptual categories of complex adaptive system theory. 72 Based on that deductive frame, the inquiring system defined what counts as data suitable to collect and analyze (for example, data about agents, rules, links, feedback, nodes), and excluded other data as noise (e.g., organizations, policies, people, and so on). The same inquiry process is employed with other deductive frameworks used within homeland security, such as the national incident management system, social identity theory, positioning theory, design theory, catastrophe theory, intelligence cycles, phases of emergency management, the DHS risk formula, the national preparedness framework, socio-techno theory, and comparative theory. Frameworks define what counts as data and what can be ignored.

Multiview – Focus On Stakeholders : Multiview inquiring systems start with the premise there is a distinction between experiencing reality (e.g., applying for and receiving a homeland security grant) and describing that experience. Each stakeholder concerned with a homeland security issue perceives the issue through a lens shaped by multiple experiences and processes. 73 For example, congressional districts, DHS, state and local homeland security agencies, budget officials, private sector organizations, vendors, and many other groups stand to gain or lose depending how grant resources are allocated. The perspectives of those stakeholders are important data for anyone who wants to learn how to improve, for instance, the risk formula used to justify awards. A multiview inquiring system incorporates elements of inductive and deductive systems; it differs from those systems by adding more than one stakeholder perspective to the inquiry.

Dialectic – Focus On Conflict : Conflict is the primary metaphor for the dialectic inquiring system. The “marketplace of ideas” is another descriptive image. The purpose of dialectic inquiry may not be to settle issues, but instead to illuminate differences in assumptions, interpretation of data, and conclusions between two or more positions about an issue. While the parties to the issue may not change their positions, dialectic inquiry benefits a third, neutral party 74 who believes truth rarely resides in one perspective, and who seeks to find a synthesis among positions. The homeland security enterprise is filled with conflict. 75 Elsewhere I argue homeland security evolves through conflict. 76 Mapping conflicts can be a useful way to learn comprehensively about homeland security.

Unbounded – Focus On Anything And Everything : The open system is the primary metaphor for the unbounded inquiry system. 77 It begins with the assumption that no discipline is superior to any other discipline. All inquiring systems are inter and mutually dependent on one another. Every inquiring system presupposes every other inquiring system. 78

Unbounded inquiry asserts that everything is connected to everything else, so it sets its sight on the big picture. It focuses on a problem “if and only if [the problem] is a member of the set of all other problems.” 79 Unbounded inquiry focuses on the “system of interacting problems, none of which can be formulated independently, let alone solved, independently of all other problems on which it impacts and which impact on it.” 80 Illustrative issues include leading in the homeland security enterprise, information sharing, homeland security resource allocation, measuring return on homeland security investments, climate change, immigration, and cyber security.

The unbounded inquiring system is claimed by its advocates to be an appropriate way to explore wicked problems , 81 because of its focus on the technological, environmental, and human dimensions of problems. The output from this perspective is thinking that is not constrained by the existing conceptual structures of disciplines and professions. The output is an active search for information that contradicts accepted beliefs. 82 Unbounded inquiry seeks answers to questions and solutions to problems “that [minimize] the costs of failure rather than [minimize] its likelihood; [and seeks] … a solution that sacrifices efficiency for resilience; … that trades avoidance of failure for the ability to survive and recover from failure.” 83

Abduction – Focus On Intuition : Abduction means guessing. 84 It is not a pull-something-out- of-your-rear guess, but rather an educated assessment based on experience and knowledge. Abduction is a type of intuition. Less is understood about the abductive inquiring system than the previous systems because only recently have intuitive perceptions and judgments been at least quasi-legitimized. 85

There are problems with abduction, as with all inquiring systems. 86 The line is fragile between accurate intuition and wishful thinking. In 2007, DHS Secretary Chertoff was criticized for telling the Chicago Tribune he had a gut feeling al Qaeda was going to attack the U.S. that summer:

Chertoff based his assessment on a personal hunch, admitting that there was not enough evidence of a pending attack to raise the nation’s threat level. Rather, Chertoff had studied terrorist patterns and some undisclosed intel to come up with his determination . 87

Behavioral economists, neuro-psychologists, decision theorists and others point out the cognitive barriers to thinking objectively and accurately. 88 Abduction is difficult.

But sometimes intuition and gut feelings work effectively as a mode of inquiry. In August 2001, something bothered Customs official Jose Melendez-Perez when Mohammed al-Kahtani tried to come into the country through Florida. Melendez-Perez did not allow the person assumed now to have been the 20th hijacker to enter. 89

On December 14, 1999, U.S. Customs inspector Diana Dean thought Ahmed Ressam was acting “hinky” as he tried to enter the U.S. from Canada. Responding to that hunch helped prevent the “Millennium Bomber” from attacking the Los Angeles Airport. 90

Experienced practitioners often rely on their “inner tuition.” 91 Abductive talent can be adapted to learn about homeland security. Go with your gut, but have it be an educated gut, a best guess; make it clear what your guess is; expose your ideas to others and look for confirming and opposing evidence.

Detour And Access – Beating Around The Bush : “One should not be too straightforward. Go and see the forest. The straight trees are cut down, the crooked ones are left standing.” Chanakya – Fourth Century, B.C.

The previous inquiring systems searched directly for actionable knowledge, for truth. Conceptually, they are rooted in western traditions of argumentation that emphasize “getting to the point.” The detour and access inquiring system aims to approach knowledge and truth indirectly. The system emerged from studies of how art, poetry, and philosophy were used in China to access and influence power. 92

I will not pretend to know as much about this inquiring system as I would like to know. For the purposes of this introduction, I’ll paraphrase material from a Francois Jullien text. 93

Detour and access focuses on both (not either/or) field and ground, object and context. It seeks oblique, indirect, and suggestive meaning to explore how shape-shifting techniques of detour provide access to subtler knowledge and meanings than can be obtained through the direct approaches that characterize most Western inquiry. Jullien argues indirect speech “yields a complex mode of indication, open to multiple perspectives and variations, infinitely adaptable to particular situations and contexts.” It is a mode of inquiry that has advantages and disadvantages in contexts where “absolute truth is absent.”

The strategy underlying the 2013 National Preparedness Report may be an illustrative example 94 of the detour and access inquiring system. Congress insists DHS document the “progress the Nation has made in building, sustaining, and delivering the 31 core capabilities outlined in the National Preparedness Goal across all five mission areas identified in Presidential Policy Directive 8 (PPD-8): Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery.” 95 The way I read the Preparedness report, the authors are telling Congress there is no single way to measure national or state progress. 96 I think the 2013 report can be further read to suggest, indirectly and obliquely, the authors believe it may never be possible to measure accurately national preparedness. The authors of the 2013 Report do not, and probably cannot, come out and say that directly. They must detour around that conclusion if they are to retain access to policymakers. 97

So what? This section argued there are at least seven approaches to structuring inquiry. Each approach is a tool that can be used by people who want to learn about homeland security. Induction : what data do you want to know? Deduction : what theories can you use? Multiview : what are the data and theories employed by stakeholders with an interest in an issue? Dialectic : for any particular homeland security issue you care about, what are the arguments, and the pros and cons for the various positions? Unbounded : what are the meta-issues and problems (with their attendant data, theories, stakeholders and arguments) that transcend and overlap specific homeland security topics and questions? Abduction : what does your experience and intuition tell you about what you are trying to learn? Detour and access : how can you approach learning about a homeland security issue by attending both to the object of your inquiry and to its surrounding context?

And Then There is Truth

How will you know when you have learned what you want to know about homeland security? Once you have applied the various inquiring systems to the homeland security questions you care about, how will you know when you have learned the truth?

In the example I used earlier about VBIED preparedness, is one view about VBIED preparedness more correct than another? What is the true perspective?

Arguments can be constructed to support — more or less convincingly — each of the four claims 98 about how to measure VBIED preparedness. The “truth” of those claims can be assessed against different criteria.

Asked in a more general way, what is the truth about homeland security (pick your specific issue), and how can we know it?

I have written elsewhere about the role of truth in homeland security. 99 I described three kinds of truth: correspondence, coherence and pragmatic.

Correspondence truth means there is a one-to-one relationship between the phenomenon being investigated and the language used to describe that phenomenon. Truth corresponds to the thing being described. If I want to learn how to create an interoperable radio system for first responders, there are comparatively easy ways to know the truth about whether I’ve accomplished that goal or not. For this example, the reality of radio communication will correspond to the language used to describe whether I have succeeded: e.g., I can either talk with someone from another agency or I cannot. Correspondence truth seems to work best (within limits) in the world of material reality. It is a truth that cannot easily be talked around or wished away.

Coherence truth is a dominant mode of social truth. It refers to agreements about the world (knowledge) that are internally consistent, within a particular community. 100 For example, beliefs about what disciplines should be represented in a fusion center are guided by this mode of truth. Richard Rorty offers an aphorism that illustrates coherence truth, and captures its socially- constructed nature: “Truth is what your colleagues let you get away with.” 101

Pragmatic truth is about getting the job done. What the “job” is depends on the situation. For learning, pragmatic truth is when you know enough about your initial question to build on this new knowledge. 102

Here is an example using all three types of truth.

What is homeland security? From the perspective of correspondence truth, the answer would depend on the relationship between what people say they are doing when they are doing homeland security work (language) and how they behave (reality). From a coherence view, the answer depends on what language community one is in. The answers can be (and almost always are) different if one is talking, for example, to emergency managers, firefighters, DHS leaders, professors, travelers going through an airport, counterterrorism officials, or children who fear they will be deported. From a pragmatic truth perspective, homeland security is whatever it has to be for me to obtain the resources I need to prevent, respond, recover from and mitigate the threats faced by my community of interest.

So what? The definition of learning used in this paper is “transforming experience into knowledge.” How do you know when you have approached the truth of what you learned? This section offers three checks: does what you know correspond to reality as you understand it? Does what you know cohere with what other people you respect believe they know? Does what you know help you accomplish your homeland security mission?

The Homeland Security Inquiry Matrix

The advantage of a foundational approach is that it is a comparatively easy way to impose conceptual order on the study of homeland security. As a student, you read and remember the claims of others, and look to find a link between what you’ve learned and the practical responsibilities and interests you have in the homeland security enterprise.

The much more messy and ambiguous start-from-where-you-are approach is filled with uncertainty and — if you enjoy learning — adventure.

The tools for the adventure include subjectivity, andragogy, questions, trial and error learning, a phenomenological approach to homeland security represented by the Cynefin framework, multiple inquiring systems, and several ways to determine the truth of what you have learned. To those tools, add the experiences you had before you started your academic study of homeland security, the ideas you are exposed to in classes, in readings, in exercises, in writing assignments, and in discussions.

These tools lead me to postulate a homeland security inquiry matrix (illustrated below). The rows describe the inquiring systems: inductive, deductive, multiview, dialectic, unbounded, abduction, detour and access. The columns hold the types of truth: correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic.

Figure 5: Homeland Security Matrix

Now consider what you want to learn about homeland security, the questions you have. Conceptually, each cell in the matrix could stimulate ideas about how to learn what you want to learn, and how to know when you’ve learned it.

The core question addressed in this essay is how CHDS students – and maybe other interested people – can begin to learn about homeland security. Learning about homeland security by starting with institutionally approved, rather than objectively tested and validated, foundations may provide academic order, but the order is achieved at the risk of constraining too quickly what homeland security could become. An alternative approach embraces subjectivity (start from where you are) and combines it with the requirement to present and defend subjective observations to others (the transformational dialectic).

I do not believe we can yet eliminate or avoid subjectivity in determining the roots and bounds of homeland security. I want to expand who gets to decide what the foundations of homeland security are, and to encourage reflective practitioners to construct and share insights derived from their own foundations.

A version of the uncertainty principle asserts one cannot measure both the position and the movement of a physical system. 103 Metaphorically, I believe the same is true when it comes to learning about homeland security. People learning about homeland security can emphasize where our proto-discipline used to be and is today, or they can focus more on the opposing pole to help create where it could go. The approach outlined in this essay points to a method of keeping homeland-security knowledge alive and continuously evolving. It is one answer to the question of how best to learn about homeland security.

So what? “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” In my view, for experienced practitioners a foundation approach to homeland security “fills a pail.” That may be enough for some educational purposes. Starting from where you are, learning what you need to learn, and exposing your ideas to your colleagues might light a fire that could help shape the future of homeland security.

About the Author

Christopher Bellavita teaches in the Center for Homeland Defense and Security master’s degree program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He serves as the executive editor of Homeland Security Affairs. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He may be reached at [email protected] .

Acknowledgement: The author would like to thank the five reviewers whose comments, critiques, and suggestions greatly improved this manuscript.

1. The proverb is frequently attributed to Yeats. I have not found any evidence Yeats actually wrote those words. According to http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/28/mind-fire/ , Plutarch is more likely the originator: “For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.”

2. One reviewer suggested I broaden my audience to include other graduate and maybe undergraduate programs. I have no evidence the approach I’m suggesting would work anywhere but CHDS. However, I believe the approach could be useful to other people who are looking for a way to start learning about homeland security.

3. I use “foundational approach” to mean assertions about what constitutes the basic concepts and ideas in homeland security. I discuss this term more fully later in the essay.

4. Donald A. Schon, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action , 1st ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

5. For an analysis of what is required for a discipline to be “firmly established,” see the disciplinary matrix discussion in Thomas S. Kuhn and Ian Hacking, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , 4th ed. (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012),181-186.

6. Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (p 143), claims that having textbooks is one of the indicators a field of study is becoming a discipline.

7. For representative examples, see CW Productions LTD, Homeland Security: Safeguarding the U.S. from Domestic Catastrophic Destruction , eds. Richard White, Tina Bynum, and Stan Supinski (BookBaby, 2016); Clarence Augustus Martin, Understanding Homeland Security , 1st edition (Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, Inc, 2014);Willard M. Oliver, Nancy E. Marion, and Joshua B. Hill, Introduction To Homeland Security: Policy, Organization, and Administration , (Sudbury: Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2014); Jane A Bullock, George D Haddow, and Damon P Coppola, Introduction to Homeland Security (Boston, MA: Butterworth- Heinemann, 2012); Charles P Nemeth, Homeland Security: An Introduction to Principles and Practice (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2013); Larry K Gaines and Victor E Kappeler, Homeland Security (Boston: Prentice Hall, 2012); Mark Sauter and James Jay Carafano, Homeland Security: A Complete Guide (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012); Jane Bullock, George Haddow, and Damon P. Coppola, Homeland Security: The Essentials , 1st edition (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2012).

8. One aspect of this approach is illustrated in a 2018 paper by Ramsey and Renda-Tenali. They describe 8 “knowledge domains [for undergraduate degree programs in homeland security] … that collectively define the intellectual scope of the discipline” (p 7 & 8). The domains – according to the consensus judgment of nine subject matter experts — are intelligence, emergency management, law and policy, critical infrastructure, strategic planning and decision making, terrorism, human and environmental security, [and] risk analysis and [risk] management. James D. Ramsay and Irmak Renda-Tanali, “Development of Competency-Based Education Standards for Homeland Security Academic Programs,” Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management 15, no. 3 (September 8, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsem-2018-0016 . In 2006 a colleague and I made a preliminary, but not as comprehensive, effort to construct homeland security knowledge domains: Christopher Bellavita and Ellen Gordon, “Changing Homeland Security: Teaching the Core,” Homeland Security Affairs 2, Article 1 (April 2006), https://www.hsaj.org/articles/172 .

9. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 80.

10. An academic discipline minimally requires: a set of problems to work on; a body of knowledge to apply to those problems; scientifically legitimate research about the problems; textbooks that aggregate the core knowledge of the discipline; and programs to educate students at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including developing PhD programs to advance knowledge in the field. See Christopher Bellavita, “Changing Homeland Security: In 2010, Was Homeland Security Useful?” Homeland Security Affairs 7, Article 1 (February 2011), https://www.hsaj.org/articles/52 . For an argument that homeland security is becoming a discipline, see Michael D. Falkow, “Does Homeland Security Constitute An Emerging Academic Discipline?” 2013, http://calhoun.nps.edu/public/handle/10945/32817 . For another perspective, see William V.Pelfrey and William D. Kelley, “Homeland Security Education: A Way Forward,” Homeland Security Affairs 9, Article 3 (February 2013), https://www.hsaj.org/?article=9.1.3 .

11. Shawn Reese, April 3, 2012, “Defining Homeland Security: Analysis and Congressional Considerations (R42462),” Congressional Research Service. One can also note the national homeland security agenda in 2001 differed significantly from the 2018 focus on catastrophic climate events, immigration, cybersecurity, and biotechnology, among other topics. For a comprehensive, although conventional, outline of contemporary homeland security issues, see William Painter, “Selected Homeland Security Issues in the 115th Congress,” Congressional Research Service, May 11, 2017.

12. Christopher Bellavita, “Changing Homeland Security: What is Homeland Security?” Homeland Security Affairs 4, Article 1 (June 2008), http://www.hsaj.org/?article=4.2.1

13. This is a preliminary conclusion. I am still testing the claim by examining widely-adopted homeland security textbooks and reading lists.

14. For an exemplar of this approach, see the thoughtful work by Robert McCreight, “A Pathway Forward in Homeland Security Education: An Option Worth Considering and the Challenge Ahead,” Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management 11, no. 1 (January 21, 2014), doi:10.1515/jhsem-2013-0099. For others, see the textbooks identified in note #7, and the recent contribution by Ramsay and Irmak Renda-Tanali, “Development of Competency-Based Education Standards for Homeland Security Academic Programs.”

15. Christopher Bellavita, “Waiting For Homeland Security Theory,” Homeland Security Affairs 8, Article 15 (August 2012) https://www.hsaj.org/?article=8.1.15 7-8.

16. For an extended discussion of a discipline’s foundations, see the disciplinary matrix section in Thomas S. Kuhn and Ian Hacking, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 4th ed., 181-186.

17. Here are some textbook examples of foundational knowledge in physics and engineering. They illustrate how foundational homeland security knowledge might (one day) be packaged: Saeed Moaveni, Engineering Fundamentals: An Introduction to Engineering , 5th edition, ( Boston: Cengage Learning, 2015); David Halliday, Robert Resnick, and Jearl Walker, Fundamentals of Physics Extended , 9th edition, (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010): and the more contemporary Foundations of Physics: An International Journal Devoted to the Conceptual Bases and Fundamental Theories of Modern Physics , https://link.springer.com/journal/volumesAndIssues/10701 ).

18. As discussed later, the Cynefin framework uses “simple” and “complicated” to mean phenomena characterized by known or prospectively knowable cause-effect relationships.

19. See Habermas’ postmodernist critique: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/ : “Habermas seeks to rehabilitate modern reason as a system of procedural rules for achieving consensus and agreement among communicating subjects.” Offering “procedural rules” is what I’m trying to do with both the emphasis on subjectivity and the transformational dialectic.

20. One reviewer of a previous draft suggested I might never be convinced textbooks could be superior to the approach I advocate. I think textbooks can be useful in certain educational contexts. I do not object to using textbooks as a part of one’s learning tools. I am arguing against CHDS students and other experienced practitioners using textbooks to begin their learning. I would welcome an experiment testing the scope, depth and utility of alternative ways to learn homeland security in a classroom – graduate or undergraduate.

21. One reviewer recommended I “briefly address [the] stigma associated with subjectivity.” I believe consciously embracing subjectivity enables the collective learning described in this essay. I recognize, however, other people hold the position that subjectivity in inquiry is to be avoided. Someone interested in this topic might start with Subjectivism, Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods , (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2008) available at http://www.sonic.net/~cr2/subjectivism.htm ; the discussion of subjectivity in Steinar Kvale, “Ten Standard Objections to Qualitative Research Interviews,” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 25, no. 2 (January 1, 1994): 147–173, doi:10.1163/156916294X00016; or Paul Diesing, “Subjectivity and Objectivity in The Social Sciences,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 2 (1):147-165 (1972). The citations in note 22 discuss aspects of subjectivity related to “stigma.”

22. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon, 2012), 55, 97-99; See also, Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow , 1st ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011); Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor, 1967); Carl Ratner, “Subjectivity and Objectivity in Qualitative Methodology,” Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research 3, no. 3 (September 30, 2002), http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/829 . See http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/822/1784 for a summary review of the topic.

23. Orion F. White, Jr. and Cynthia J. McSwain, “Transformational Theory and Organizational Analysis,” In Beyond Method: Strategies for Social Research , ed. Gareth Morgan, 292–305. (Thousand Oaks:Sage Publications, Inc, 1983). The process, as I interpret it, is cyclical in the sense used by Graff and his colleagues in describing the continuous conversation of scholarship (in Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst, They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing , 3rd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2014): 3-4.) White and McSwain use transformational largely from a psychological perspective. That idea goes beyond what I want to do in this paper. On the utility of continuing the transformation process, see also Aumann’s agreement theorem: “A … 1976 theorem of Aumann asserts that honest, rational Bayesian agents with common priors will never agree to disagree” on their opinions about any topic. Scott Aaronson, (2005), “The Complexity of Agreement,” Proceedings of ACM STOC : 634–643, doi:10.1145/1060590.1060686. ISBN 1-58113-960-8. Retrieved 2010-08-09.

24. I have heard it argued that “starting from where you are” risks missing something important. In my experience (and neglecting for now how “important” is determined), if the information missed is important, the student will eventually learn it.

25. Bloom’s taxonomy is discussed later in this essay. Benjamin Samuel Bloom, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals Handbook I, Handbook I, (New York; New York; London: McKay ; Longman, 1956). Two of the text books I reviewed to support the claim about levels (Jane A Bullock, George D Haddow, and Damon P Coppola, Introduction to Homeland Security and Mark Sauter and James Jay Carafano, Homeland Security: A Complete Guide ) started each chapter with the lower-level Bloom’s Taxonomy description of “what you will learn.” Compare this approach to learning to that espoused in Wiliam V. Pelfrey and William D. Kelley, “Homeland Security Education: A Way Forward.” Homeland Security Affairs 9, Article 3 (February 2013) https://www.hsaj.org/?article=9.1.3 .

26. Knowing what the four failures were that led to the 9/11/01 attack is a different kind of learning than understanding, for example, what the Commission meant by failure of imagination, or whether the Commission got it its critique correct. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States , 1st ed (New York: Norton, 2004). Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (New York: Twelve, 2009). I suspect how professors use textbooks can encourage learning at all six levels. I would welcome seeing evidence about how and with what results this is done.

27. “Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the … sciences…. [I]t is harmful to the growth of … science if administrative measures are used to impose one particular … school of thought and to ban another. Questions of right and wrong in … science should be settled through free discussion in … scientific circles and through practical work in these fields. They should not be settled in an over-simple manner.” Mao Tse-tung, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People,” in The Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung , Vol. V (Peking, China: Foreign Language Press, 1957), http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_58.htm . Mao was talking about handling contradictions in a socialist society, but his point has relevance for homeland security — unlike Mao’s suggestion in the same commentary about what to do with people who disagree with mainstream ideas: “What should our policy be towards non-Marxist ideas?” he asked. “As far as unmistakable counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs of the socialist cause are concerned, the matter is easy, we simply deprive them of their freedom of speech.” [This citation taken from Christopher Bellavita and Ellen Gordon. “Changing Homeland Security: Teaching the Core.” https://www.hsaj.org/articles/172 .] A colleague pointed out Mao’s “deprivation rule” can be used when the good guys are doing the depriving: “Twitter shuts down 125,000 Isis-linked accounts,” http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/125000-isis-linked-accounts-suspended-by-twitter-a6857371.html .

28. I am using the word “us” to mean people who care about homeland security education.

29. Barry Buzan, Ole Wver, and Jaap De Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis ,( Boulder, Colo: Lynne Rienner, 1997) describes a related definitional debate in the broader security studies field. The “narrow” view of security studies gives primacy to “the military element and the state in the conceptualization of security.” The “wide” view aims “to extend security … thinking into the non-traditional sectors (economic, societal, environmental).” The comparative framework they offer can be applied, with modifications, to homeland security. The narrow view of homeland security emphasizes terrorism and catastrophes. A wider view expands thinking into other domains that affect the nation’s safety and security. For an example of a wider view of homeland security see Wayne Porter and Mark Mykleby, A National Strategic Narrative (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, August 2011).

30. M.S. Knowles, et al., Andragogy in Action , (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1984); See also M.K. Smith, (2002) “Malcolm Knowles, Informal Adult Education, Self-direction and Andragogy,” The Encyclopedia Of Informal Education , www.infed.org/ thinkers/et-knowl.htm; http://infed.org/mobi/malcolm-knowles-informal-adult-education-self-direction-and-andragogy/ . “Mature learners” typically is interpreted to mean adults. I do not know why this approach could not also be extended into other age groups. Colleagues who teach elsewhere tell me it would likely not work with undergraduates.

31. To illustrate this claim, consider the questions that could be generated from an andragogical perspective about a cyber- security threat to critical infrastructure: 1) what do you want to learn, why, and how? 2) what do you already know about the topic?, 3) what need do you have to learn about it?, 4) what problems are addressed through the questions you ask about it? and 5) is there something personal that drives you to want to know?

32. A reviewer of an earlier draft asked about the purpose of the text box insets. Lyndon Johnson was once briefed about the Middle East by several professors. After the briefing he is alleged to have said “Therefore, what?” ( https://goo.gl/qwSA4Y ) This essay is written primarily for graduate students (although it may also be useful to some undergraduates). In my experience with practitioners, they can take just so much conceptualizing before they want to know “so what?” What I aim to do with the text insets is to break the stream of theoretical language, and operationalize the ideas in the priorsection(s) by suggesting to the readers how they can use the information.

33. For examples, see http://www.learning-theories.com/ and http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Learning_Theories/Adult_Learning_Theories .

34. David A Kolb, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development , 2nd Edition (Pearson Education, New Jersey. 2015), 49. Kolb’s phrase is “Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience.”

35. In Bloom’s taxonomy (Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals), “knowledge” is demonstrated by recalling facts. I am using “knowledge” to mean beliefs that bear an appropriate connection (whether causal, coherent, or practical) to the subject of inquiry, a connection that depends on the “mode of truth” (discussed later in the essay). See Ted Honderich, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 285 (facts), 478-479 (knowledge), 873 (social construction), 874 (social facts).

36. Elinor Ostrom, “A General Framework for Analyzing the Sustainability of Social–ecological Systems,” Science 325, no. 5939 (2009): 420. See the discussion of the deductive inquiry system, below, for more on frameworks.

37. Kolb, Experiential Learning , 51.

38. Benjamin Samuel Bloom, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives .

39. Graphic from http://aahalearning.blogspot.com/2013_10_01_archive.html (accessed August 2019) .

40. Graphic from https://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/time/learning_goals.html (accessed August 2019). The revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy moves evaluation to the penultimate position at the top of the pyramid, and moves synthesis to the top, rebranding it as creativity.

41. Raphael D Sagarin and Terence Taylor, eds., Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).

42. For the purposes of this paper, I’m using phenomenology to mean “making sense of a situation in a way that allows one to be effective in achieving a desired goal” (suggested by David Snowden). A more precise discussion of the term can be found in Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology (London; New York: Routledge, 2000): 37-41: “Explanations are not to be imposed before the phenomena have been understood from within.”

43. D Snowden and M Boone, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making,” Harvard Business Review, November 2007; C Kurtz and D Snowden, “The New Dynamics of Strategy: Sense-making in a Complex and Complicated World,” IBM Systems Journal 42, no. 3 (2003).

44. I put “realities” in quotes to suggest, while skipping over it in this paper, it would be useful to discuss material and socially- constructed reality in homeland security.

45. Snowden and Boone provide an example of using the framework in a public safety context in “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making,” 1,8.

46. The graphic comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework#/media/File:Cynefin_framework,_ February_2011_(2).jpeg. There are numerous graphical variations of the Cynefin framework. The history of the model’s development can be found here: http://old.cognitive-edge.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/The-Origins-of-Cynefin-Cognitive-Edge.pdf .

47. Since 2014, David Snowden, the developer of Cynefin, changed the word “simple” to “obvious” in the model. In this essay I use simple.

48. Weick calls this retrospective sensemaking (see, for example, Karl E Weick, Making Sense of the Organization (Malden, Mass. Blackwell, 2009). For a very readable introduction to the complexity literature see (the first half of) Melanie Mitchell, Complexity: A Guided Tour (Oxford University Press, USA, 2009); and John H. Miller and Scott E. Page, Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life (Princeton University Press, 2007); For a pragmatically philosophical introduction, see Paul Cilliers, Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems , 1st ed. (Routledge, 1998).

49. https://dotsub.com/view/22a4f971-77cd-4863-8aa3-c2170f93db01 (accessed August 10, 2019). Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers (New York: Times Books, 2006).

50. Gedeon Naudet, James Hanlon, and Jules Naudet, 2010. 9/11. Paramount . One specific example of chaos as described in the text can be viewed (starting at the 46 minute mark, through 51) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXYCdfoz0wQ (accessed August 10, 2019). A reviewer suggested another useful illustration of the chaotic frame in Terri M. Adams, and Larry D. Stewart, “Chaos Theory and Organizational Crisis: A Theoretical Analysis of the Challenges Faced by the New Orleans Police Department During Hurricane Katrina,” Public Organization Review 15, no. 3 (September 2015): 415–31. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11115-014-0284-9 .

51. Simple in Cynefin terms.

52. Although there are many ideas; see for example, Prepare for a Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED)/Suicide Vehicle Borne IED (SVIED)/Person-Borne IED (PBIED) (05-2-3092), p 2-324 – 2-325, https://rdl.train.army.mil/catalog/go/100.ATSC/9AE04EFF-0143-4FEF-AE38-5BA288A54EE1-1304110136444 .

53. Jeffrey Kaliner, “When Will We Ever Learn? The After Action Review, Lessons Learned and the Next Steps in Training and Educating the Homeland Security Enterprise for the 21st Century,” 2013, http://calhoun.nps.edu/public/handle/10945/34683 .

54. See,for example, STATEMENT OF RICHARD SERINO, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, U.S. SENATE WASHINGTON, D.C., “LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBINGS: PREPARING FOR AND RESPONDING TO THE ATTACK” [sic for the caps]. Submitted By Federal Emergency Management Agency, 500 C Street, S.W. Washington, D.C. 20472 JULY 10, 2013. 2 (viz “They weren’t the only responders.”) http://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/20130726-1923-25045-1176/lessons_learned_from_the_boston_marathon_bombings_preparing_for_and_responding_to_the_attack.pdf .

55. This reflects an idea frequently attributed to Lao Tzu, “If you tell me, I will listen. If you show me, I will see. But if you let me experience, I will learn.”

56. https://web.archive.org/web/20131127015315/http://www.hlswatch.com/2013/08/13/crossing-over-into-canada/ (accessed August 10, 2019).

57. Cilliars, Complexity and Postmodernism , viii.

58. “Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack,” Volume 1: Executive Report, 2004, 6; Also, https://www.ferc.gov/industries/electric/indus-act/reliability/cybersecurity/ferc_executive_summary.pdf .

59. Cilliars, Complexity and Postmodernism , viii-ix; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociotechnical_system .

60. This is Tim Harford’s theme in Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). A TED talk of the book’s core idea can be seen at http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_harford.html . Note that the distinction between complicated and complex is not easily apparent. In my view, these are the two domains that stimulate homeland security evolution. Complicated and complex are primarily the domains of wicked problems (see note #81). Action in the chaotic domain can trigger punctuated evolution (equilibrium) in a system.

61. For the purposes of this presentation, the chaotic inquiry frame is equivalent to the disordered space in the Cynefin framework, the space of not knowing what quadrant you are in.

62. Elsewhere I suggested three tests for determining when the field has matured enough to justify a foundational approach: does a “homeland security perspective” help solve any of the field’s enduring problems? Are the ideas derived from that perspective superior to the approaches championed by other disciplines in the homeland security enterprise? What are the notable achievements – either practical or conceptual – derived from a “homeland security perspective?” Christopher Bellavita, “Changing Homeland Security: In 2010, Was Homeland Security Useful?”

63. Ian I Mitroff, The Unbounded Mind: Breaking the Chains of Traditional Business Thinking (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) 29, citing C. West Churchman, The Design of Inquiring Systems: Basic Concepts of Systems and Organization (New York: Basic Books, 1971).

64. For an extended discussion of the role of induction in social science, see Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory ; Strategies for Qualitative Research, Observations (Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co, 1967). For an excellent example of the inductive inquiry system applied to a homeland security system, see the Naval Postgraduate School/Center for Homeland Defense and Security K-12 School Shooting Database at https://www.chds.us/ssdb/ .

65. Ian I Mitroff, The Unbounded Mind: Breaking the Chains of Traditional Business Thinking , 31. Induction is also the primary way I learned this method of teaching homeland security.

66. C. West Churchman, The Design of Inquiring Systems .

67. Ian I Mitroff, The Unbounded Mind .

68. Ian I. Mitroff and Louis R. Pondy, “On the Organization of Inquiry: A Comparison of Some Radically Different Approaches to Policy Analysis,” Public Administration Review 34, no. 5 (September 1, 1974): 471–479, doi:10.2307/975094.

69. Charles S. Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931): 136-143; K. T. Fann, Peirce’s Theory of Abduction (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 1970); John R Josephson and Susan G Josephson, Abductive Inference: Computation, Philosophy, Technology (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Joshua Cooper Ramo, The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New Global Order Constantly Surprises Us and What to Do About It , 1st ed. (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009); Francois Jullien, Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece , trans. Sophie Hawkes (MIT Press, 2004); François Jullien, The Book of Beginnings , Translated by Jody Gladding, Translation edition, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).

70. A thorough presentation of these inquiring systems should include comparisons among the seven, and a description of the problems associated with each one.

71. For a brief discussion about the many uses of the word “theory,” see citation number 9 in Christopher Bellavita, “Waiting For Homeland Security Theory.” In the current essay, I am using theory to refer to a generalization, hypothesis, pattern or any framework that helps discriminate between signal and noise.

72. I do not believe there is a “single” theory of complex adaptive systems. I’m using the single construction in the example for illustration purposes.

73. For another statement of this system, see the discussion of motivated reasoning in Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon, 2012), 98.

74. For example, a person who wants to learn about homeland security.

75. As of August 2019, homeland security policy conflicts can be seen within the following topic areas: refugee policy, border security, Immigration and Customs (ICE) detention and removal procedures, election security, cyber attacks, wildfires, drought, flooding, climate change, child immigrants, visa overstays, social media abuses, pandemic threats, encryption, white nationalism, biotechnology, radicalization, mass casualty criminal events, loss of confidence in government institutions, foreign threats, automation, health care spending, the national debt, domestic political divisions, trust between police and communities, and domestic use of drones.

76. I make this argument in Christopher Bellavita, “Homeland Security in the United States: Lessons from the American Experience,” in Homeland Security Organization in Defence Against Terrorism , ed. J Charvat (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2012), 36.

77. For an introductory discussion about open systems and national defense and security, see Wayne Porter and Mark Mykleby, A National Strategic Narrative (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, August 2011). A comprehensive review of the evolution of systems theory ideas can be found at Alex J. Ryan, “What Is a Systems Approach?” arXiv Preprint arXiv:0809.1698 (2008), http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.1698 .

78. Mitroff, The Unbounded Mind : 91-92.

79. Mitroff, citing Churchman, 109.

80. Ibid., 139, citing Russell Ackoff, Redesigning the Future , (New York, John Wiley, 1974).

81. H Rittel and M Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Sciences 4 (1973): 155–169.

82. Mitroff, The Unbounded Mind , 127.

83. Ibid., 116.

84. Robert Burch, “Charles Sanders Peirce,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/peirce/ .

85. For discussions to support this legitimization claim, see Timothy D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious , New Ed. (Belknap Press, 2004); Gary Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions , Reprint (The MIT Press, 1999); Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (New York, N.Y.: Back Bay Books, 2007).

86. A discussion of problems goes beyond what I want to do with this essay. That analysis can be found in C. West Churchman, The Design of Inquiring Systems , and Ian I Mitroff, The Unbounded Mind . For one illustrative example of the analysis, see John Vickers, “The Problem of Induction”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/induction-problem/ .

87. “Chertoff’s Gut: Al-Qaeda Could Strike This Summer,” Wired.com, Threat Level, accessed October 28, 2013, http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/07/chertoffs-gut-a .

88. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow , 1st ed. ; John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa, “The Hidden Traps in Decision Making,” Harvard Business Review 76, no. 5 (1998): 47–58; Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion , (New York:Pantheon, 2012).

89. Stewart A. Baker, Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism , 1st ed. (Hoover Institution Press, 2010), Relevant excerpts at http://www.newsmax.com/RonaldKessler/hijacker911terrorismObama/2010/09/27/id/371659 .

90. Hal Bernton et al., “The Terrorist Within, Chapter 12: The Crossing,” The Seattle Times, July 2, 2002, available at http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20020702&slug=12ressam02 . The article also illustrates what can happen when someone ignores her intuition.

91. Kline, Sources of Power , describes how experienced public safety professionals use intuition.

92. Francois Jullien, Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece , trans. Sophie Hawkes (MIT Press, 2004). This system continues to be used in China: “Chinese Communist party authorities, fearing a threat to their legitimacy, forbid open discussion of the so-called “June 4th incident” [Tiananmen Square Anniversary] in the country’s media and on its internet. Yet internet users have reacted by using ever-more oblique references to commemorate the tragedy, treating censors to an elaborate game of cat-and-mouse,” ( http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/04/tiananmen-square-online-search-censored . For additional information on problems with “detour and access” as an inquiry method, see the discussion in Ralph Weber, (2014). “What about The Billeter-Jullien Debate? And What Was It About?” Philosophy East and West , 64(1):228-237.

93. Ibid. The direct quotations, according to my notes, are from Chapters 1 and 2 in Detour and Access . Since I no longer have access to the book, I have been unable to locate the page numbers.

94. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, National Preparedness Report, March 30, 2013, http://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/32509?id=7465 ; a similar argument can be made for the 2014 and subsequent National Preparedness Reports, https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/97590 , (2015) https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/106292 , (2016) https://www.fema.gov/media-library/collections/523 , and (2017) https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/document/134253 .

95. http://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/20130726-1916-25045-2140/2013_npr_fact_sheet.pdf.

96. For examples, see the data discussion on page ii, and the description of the methodology on pages 2-3: “The NPR reflects approximately 1,400 sources and 3,200 measures and metrics that contribute to analysis of the core capabilities and related targets identified in the Goal.” (2); “These trends in national preparedness will be increasingly evident in future reports, as the NPR development process continues to mature and incorporates additional input from across the whole community.” (ii).

97. The conclusion in this sentence is based on my reading of the report; there is nothing in the report that makes this assertion. DHS has been trying for close to two decades to measure preparedness. Perhaps it is the quest, not the people on the quest, that is the barrier. See also the discussion of measurement in the April 12, 2016 congressional testimony “FEMA: Assessing Progress, Performance, and Preparedness” at http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/fema-assessing-progress-performance-and-preparedness .

98. The claims were framed earlier in this paper as simple, complicated, complex and chaotic.

99. Christopher Bellavita, “Changing Homeland Security: What Is Homeland Security?”.

100. This theme is developed in Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality ; See also Paul Thagard, Coherence in Thought and Action, Life and Mind (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2000).

101. Rorty is quoted in W. Desmond, Art, Origins, Otherness: Between Philosophy and Art (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003), 280.

102. “Build” could be learning something more, or helping to improve homeland security.

103. Jan Hilgevoord and Jos Uffink, “The Uncertainty Principle,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2016, Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2016, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/qt-uncertainty/ ; Robert P. Crease and Alfred Scharff Goldhaber, The Quantum Moment: How Planck, Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg Taught Us to Love Uncertainty , 1st edition, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014), 23-26.

Copyright © 2019 by the author(s). Homeland Security Affairs is an academic journal available free of charge to individuals and institutions. Because the purpose of this publication is the widest possible dissemination of knowledge, copies of this journal and the articles contained herein may be printed or downloaded and redistributed for personal, research or educational purposes free of charge and without permission. Any commercial use of Homeland Security Affairs or the articles published herein is expressly prohibited without the written consent of the copyright holder. The copyright of all articles published in Homeland Security Affairs rests with the author(s) of the article. Homeland Security Affairs is the online journal of the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS).

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DHS works with all levels of the government to fight against and recover from attacks, accidents, natural disasters and threats.

Science and Technology

S&T is the primary research and development arm of DHS, providing federal, state and local officials with technology to protect the U.S.

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TSA employs a risk-based strategy to secure U.S. transportation systems, working closely with stakeholders, as well as law enforcement and intelligence partners.

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EOP is a process whereby a facility or an institution prepares to respond and recover from hazards. This paper is a review the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) EOP, i.e., the Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG) 101- Developing and Maintaining Emergency Operations Plans and compares the guide with another plan for...

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The Transport Security Administration was created after terrorist attacks that took place in September 2001 where hijackers took dominance of four airliners. The attack led to the death of 2996 people while more than 6000 were injured. The fundamental issue was not the use of private companies but also the...

This is an essay paper about the United States immigration and border security problems and how this has affected the primary objective of the Department of Homeland Security. This paper will begin by giving a brief history of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and how this department...

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Department of Homeland Security Department of homeland security was formed by the United States government which focuses on confronting the series of threats of terrorism thus creating a peaceful environment in the nation. Homeland security has been currently expanded because of the increasing terrorism to develop flight security around the globe...

Over the previous decade, there has been growth in threats to critical infrastructure sectors to potential disastrous dimensions. Critical infrastructure protection has turned out to be an issue of economic stability, domestic security, and public safety.  To protect the nation from cyber-attacks to critical infrastructure it is imperative the United...

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Borders represent essential avenues through which sovereign countries interact via immigration and trade. It is crucial for the border authorities to ensure that the security systems around such borders are sufficient and adequate in handling their intended border regulation functions. The resources budgeted to enhance such systems should be proportionate...

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Effective Border Control Effective border security is a key factor for a country that is fighting to implement counter-terrorism measures. Border control is the first move in defending a country against terrorist's attacks and illegal movement of goods across the borders. Many members of states find it challenging to monitor land...

Although Homeland Defense, as well as Homeland Security, are not the same, the line between them is a narrow one. Scholars gave a little thought about the functions of the two bodies before the attack of 9/11. In most cases, people associated with Homeland security with local law enforcement and...

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The government has identified 16 infrastructure sectors essential to its security, economy and health care (The Department of Homeland Security 2018). These sectors guarantee the resilience of the society during crises. The sectors were created in order to consolidate and uphold the networks, assets, and networks in a coordinated manner (The...

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Introduction Over the previous decade, there has been growth in threats to critical infrastructure sectors to potential disastrous dimensions. Critical infrastructure protection has turned out to be an issue of economic stability, domestic security, and public safety. To protect the nation from cyber-attacks to critical infrastructure it is imperative the United...

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The 2014 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review contains the responsibility the Department of Homeland Security shares with various individuals across federal, local, state and tribal governments, non-governmental organizations and the private sector  (Dale, 2014) The real challenge in transforming the QHSR 2014 into a living reality lies in the difficulties in...

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Introduction Domestic intelligence involves activities or conditions within the United States that threaten internal security and that might require the employment of troops. Homeland security enterprise, on the other hand, safeguards the American citizens against terrorism with integrated results-based operations. The research will illustrate the capabilities and limitations of both the...

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Richard D. Parker, Homeland: an Essay on Patriotism , 25 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 407 (2002).

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A House Is Not a Home

By Iman Fayyad

Ms. Fayyad is an assistant professor of architecture at Syracuse University.

On July 9, 1998, a small house in Anata , a village northeast of Jerusalem, was destroyed for the first time. Home to the Shawamrehs, a Palestinian family of nine, the house was built four years earlier in a part of the West Bank over which Israel has military control. House demolitions occur routinely in this territory, where Palestinians like Arabiya and Salim Shawamreh are denied building permits on land that they have purchased and rightfully own.

This house became a target for repeated demolitions because the family refused to leave. Each time Israeli authorities razed it, the family rebuilt it, alongside volunteers from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Now known as Beit Arabiya, the house has become a symbol of resilience.

This family’s story exemplifies the precarious nature of life as a Palestinian, whether residing in the homeland or abroad in the diaspora. When I visited Beit Arabiya in 2012 to celebrate its fifth reconstruction, I was fully aware that yet another destruction could be around the corner. As history repeats itself yet again when it comes to displacing Palestinians from their homes en masse, one thing remains clear to me: Although a house can be temporary, the home is permanent.

My definition of “home” is a complex one. Despite the nostalgia I feel whenever I visit my birthplace — Reston, Va., a suburb of Washington — or any of the American cities I have lived in as an adult, they are not places I ever called home. When someone asks me where I am from, I say I am from Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is where I grew up, from about the age of 5 until I graduated from high school. It is where my mother was born, where her parents and grandparents were born and where my most formative memories reside. Jerusalem, with its simultaneous precariousness and stability, is where I learned that physical space shapes who we are. It taught me to understand the material world as a place of perpetual flux, which is fundamental to my work as an architect and educator today.

As a child, I loved wandering around Jerusalem with members of my family, listening to them narrate the city’s storied landscape. An abandoned building abutting an Israeli courthouse used to be a cinema they frequented as teens. An Israeli-owned restaurant stood in what was unmistakably the old home of a Palestinian family. An Israeli highway split neighborhoods that were once connected , severing the West Bank in half and providing a de facto fault line along which illegal settlements were created and expanded. Over several years, I witnessed one of these settlements gradually emerge across my neighborhood. Conversations involved a lot of saying “this used to be” and “that was once.” I spent my childhood conjuring alternate versions of Jerusalem, living between past and present.

Ironically, the city where I feel I most belong is the one place that can never function as my home again. I enjoy more rights and live a more dignified life in New York than I would as a Palestinian of my status in Jerusalem. Israel effectively denies me the right to earn a living, own or rent a house or even drive a car in Jerusalem. This discriminatory treatment does not apply to other U.S. citizens. Despite my American citizenship, my identity as a Palestinian casts me as exceptional.

Nonetheless, Jerusalem will never be displaced from my personhood; my family still lives there, and I visit often. When I think back to being asked by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints about my reasons for being in Jerusalem, once part of my morning routine to get to school, the answer to that question today feels more existential than practical.

Even when I lived in Jerusalem, I was considered a visitor, not a legal resident. As West Bank ID holders, my father, two brothers and I had to get visitor permits approved by Israeli authorities every three months so that we could continue to live in the city with my mother, who, unlike us, is a native Jerusalemite — an unofficial term used to identify Palestinians born in Jerusalem. (Israel claims jurisdiction over East Jerusalem despite the fact that it falls squarely within the West Bank under internationally recognized borders; this allows Israel to restrict West Bank ID holders’ movement in and access to any part of the city.)

The expulsion and forced displacement of scores of Palestinians first from their houses and eventually from their homeland — in the nakba of 1948, when Israel was founded; in 1967, when even more territory was lost; and in subsequent rounds of violence, including the current war — has created a scattered global refugee population of about six million people . I like to think that our home exists within each of us, no matter where we are. But this systematic displacement is, at its core, deeply tragic.

In Gaza, an estimated 70 percent of occupied housing units have been destroyed or severely damaged since Oct. 7, internally displacing about 85 percent of its people. This mass destruction of dwellings , what has been commonly referred to as domicide, renders entire swaths of land uninhabitable. It is estimated that in the West Bank over 1,395 structures were bulldozed last year, joining around 60,000 others that were demolished in recent decades in the occupied territories.

Israel justifies many of these demolitions as legal under its zoning regulations, which classify about 72 percent of the West Bank as agricultural land or as national parks, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. (This was the case with Beit Arabiya; the Shawamrehs’ first application for a building permit was turned down because their land fell into that classification, although by their estimates, it was too rocky to be farmed.) This zoning is done under the guise of environmental protection but effectively bars Palestinian construction on the land, which the U.N. and international organizations have considered occupied since 1967.

It can be almost impossible for Palestinians to rid themselves of a looming sense of transience, whether they live in the diaspora or are struggling to hold on to their homes in the occupied territories. Imagine what it feels like to be a refugee in your own homeland.

It feels strange to be from a place that almost everyone has an opinion about. Sometimes, the four words I dread hearing the most are “Where are you from?” The conversation that ensues is never straightforward and rarely comfortable.

“Palestine” is rarely an option on a form to indicate nationality. My home country in my official college profile was left blank because my country of origin did not exist. I often think about what it means to be Palestinian without an internationally recognized Palestine. Even this form of geopolitical erasure is painful.

The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish captures the essence of our plight in the internal dialogue of his self-elegy, “In the Presence of Absence.” He writes:

You ask: What is the meaning of “refugee”? They will say: One who is uprooted from his homeland. You ask: What is the meaning of “homeland”? They will say: The house, the mulberry tree, the chicken coop, the beehive, the smell of bread and the first sky. You ask: Can a word of eight letters be big enough for all of these, yet too small for us?

In November 2012, Beit Arabiya was destroyed for the sixth and last time. Against all odds, the Shawamrehs outlived the repeated, traumatic destruction and reconstruction of their house. Their story of perseverance is quintessentially Palestinian: Time and again, Israel tried to uproot them from their land, but they remained — if not in their original house, then in another one not too far away.

Among the seemingly infinite uncertainties facing Palestinians today, one eternal truth that we have come to know all too well is that you can destroy a house, but you can never take away a home.

Iman Fayyad is an assistant professor of architecture at Syracuse University and a principal of a design and research practice.

Source photograph courtesy of Jeff Halper.

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Imaginary Homelands Summary & Analysis

Looking for Imaginary Homelands summary? This paper contains a synopsis, critical review, and analysis of Imaginary Homelands by Salman Rushdie.

Introduction

The essay Imaginary Homelands describes the plight of the writers in the Diaspora as they attempt to reconnect with their homelands. However, the reconnection fails miserably due to incomplete memory. They are completely out of touch with their homelands and hence grossly alienated.

This essay will focus on the features of semantic and lexical structures employed in order to highlight the question of memory fragmentation. These are metaphors, semantic fields, intertextuality and text types, and register.

Imaginary Homelands Summary

Imaginary Homelands is a collection of essays by Salman Rushdie. The book written between 1981 and 1992 focuses on the author’s experiences in the time when Indira Gandhi was ruling India. The book is divided into six parts: Midnight’s children, The politics of India and Pakistan, Literature, Arts & media, Experience of migrants, and The question of Palestine.

Imaginary Homelands Analysis

Metaphor in imaginary homelands.

There is extensive use of metaphor in the essay Imaginary Homelands by Rushdie. This is driven by the need to convey the theme of alienation that people in the Diaspora are invariably plagued with.

Mostly, the exiles have to do with faint memories, which have gaping hiatuses and therefore, they have to fill in using their imaginations (Seyhan 2000). The use of metaphor, it can be argued, deliberately reflects on Rushdie’s personal history. The metaphors have been discussed as follows.

The old photograph that hangs in the room where Rushdie works is metaphorical. It represents a section of Rushdie’s past from which he has been totally alienated. He was not yet born when the photograph was taken. The old photograph is significant because it prompts Rushdie to visit the house immortalised on it.

This is a black and white image of the house, and as Rushdie discovers, his childhood memories were also monochromatic (Rushdie 1991, p. 9). This implies that his childhood memories were untainted.

Pillars of salt have also been used metaphorically. It is an allusion to the biblical story of Lot and his wife in which the latter turned into a pillar of salt upon looking back at the destruction that was befalling their homeland. Pillars of salt, therefore, refers to the dangers faced by those in exile when they try to reconnect with their homelands.

This point to the trouble that Rushdie faced from his motherland when he wrote the novel Satanic Verses which featured Prophet Mohammad sacrilegiously. Consequently, a fatwa was declared on him and he had to be given a round-the-clock police protection by the British government.

Then, there is the metaphor of the broken mirror. The metaphor denotes the distant and almost obscure memories that those in exile have about their homeland. The memories are made up of many pieces that cannot be patched up together. The fact that some crucial pieces are missing aggravates matters. In extreme cases, those living in diaspora have no recollection at all about their homeland.

Consequently, they resort to imaginations to complete the picture. In the essay, the author writes: “…we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind.” (Rushdie 1991, p. 10). He further admits that he made Saleem, the narrator in one of his earlier works; suspect that “his mistakes are the mistakes of a fallible memory…” (Rushdie 1991, p. 10).

Closely related to the metaphor of broken mirror is the reference to shards of memory. Shards are small jagged pieces that result when something is shattered. It is impossible to reconstruct the original item using them. More often than not, a considerable number of them are irretrievable. This is a reflection of the hopelessly inadequate memories about their homelands that are nursed by those in the diaspora.

They can only afford tiny fragments of memories, which cannot be put together to build a complete picture of their motherland. They then resort to the “broken pots of antiquity” (Rushdie 1991, p. 12) to reconstruct their past. Rushdie further argues that as human beings, we are capable only of fractured perceptions (Rushdie 1991, p. 12) because we are partial beings.

Rushdie also likens meaning to a shaky edifice built from scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films among others. This implies that the meaning attached to the memories that those in exile harbour is constantly being amended. The shaky edifice has to receive constant patches and repairs in order to maintain it.

Semantic Fields in Imaginary Homelands

Brinton (2000) defines semantic field as a segment of reality symbolized by a set of related words (p. 112). The words in a semantic field share a common semantic property. There are various semantic fields in Rushdie’s Imaginary Homelands.

Rushdie uses the expression “imaginary homelands” as a powerful metaphor to elucidate the shattered vision of the migrant who is abroad. This semantic field denotes the preoccupation with lost memories experienced by those in exile. To them, home is not a real place, but an imaginary rendition authored by discontinuous fragments of memory conceived in imagination.

According to Rushdie, it is impossible to reclaim the lost memories and, therefore, the need to recreate a vastly fictionalized “Indias of the mind” (Rushdie 1991, p. 10). This amplifies the alienation faced by those in exile.

Another semantic field is evident in the expressions “lost time” and “lost city” (Rushdie 1991, p. 9-10). In Rushdie’s essay, they refer to a lost history, which those in the Diaspora cannot recover. What are available are the disjointed shards of memory that are scarcely sufficient to build a history on.

Due to this, Rushdie is confined to creating his own version of India and as a result, he ends up writing a novel of memory and about memory. It implies that everything is lost thus making the exiles more alienated from their homelands.

The admonition on the bridge over a local railway line, “Drive like Hell and you will get there” (Rushdie 1991, p. 11) is another semantic field. This statement is curiously ambiguous. On the one hand, it may be a warning against over-speeding whose end result is likely to be death through a possible accident.

On the other hand, it might be a rallying call to drivers to zoom over the bridge so as to get to their destinations on time. Rushdie envisions a contradiction in this ambiguity. He holds fast to it because it is one of the fragments of memories about his homeland.

Then, there is the way in which Rushdie uses the expression “our worlds”. This is a semantic field that denotes people’s individual experiences, aspirations and dreams. In this essay, the author states that individuals have the freedom to describe their worlds according to the way they perceive them.

This is a deliberate attempt to escape the harsh reality of lost memories. He can find refuge in the use of imagination to recreate his own world; one that consists of memory fragments. It underscores the biting alienation afflicting those in Diaspora.

Imaginary Homelands: Narrative Forms

Rushdie’s essay is chiefly a literary text. This is because it employs narration as the method of presentation. The author narrates his moving experiences when he visits Bombay after many years.

He narrates: “A few years ago, I revisited Bombay, which is my lost city, after an absence of something like half my life.” (Rushdie 1991, p. 9). This is an effective way of reaching out to the readers, most of whom may not be familiar with the feeling of alienation experienced in exile.

The narrative forms involve orientation, which sets the scene, time and the characters in the essay. In this case, the scene is Bombay; the time is a few years ago; and the characters include the narrator himself. There is also the compilation, which outlines the problem that leads to a series of events.

In this essay, the old photograph made the author visit Bombay after many years. Narrative forms also involve a resolution. This is the answer to the problem elucidated in the essay. In this essay, the author reverts to the use of imagination to make up for lost memories. He creates the India that he can afford.

Being an essay, it can also be considered a factual text. This is because it entails a discussion on the problem of a fragmented memory. The author draws the reader’s attention to the plight of emigrant troubled by a lost history. Plagued by insufficient recollection, the author, as a literary artist, discovers that he is less than a sage.

Imaginary Homelands: Text Register

Closely related to the text type is the use of register. Register refers to the set of meanings, the configuration of semantic patterns that are typically drawn upon under the specific conditions, along with words and structures that are used with the realization of these meanings (Halliday 1978, p. 23). This draws interest to Rushdie’s contextual use of language in the essay Imaginary Homelands .

Rushdie examines the complex situation that encumbers the writer in the diaspora as they attempt to transform nostalgia into an ideal past (Mannur 2010, p. 28). But seeing the past through broken mirrors diminishes the idealised image of the past.

He further draws an analogy between the old black and white photograph and his childhood perceptions. History had added colour to those perceptions, but nostalgia has drained hue out of them: “the colours of history had seeped out of my mind’s eye” (Rushdie, 1991, p. 9).

Allusions in Imaginary Homelands

The essay Imaginary Homelands makes references to various other texts. These intertextual allusions serve to reinforce the plight of those living in exile. They heighten the alienation and the feeling of loss, which arise as a result of loss of memory. They also serve to build on the plot of the essay; thus, emphasizing the subject matter.

The first reference is made to L.P. Hartley’s novel, The Go Between . The first sentence of the novel forms the caption to the old photograph in the author’s room. It states that the past is a foreign country. This implies that those in exile are not familiar with their pasts.

However, the author makes a fervent attempt to escape the harsh reality of the statement by trying to reverse it. He would have preferred to grasp his humble beginning, but unfortunately, he is hopelessly trapped in the present. So, the past becomes a lost home, a lost city shrouded in the mists of lost time (Rushdie 1991, p. 9).

Another instance of intertextuality is evident in the use of the metaphor “pillar of salt”. This has been borrowed from the biblical story in which fire rains down on Sodom and Gomorrah, home to Lot and his wife. Lot’s wife turns back, contrary to the instructions given by the angel, and turns into a pillar of salt.

Similarly, those in forced exile face potential demise should they turn back home. A few do turn back home in spite of the risk they expose themselves to. As for Rushdie, the people back home are baying for his blood as controversy rages about his novel, Satanic Verses.

Rushdie also makes reference to a book he is scripting while in north London. He looks out the window onto a city that is inherently dissimilar to the one being illustrated in the book. This instance is quite relevant here in that it helps bring to the fore the disparity between reality and fiction.

The city described in the book being written is built on some obscure memories, which result from missing history. This is the distortion occasioned by broken memories. In that book, the author makes the narrator to suspect that his mistakes are as a result of distorted memories.

The author draws a parallel to his other work of art, Midnight’s Children . He is still grappling with the disturbing issue of memory. Before penning the book, he spends a long time trying to recall what Bombay, his homeland, looked like in the 50s and 60s. Due to insufficient memory, he shifts the setting to Agra under the pretext of creating a certain joke about the Taj Mahal.

What is evident here is the substitution made by individuals afflicted with incomplete recall in order to make up for the gaps in their memories. This is what informs the rather baffling conclusion that writers are no longer sages, dispensing the wisdom of the centuries (Rushdie 1991, p. 12).

The essay has also borrowed from John Fowle’s Daniel Martin. The opening line in this book thus goes: “Whole sight: or all the rest is desolation” (Rushdie 1991, p. 12). The statement seems to be implying that the problem of broken memories could be universal. It is felt by all, not just Rushdie alone. It also points to the fact that it is not possible to experience a complete memory recall.

Any attempt to total recall may only lead to desolation. This also explains why there is a universal resort to imagination to complete the missing picture. Consequently, writers cease to be sages as they have no wisdom to dispense – only an imaginary homeland.

Rushdie has successfully employed the various features of semantics and lexicon structure in order to express his meaning. Through the use of metaphors and intertextuality, the author successfully depicts the problem of a fragmented memory and explains why those in exile have to resort to imagination in order to recreate the homes they can never attain (Ramsey and Ganapathy-Doré, 2011, p. 162).

The text type used is also appropriate since it helps connect with the reader who may not be familiar to the alienating experiences of those in exile and the reason as to why writers engage in imagination rather than portraying reality.

Semantic fields in the essay have accomplished the intended purpose of expressing meaning to as many readers as possible. Therefore, it is important to study the semantic and lexical structure employed by Rushdie in his works in order to understand them fully.

List of References

Brinton, L J 2000, The structure of modern English: a linguistic introduction , Illustrated edn, Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Halliday, M A 1978, Language as social semiotic: the social interpretation of language and meaning, London: Edward Arnold Publishing Company.

Mannur, A 2010, Culinary fictions: food in South Asian diasporic culture , Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Ramsey, H and Ganapathy-Doré, G 2011, Projections of paradise: ideal elsewheres in postcolonial migrant literature , New York: Rodopi.

Rushdie, S 1991, Imaginary homelands, London: Granta Books.

Seyhan, A 2000, Writing outside the nation , New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

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1. IvyPanda . "Imaginary Homelands Summary & Analysis." March 4, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/imaginary-homelands-essay/.

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IvyPanda . "Imaginary Homelands Summary & Analysis." March 4, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/imaginary-homelands-essay/.

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A collection of essays discussing the concept of Aztlan, the mythological homeland of the Chicano movement.

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My Homeland Your Homeland Essay Example

• Pages: 3 (645 words)
• Published: July 14, 2018
• Type: Essay

My Homeland Your Homeland I love the smell of my country in spring. So wonderful, fresh and colourfull. So many different fragrances, unique perfumes make this smell so adorable. That smell is created by the people who live here, in beautiful country of mine, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Three constitutional nations with their own characteristic perfume together make one of great value, and one can not exist without the others. Sitting in my favorite cafe, alone in my deepest thoughts.

My tea's already gone cold. I'm wondering how quickly a change can happen. When I got out of my bed this morning, the morning rain clouds were up on my window and I could barely see anything. I wanted to go back to my bad, but something made me go ou

t for a walk. I'm happy I did that, because as soon as I got out I knew it' was going to be a beautiful day. The sun rose in a hurry, as if it was trying to make up for setting so early the evening before, bouncing into the sky like a great fiery yo-yo.

The sky was a brilliantly bright, baby blue, and perched gently on the leafy branches of the trees in the park, birds sang. It looked like utopia, or is it really? It’s been two decades since the war in this area was started, and consequences on the cities are becoming less and less visible. But what about the consequences and differences among the people? Are they getting bigger as the days are passing by, or they’re blending and the people are forgiving?

I believe that

the war is far behind us, it surely will never be forgotten, but it has to be forgiven. In my community it already is. We all live together, Serbs, Bosnians and Croats. We all look the same, breathe the same and eat the same. We are all just humans, living together in one country, creating one beautiful society, one unrepeatable perfume. In my circle of friends we all share the same opinion. There is no hate or refusal to suffer, we all go out together and we don’t make distinctions among us.

I rate people by their values and qualities, not nationality or religious affiliation, and so do my friends. We are one inseparable circle and every individual makes the circle complete, makes our perfume perfect. I’m still sitting in my favorite cafe. I came alive out of my deepest thoughts, happy and satisfied. Through the window I can see loads of people, talking, hurrying, laughing, crying, hugging and smiling. They’re all doing this together, without separating themselves by ethnical or religious affiliation.

And I’m very glad for that. This means that the people have put the past behind them, and that they are ready to continue building their history, tradition and culture together, like they did before. People are people, and the only thing they can do is to put the past behind them, forget about the differences and love each other. Love and war, two concepts that are so contradictory that it is hard to believe they could ever coexist simultaneously in one society.

But in our country it is shown that love can come after war, just like the

sun came after those rainy clouds this morning. Maybe you don't understand this, but I understand. This is in genes of all of us, Balcanic people. We are the people of joy, music and friendship, and you have to come here to experience this kind of living. It is unrepeatable and unforgetable. I'm sure you'll enjoy it and sometimes, in the future, you'll wish to come back here one more time. The door of Bosnia and Herzegovina are always open to people of good will smiling faces. Vladana Klacar III-4

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Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs faces sweeping sex-trafficking inquiry: What the feds have, need to prove

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Over the last few months, a legendary name in the music world has faced a series of shocking allegations of sexual abuse.

In civil lawsuits, four women have accused Sean “Diddy” Combs of rape, assault and other abuses, dating back three decades. One of the allegations involved a minor. The claims sent shock waves through the music industry and put Combs’ entertainment empire in jeopardy.

Now, the hip-hop mogul’s legal troubles have worsened considerably.

Law enforcement sources told The Times that Combs is the subject of a sweeping inquiry into sex-trafficking allegations that resulted in a federal raid Monday at his estates in Los Angeles and Miami.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ L.A., Miami homes raided in sex-trafficking inquiry, sources say

Agents search Sean Combs’ Holmby Hills and Miami mansions as part of a federal inquiry into sex trafficking allegations, law enforcement sources said.

March 26, 2024

Authorities have declined to comment on the case, and Combs has not been charged with any crime. But the scene of dozens of Department of Homeland Security agents — guns drawn — searching Combs’ properties underscored the seriousness of the investigation.

At the same time as the raids, police in Miami arrested Brendan Paul, a man described in a recent lawsuit against Combs as a confidant and drug “mule.” Miami-Dade police took Paul, 25, into custody on suspicion of possession of cocaine and a controlled substance-laced candy, records show.

Paul was arrested at Miami Opa-Locka Executive Airport, where TMZ posted video showing Combs walking around Monday afternoon. An affidavit reviewed by the Miami Herald alleged that police working with Homeland Security found drugs in Paul’s bag. There is nothing in Miami court records connecting Combs to Paul, who was later released on $2,500 bail.

The arrest, however, is the latest in a string of legal woes tied to Combs.

Sources with knowledge of the sex-trafficking investigation into Combs, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said federal authorities have interviewed at least three women, but it’s unclear whether any are among those who have filed suit.

Behind the calamitous fall of hip-hop mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

In the wake of multiple lawsuits filed against him, former members of Combs’ inner circle told The Times that his alleged misconduct against women goes back decades.

Dec. 13, 2023

Legal experts say it could take time to build a criminal case against Combs but note that the civil suits could offer investigators a road map.

Dmitry Gorin, a former L.A. County sex-crimes prosecutor who is now in private practice, said the allegations in the lawsuits would likely have been enough for a judge to grant search warrants for Combs’ homes.

Investigators probably would seek authorization to “search for videos or photographs on any devices connected to the target ... anywhere where digital images can be found in connection to sexual conduct that would have been recorded,” Gorin said.

Shawn Holley, an attorney for Combs, did not respond to requests for comment, but Aaron Dyer, another of his lawyers, on Tuesday called the raids a “witch hunt” and “a gross overuse of military-level force.”

“Yesterday, there was a gross overuse of military-level force as search warrants were executed at Mr. Combs’ residences,” Dyer said in a statement. “This unprecedented ambush — paired with an advanced, coordinated media presence — leads to a premature rush to judgment of Mr. Combs and is nothing more than a witch hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits. There has been no finding of criminal or civil liability with any of these allegations.”

Combs has previously denied any wrongdoing.

Gorin and other legal experts said investigators could be focused, in part, on the sexual assault allegations involving a minor. If a minor is moved across state lines for the purpose of sex, “that is enough for at least an argument ... of sex trafficking because somebody underage cannot consent,” Gorin said.

“Sex trafficking for adults usually involves some sort of coercion or other restraints,” he said, and can be tougher to prove. Prosecutors would need to show you “encouraged somebody to engage in sexual activity for money or some other inducement.”

Coercion, he added, is not limited to threats of violence. It could involve being held against one’s will or someone simply saying, “I don’t want to participate in group sex, and now I’m being forced to.”

Homeland Security investigates most sex-trafficking operations for the federal government. Legal experts say one possibility why the agency could be involved in this case is because the women involved in the allegations against Combs could be from other countries.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs sexual harassment suit includes notable music industry names

A new suit from music producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones makes new, explosive claims about Combs’ alleged assaults and misconduct in granular detail, naming several prominent artists and music executives as well.

Feb. 28, 2024

Meghan Blanco, a defense attorney who has handled sexual trafficking cases, said they can be “incredibly difficult cases to prove.”

“They have [in the Combs case] convinced one or more federal magistrates they had enough probable cause for one or more search warrants,” Blanco said. “Given the scope of the investigation, it seems they are further along than most investigations.”

Combs’ legal troubles have been building for months.

His former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, accused him of rape and repeated physical assaults and said he forced her to have sex with male prostitutes in front of him. Joi Dickerson-Neal accused Combs in a suit of drugging and raping her in 1991, recording the attack and then distributing the footage without her consent.

Liza Gardner filed a third suit in which she claimed Combs and R&B singer Aaron Hall sexually assaulted her. Hall could not be reached for comment.

Another lawsuit alleges that Combs and former Bad Boy label president Harve Pierre gang-raped and sex-trafficked a 17-year-old girl. Pierre said in a statement that the allegations were “disgusting,” “false” and a “desperate attempt for financial gain.”

After the filing of the fourth suit, Combs wrote on Instagram: “Enough is enough. For the last couple of weeks, I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy. Sickening allegations have been made against me by individuals looking for a quick payday. Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family and for the truth.”

Last month, producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones filed a federal lawsuit against Combs accusing him of sexually harassing and threatening him for more than a year. The suit includes mention of Paul in connection with “the affairs ... involving dealing in controlled substances.”

On Monday, the suit was amended to include Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. as a co-defendant in the lawsuit.

Cuba Gooding Jr. added as co-defendant in Lil Rod’s lawsuit against Diddy

Cuba Gooding Jr. is added as a co-defendant in a lawsuit against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs. Record producer Rodney ‘Lil Rod’ Jones accuses the actor of sexual assault.

Blanco said prosecutors “are going to look carefully for corroboration — the numbers of people accusing the person of similar acts.” Beyond that, they will be looking for videos, recordings and cellphone records that place people in the same locations or text messages or other discussions at the time of the alleged acts.

She said prosecutors are trying to build a record of incidents that happened some time ago.

Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer for Ventura and another, unnamed plaintiff, said in response to reports of the search warrant issued against Combs: “We will always support law enforcement when it seeks to prosecute those that have violated the law. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a process that will hold Mr. Combs responsible for his depraved conduct.”

Wigdor on Tuesday called his clients “courageous and credible witnesses.”

“To the extent there is a prosecution and they want our clients to testify truthfully,” he said, “I think they will and that will be damning evidence.”

The searches Monday in L.A. and Miami sparked worldwide attention.

Diddy’s ‘Love’ producer Lil Rod accuses him and associates of sexual assault, illicit behavior

Rodney ‘Lil Rod’ Jones has filed a bombshell lawsuit against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs accusing the media mogul of sexually harassing and threatening him.

Feb. 27, 2024

His 17,000-square-foot Holmby Hills mansion, where Combs debuted his last album a year ago, was flooded with Homeland Security agents who gathered evidence on behalf of an investigation being run by the Southern District of New York, according to law enforcement officials familiar with the inquiry.

Two of Combs’ sons were briefly detained at the Holmby Hills property as agents searched the mansion in footage captured by FOX11 Los Angeles.

Both Blanco and Gorin said prosecutors will have to examine the accusers’ motives for coming forward and whether they are motivated by financial gain. They are sure to look for inconsistencies in any allegations, they said.

Any defense, Blanco added, will question why the accusers are only now coming forward and whether they have an incentive beyond justice.

“It comes down to credibility,” she said.

Times staff writers Stacy Perman and Nardine Saad contributed to this report.

More to Read

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ ex says feds ‘terrorized’ her sons, posts dramatic video of L.A. raid

Diddy returns to Instagram, amid federal probe, to celebrate Easter with youngest daughter

April 1, 2024

Feds want Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ communications, flight records in sex-trafficking probe

March 29, 2024

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Richard Winton is an investigative crime writer for the Los Angeles Times and part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2011. Known as @lacrimes on Twitter, during almost 30 years at The Times he also has been part of the breaking news staff that won Pulitzers in 1998, 2004 and 2016.

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