This course will cover the basic concepts involved in the design and operation of nuclear reactors. Students will build an understanding of how nuclear reactors work and how they relate to nuclear weapons. The course will cover how various designs are more or less proliferation resistant and how reactors use and produce nuclear material. This course is strongly recommended for students considering taking the J-Term practicum held at the Czech Technical University’s VR-1 “Sparrow” research reactor.

This course is a comprehensive introduction to the study of Israel’s nuclear history and policy within the broader context of understanding the nuclear dimension of Middle East politics. The course focuses on the uniqueness and the exceptionality that constitutes Israel’s nuclear history and policy. By that uniqueness we mean the original policy which Israel devised to acquire and possess nuclear weapons that ultimately made Israel an exceptional case both vis-à-vis the United States non-proliferation policies and vis-a-vis the non-proliferation regime. That policy is known as Israel’s policy of “nuclear opacity” or “nuclear ambiguity,” under which Israel has never officially acknowledged to acquire or possess nuclear weapons, even though since 1970s Israel is universally presumed as a nuclear weapons state. The course ends with reflections about challenge that Israel’s nuclear uniqueness poses both to the United States nonproliferation policy and the non-proliferation regime as a whole.

This course provides students with a solid foundation in scientific and technical fundamentals critical to nonproliferation and terrorism policy analysis. Such policy analyses often require strong foundational knowledge of basic scientific and technical concepts in order to understand, create, and inform policy decisions. The course begins with an introduction to science and the scientific method and then evolves into the three main areas: biological weapons, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons and relevant technologies. Topics covered in the biological component include fundamental concepts related to microorganisms, DNA, RNA, proteins, and processes of infection and disease. Topics covered in the chemistry component include fundamental concepts related to atomic structure and the periodic table, chemical structural representations, functional groups, reactivity, toxicity, as well as modern separation, purification and analytic techniques commonly used for chemical species. Applications of the fundamental concepts in the first two topics are further developed in relation to features of chemical and biological weapons and warfare, including agents, delivery methods and effects. Topics covered in the nuclear component part of the course includes radioactivity, uranium, nuclear weapons, radiation detection instrumentation and applications, environmental plumes, and various instrumentation and analysis techniques. Upon completion of this course students will have a deeper appreciation for the debate on various verification solutions that have been proposed for compliance under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and nuclear treaties.

This course is designed to provide the student with a basic knowledge of the issues relating to cyber security, from both a technical and historic perspective. The basic concepts of cyber security that will allow the student to understand the current concerns, vocabulary, and basic principles involved in cyber security will be considered, along with the technologies used to prevent and detect cyber-attacks. The history of cyber-attacks, basic concepts and considerations of cyber warfare, hacking, and basic concepts such as authentication and encryption will be covered along with the major efforts and initiatives that have been developed by the international community to deal with them. A particular focus of the course will be on cyber security as it relates to the field of nuclear security.

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the issues surrounding the proliferation of nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological (NBCR) weapons and their means of delivery, the consequences of proliferation, and means to stem it or ameliorate its dangers, including:

• Nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons technologies

• Means of delivery, including ballistic and cruise missile technology

• Alternative perspectives on the dangers of proliferation and the utility of the term “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD)

• Factors affecting why states do or don’t pursue and obtain nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons and their means of delivery

• Potential and actual non-state actor pursuit, acquisition, and use of NBCR weapons

• Profiles of key countries and their NBCR programs and policies

• Deterrence vis-à-vis states and non-state actors

• Counterproliferation, including the possible use of force

• The nuclear nonproliferation regime, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards system

• The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC)

• The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)

• Missile control regimes and other export control arrangements

• Cooperative threat reduction and various post-9/11 initiatives

• Alternative futures, including new nuclear abolition debates

In this course, you will learn the essentials underlying cryptocurrency, Web3, and DeFi; go hands-on with crypto transactions; learn to monitor the blockchain (and understand what you are looking at); and comprehend the various ways the ways crypto and blockchain are used in real life, where the technology is headed, and how it can be abused.

The course is an introduction to the subject of terrorism. The course will focus on a range of fundamental questions, such as: What is Terrorism? What causes Terrorism? Why do terrorist groups emerge and how do they end? What is extremism? Why do individuals join terrorist groups? What are lone wolf terrorists? What is leaderless jihad? These are but a few of the elements that will be explored over the course of the semester. The course also aims to expose students to a wide range of terrorist groups and ideologies.

This seminar explores several areas of the professional financial crime fighting field, including law-enforcement investigations and prosecution strategies, government policy implementation and enforcement, investigations and compliance management at traditional financial institutions and fintech firms, public – private partnerships to address crypto crime, and multilateral agency efforts. All of these stakeholders have different approaches to investigations and different perspectives about compliance. We will also look at several sanctions regimes from the initial policy design to implementation, enforcement and compliance.

The counterterrorism seminar is designed to address the challenges of terrorism in the current and future global security environment in a participatory format. Specifically, the seminar briefly reviews the threat terrorism poses to liberal democratic states, citizens and policymakers, then explores how liberal democracies can best predict, prevent, preempt and, if necessary, directly combat terrorism and terrorists. The course will assess the history and future of terrorism; analyze terrorist and state strategies; and then focus on the tools to fight terrorism - military, intelligence, police, diplomatic institutions and approaches; the "targets" of counterterrorism - leaders, finances, safe havens, networks, ideologies; and the technologies used to counter terrorism - drones, social media, and more. Case studies and simulations will be used throughout the course.